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Wednesday, 9 December 2009

Why our Lyonpos, MPs and Leaders should try Twitter?

I hate communication which are verbose and full of jargon. To make matters worse they rarely answer the questions asked and even confuse the listeners. And this seems to be exactly what our Lyonpos, MPs and leaders within the Civil service and the private sector seem to be doing -

To a question on FDI asked by the Opposition Leader to Lyonpo Khandu,  he writes:

"Lyonpo Khandu Wangchuk’s reply was long. He talked the House through the history of FDI in Bhutan, economic growth, economic policies, employment, tourism, foreign currency, domestic airports, helicopter services, seasonal tourists, conference centers, infrastructure, credit cards, TAB, tourist visas, and hotels. He even mentioned McKinsey and Brazil!"

Not clear if he was satisfied with the response -

In another post he summarises the response of our finance minister to a question posed by another MP as

" The Finance Minister’s response was long and detailed, but confirmed that the MP was correct in asserting that, “…till date not much has been delivered.” 

Here the DHI Chairman completely misses the question - 

He says “The assembly members should know that we are functioning within the legal framework and they should understand the position of the royal charter,”

From the chairman of an organisation which looks to improve governance and performances of many of our corporations, this looks lame.

There are many such instances - I was once chided and ridiculed for asking a question during a gathering by a senior official. Of course I didn't get any answer. We can also attribute the failure of embedding GNH within our society partly to our inability in communicating it in a way that our people can understand.

There is clearly a need for our leaders to communicate effectively and in this - I find the rule based on which Twitter works very useful - "Deliver value (your messages) using no more than 140 characters".  It is very challenging but I have found remembering this one very useful.

There you go - Honourable Lyonpos, MPs and leaders - If you need to discipline your responses - try twitter. You will also get to know how popular you are or how much value you offer through your messages by the number of followers you have.

Bold and Wrong - Salary Increases for our Parliamentarians


Now this is bold!

Not the Opposition Leader's update but the salary increase for our Parliamentarians especially at a time when:
  • The Government rely heavily on foreign aid to fund our development activities
  • Our national debt is close to 60% of our GDP
  • Many families have lost much of what they have in the recent disasters and are still rebuilding their lives
  • The Lyonnchoen talks of a change in our "consciousness and lifestyle" from one of "greed, materialism and consumerist fallacy" to that of GNH
  • The unemployment is at an all time high of 4%
  • The Government talks of transparency, efficiency, cost reduction and service to the people
For all of the above and for want of a rational justification, this is wrong. I hope this is a mistake.

By the way - this isn't even in the agenda for this session of the National Assembly.

Tuesday, 8 December 2009

Climate Change Series 2

Links 10/12/2009
Links 09/12/2009
Links 08/12/2009

    Monday, 7 December 2009

    WTO, Trash, Loneliness, etc. - Readings

    1. WTO: Group Mulls - talks