manisha's posterous

While visiting the really uncared for 14 falls near Thika just outside of Nairobi, Kenya I came across three adolescents.  They were not at school as their teachers went on strike.  Instead they were making money.

They had invested their savings in the purchase of photo printers.  Tourists would come, visit the fall, often be disgusted about the state of the area and these boys for 100 Shilling (about a USD) propose to take your pictures and print it so that you go home with a souvenir.

I have to say, we make great policies for enterprenership and technology and write wonderful essay and policy paper about it...but these three boys were implementing it.

Hats off to these entrepreneurs!  I was very impressed.

For those wishing to replicate.  All you need is:

A photo printer, a car battery, an inverter, a camera a

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If you have been following the news lately, you would have noticed armies, rebel groups  and insurgents across the world are rallying and wizzing accross the roads and desert tracks on pick up trucks.  Whether it is in the desert roads of Libya, the meanders of Cote D’Ivoire, or the valleys of Afghanistan, pick ups are the vehicle of choice.

(Source: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/World/20110407/libya-thursday-110407/)

(source: http://niger1.com/?tag=cote-divoire)

Interestingly the battle armoured vehicles are being overtaken by the pick up trucks.  Most of the tanks and regular army vehicles I have seen were overturned by the road side!  I have never been on a tank, but one of my friends who did his military service in a tank was telling me how uncomfortable it can me.  Amphibious tanks, is now used to carry tourist around on 'duck tours'.  Humvees are luxury vehicles.  Simplicity seems to be the word and perhaps the solution is to go on pick up.  

It makes me wonder whether companies like Toyota are aware of their notoriety in the informal ground troop, insurgent and rebel community.  I am not sure whether their officials went in and did any pick up trucks deals with rebel group as you often hear of arms trade deals.

When economics and common sense come at play, the logical wisdom tends towards the pick up truck.  Economics first: A conventional military truck on ebay sells for at least $ 15000, while you can buy a Toyota pick up truck for 5 times less...  The arms industry which of course also covers vehicles, is almost a $ 1.5 trillion Close to three percent of the world's GDP is spent onInsurgents with limited means, can maximise their impact by buying 5 such vehicles and ferrying 5 or more times as many people.

In Common sense terms: Of course, when it breaks down, there is always a road side mechanic who will know how to repair it!  And on that if you have not seen the BBC Top Gear show- Killing a Toyota, I strongly recommend it, here is a link:  .  Despite numerous attempts to 'kill' a toyota pick up truck, the car still drives on.

On the policy side, what does this tell us?  

 Well I surely think that going the Pick up way is a great idea for the governments with huge deficits.  Who knows investing in more pick up trucks, naturally fitted with the right safety equipment, could even help the US government reduce its deficit, balance its budget and prevent the treat of a future shutdown!  

When I studied Stats in India, it was one of those very torturous classes that I had to drag myself to.  My experience at Harvard with Stats was a stark difference.  The main reason was perhaps because here the professors taught it more as a living rather than just an abstract number crunching subject. Here is an example of a class I attended:

Despite appearance, the subject of the presentation was very serious: Application of the clustering methods to whisky classification.  Professor Wishard proposed a classification clustering whisky in 8 different groups ranging from sweet, congnachy to peaty.  The practice and science of taxonomy can indeed be a very taxing subject, imagine what Dr Wishart had to go through for his research! And the number of students postulating to be his research assistant!

Nowadays, stats are quite around us in real life everywhere.  Of course in financials matters, risks and investments, but also algorithms pair you with possible matches on dating sites, and the statistical significance of results of clinical trials are determinants of whether a drug goes or not on the market.  That is to say how important and surrounded we are by stats. 

Of course, in that statosphere, the source data becomes most important.  Wrong input of details on the dating site, will of course match you with the wrong candidate and no love in sight.  That can be tragic for an individual. In policy making wrong data leads to wrong conclusion and wrong conclusions to wrong policies, here the tragedy is nationwide.  I had a recent encounter with data from my homeland; I was faced with a pair of data from the Central Statistical Office (CSO) which pointed to two different directions.  Both sets are data being used for policy and analysis.  What is right and what is wrong.  The advice I got from the CSO is that I should be careful of not comparing data from different sources and methodologies.

The problem is, around the world, we spend a good proportion of our time comparing data from various sources.  Take Hans Rosling, he has made almost a full time activity of animating data from various sources.  While the central statistical office provides data that do not speak to each other, rankings and benchmarking are being made based on such data.  These rankings and benchmarking use data from different sources and methodologies and they have an increasingly huge influence on government policy nowadays. 

In another hemisphere, data of Irish whiskey is used with data of Scottish breed whisky to develop Iphone apps that cluster, analyze and classify choices allowing the peat-freak to choose from the best array. Even if laws for whisky age classification differ in the two whisk(e)y making regions.

Comparison or not, let me end with a little note from Hans Rosling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo 

As I read through the wikileaks documents posted today, I have to say that I am absolutely dumbstruck.  I never thought that I would ever be able to see documents giving candid information, that end up becoming policies. Therefore from a purely political policy study point of view, it is fascinating to read elements that I until now could only assume and infer.  It is also amazing to see how these were turned into concrete action.  This also reminds me of some of my Harvard classes where we had to write memos to our leaders explaining a situation or position.  I always wondered about the balancing act between being diplomatic and being candid in those memos.  well perhaps if these leaks had been up a year earlier, I would have chosen full candidness…

Having said this, it also gives me the shivers.  I would not want to be in the shoes of the secretary of state now.  I can almost visualize Mrs Clinton sitting with 10000 phones ringing around her and all demanding an explanation for the leaks and for the content of the leak.  While I have all the respect for freedom of information, I cannot help think how many lives are threatened by these documents.  The Taliban has already said that they would kill the informants.  Even in countries with greater democracy if someone in the course of a conversation with a ‘friend’ proposed an opinion that is being related in these leaks, the person is quite likely to face some level of reprisal.

And if such top secret documents could be leaked, some that I as a non-US person was never supposed to set eye upon, what does this say of security?

I am quite confident that within the US services there are very competent youngsters who know and understand computer security treats.  There are after all highly competent ones who helped the leak. But I am also sure that within the same services there are many leaders who do not necessarily understand where and how these threats can occur.  And as in any hierarchy, the formal Authority has the ultimate power to decide on priorities.  Perhaps information security is bequeathed to a lower priority status, lesser funding is provided for it and in the mean time, focus goes onto other elements…

Speaking of priorities, here is a recent one...

Image from Flickr- Globetrodden page

Uploaded by Y Mucho Mas on August 1, 2010 © All rights reserved

Yesterday Aung Sang Suu Kyi was freed after decades of house arrest.  Although I do not know her, I feel very connected to her.  She and I are after all alumni’s of Lady Shri Ram College.  Where we like these girls in LSR spent carefree days not thinking that one day not thinking that some day our calls to leadership would limit our freedom. Therefore it is appropriate that I write about her fight.

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Picture Source Indiatoday & LSR website

We know that change happens very slowly.  Her fight has started twenty years ago and is still ongoing.  All this while she has been a patient martyr for democracy.  When she came out many expected a triumphant discourse.  Instead she chose a quiet way to make her voice heard: Listening to the Burmese people and her international supporters.  Listening is a powerful tool of leadership that many leaders forget.  Instead of getting on the platform and being the centre of attention, she has succeeded in in turning the focus onto the people and the foreign supporters.  She knows that the vehicle of change is not her.  As a real leader, she is in leadership jargon, giving the work back.  As thus, the answer to democracy in Burma comes not from her, but from all the other agents within and outside Burma.  That includes the Generals who have kept power.  Her offer to talk to them offers further insights on her style of leadership.

Right now little has seeped through to unveil the behind the scenes of her liberation.  It is not a coincidence to me that her liberation occurred right after the close of the G20 leaders summit.  It is not a coincidence that the summit was held in Asia, and that the week prior to her liberation, Asian and western leaders crissed-crossed around Europe and Asia discussing assorted issues. In the behind the scenes, the diplomatic power of the Asian economies must have played a role.  The fact that she wants to listen to her international supporters, tells us that they are perhaps the invisible hands that worked towards her liberation and towards democracy.

Only the future will tell us the story of what has and will happen.  As peace is fragile, democracy is fragile, so is her freedom.  The future will tell us the length of her freedom.  Some expected a forceful message.  If she was forceful, perhaps she would already have been silenced again.  Her leadership strategy helps to buy time, gather different agents of peace and democracy and support to move things forward.  Moreover she has time to reorganize.

Leadership we were taught means to ‘go forth to die’.  Leadership is therefore a dangerous path and Aung Sang Suu Kyi having walked miles on that traitorous path opt for caution.  We do not want her fight to die. We do not want her voice to go again behind the curtains.  I have in my short life been witness to the fall of the iron curtain, the liberation of Mandela and now the freedom of Aung Sang Suu Kyi. I am an optimist, as thus I am hopeful that her freedom augurs well for democracy and for the people of Burma.  In this moment I think of my one Burmese friend.  What could she be thinking of now? Does she have the freedom to think of freedom? 

Just read an article in one of the newspapers about Mauritius’ success.  This I feel is part of the feeling of national pride that we all as Mauritians have.  After all, we all sweated to bring the country to where it stands now.  This pride however often makes us close our eyes on what is going on wrong, and there are many.  Let us look at data, benchmarks and rankings…

Gender

Much as the economy has advanced, much still needs to be done for the state of women in Mauritius.  The world economic forum Gender gap report every successive year highlights the fact that although much has been done to provide health and education to women in Mauritius, women are still not able the reach the higher echelons of decision making.  A small survey that I carried out reveals that the government service is the one that leads with the highest number of women at top levels, however, the parliament itself sits only 13 women out of 70.  As for businesses, higher management is mostly male dominated. Board rooms have very meager female representation.  The sole exception is boards that have government representation or companies that the government owns where the high echelons women hold board seats as representatives of the government.  Another alarming factor is that in the active population, less that 37 percent are women.  It is quite likely that a good number of women work in the informal sector.  Likely also that many are unemployed as women were worse hit with the manufacturing sector shrinking and finally likely that many opt out of the work market. 

Crime

You do not need statistics, to understand that the rate and gravity of crimes in Mauritius is mounting…you just need to read the headlines of the newspapers.  I was surprised to find that many are scared to venture out fearing bag or jewelry snatching.  I have not done much research on the rise of criminal offences, but I sense that the two main causes could be unemployment and drug addiction.  If there indeed was a correlation between unemployment and crimes, given that women unemployment is higher, then we would have had more women committing criminal offences, but data reveal the contrary.

Drugs

This brings me to my third concern about Mauritius: Drugs. Opiate (heroin) consumption in Mauritius when ranked on a global scale and the highest level in Africa.  We often pride ourselves to being first in many things, but this is one not to be proud of. Researchers have also shown that Mauritius also has high prevalence of injecting drug use and a concentrated HIV epidemic among these users.  Drug consumption also has an incidence on the effectiveness and competiveness of the most precious resource that the country has… its manpower.

These are some issues but we can find other data and rankings that are disturbing.  We cannot address them if we as a nation keep our eyes tightly shut on these issues.

 ‘Lever de mo people, Prend Concience realite’ said Kaya, the segae singer and he was right.  The irony is that his arrest was linked to cannabis consumption… and here’s a last bit of stats… Cannabis prices are the 5^th highest in the world in Mauritius.

As policy makers, we often think about reforms in dry way.  An economist, as I am, will try, like the alchemist, to find the magic combination of policies to administer in the hope that it will bring about growth.  We often forget that policies are not chemical compounds whose reactions are predictable.  Moreover policies are implemented by people who each have inherent likes, dislikes, biases, experiences, values and cultural heritage.  All these have a strong influence on their leadership.  In turn that has a deep impact the real impact of the magic policy compound.

In countries that have come out of civil war, the social fabric is so fragile that people are afraid to displease each other out of fear that discontent may lead to conflict.  As a result, decisions tend to minimize displeasure.  In leadership jargon, we would refer to this as ‘work avoidance’.   Here I do not mean avoiding the work in the sense of sitting under a tree and not working.  Instead in leadership it refers amongst others to finding ways to protect oneself from potential threats of hurt and change and avoiding potential conflict or controversies. 

Reforms therefore become very difficult in post civil war context because the fear of hurting one another prevents constructive ambiguity and discussions.  Tough decisions are cast aside, delayed, postponed, or decision makers opt for the least painful solution leaving no room for constructive conflict.    Unfortunately, such action or rather inaction is at the cost of the larger development of the country.  In the end, ensuring everyone is happy is not in the best interest for the country. 

This phenomenon is not restricted to political leadership.  Instead it seems entrenched in the modus operandi at all levels of decision making.  Simple decisions such as who should attend an event seek to minimize displeasure and ambiguity.  The unfortunate fact is that even simple decisions may be very important for the overall development of the country. 

I heard from Gordon Brown’s speech at the Kennedy School Forum that the IMF has just undertaken a study showing that a coordinated policy approach [using an alchemist mix of ingredients] would create 30 million jobs and lead to 4 percent growth in world economy and 3 trillion dollars of extra economic activity.  Perhaps it would be wise in this policy mix for the alchemists of the IMF to include the state of preparedness of leadership to address reforms and make allowance for the effect of conflict avoidance in the policy implementation process. These same leaders I saw this weekend in DC painfully lugging huge leather bags with details of their governments successful and failed finances. 

Have you ever wondered why countries like Egypt, Niger, US or Canada have such immaculately straight borders?  There is none other reason than man’s intervention.

Ever since mankind discovered that domesticating animals would ensure meat and planting crops would supply food, mankind has delimited lands with borders.  Most of mankind then left nomadic life for a more sedentary one, except for a few who still maintain a migratory form of livelihood. 

Roma are in the limelight these days as the French authority drives them out of their borders.  I am no expert of the Roma population.  I only encountered them once at an intriguing Festival in Provence which was almost in different dimension.  One incident, from that night left me perplexed.  One of the Roma men was not appreciative of me admiring their horses for too long.  I never quite understood his unease, until a recent completely unrelated conversation with my friend Nele who is an Amnesty expert on the Roma issues.  It so happens that Roma are originally from the Indian Subcontinent, like me.  It is my theory that they perceived me as a spy or competition! 

Perhaps I should be careful next time I enter France, I may be mistaken for a Roma.  Apart from France, as Nele says, in her media discussions last year 10,000 Roma were deported by various EU member states[i].  This calls on me to be careful and carry my passport when visiting Europe.  One note of consolation: if deported to Romania, I can visit friends there.

Anyhow, I digressed at the border!

Roma have decided to continue a Nomadic life.  Populations across Europe settled down and set up frontiers and then the EU, in theory wiped out boundaries.  But it seems you can cross borders, but not linger on too long. 

In many parts of the world, nomadic lifestyle is associated with vagrancy.  In Mauritius, there was a vagrant depot, sort of a prison for vagrants.  But guess what?  That was more than a century ago and in the times of slavery and indentured labor.  

Nomadic populations travel across the world for better opportunities.  It does not mean that we should shun them.  Chinese Hakka traveled across China and across the world.  My Hakka friend’s grandparents settled in Mauritius.  Their parents settled in Canada.  Now they are in Singapore or Australia.  They migrated seeking better opportunities.  Roma interviewed said they would go back to France because of better economic situation. 

Men have drawn borders. ..What would happen if mankind now erased them?  Perhaps everyone would flock to poles of economic development.  But perhaps not…  We are all attached to our lands and belongings; It is quite likely that a good majority of us will remain put.  The sea is a good example, there are both international and national waters, but trade routes still follow the same determined path. 

Only our dreams are borderless.  And we can only dream of a borderless world.  Until then we can only hope that nomadic populations are no more persecuted.  And for that I know, some out there are keeping a good watch.

I am in Mauritius for the past two weeks and one of the buzz words that I have been hearing is IT.  I have visited Ministries and all of them are setting up e-platforms, or providing services and information online.  You can also be e-recruited!

Ten years back... there was nothing of that.  Five years back, the e-thinking was quite nascent.

Technology has changed and is changing lives in ways that people never realized or thought of before.  As I look back, one of the reasons why I could make it to Harvard was because of technology.  Access to information online, meant that I did not have to go to the very intimidating USIS with the then more intimidating person who handled the education affairs, and had to flip though heavy books searching for a university to apply to.  Instead, on a google search, I could find what interested me, and then on a click gather all the info I needed.  Using a mail I could establish contact with the school and decide if I wanted to go meet them.  

Easy said, easy done.

There are still countries where internet is not a near reality and it makes people still live under the opacity of little or no access to information.  Or information is accessible to just a handful few, who then using knowledge rule over the rest of the less  knowledgeable.   I hear of countries where government recruitment is not even published and people are just handpicked and no one knows of how the process happens.

I hear also of countries where mobile telephony are helping report electoral wrong doings...

But I recently also heard of countries where the less knowledgeable are being told that if they do vote the opposition party, a direct message will be sent to the ruling party via satellite telephony... and they will be in deep trouble.

So there is both good and bad usage.  

But the benefits of the good far outweighs the bad.

Long Live technology!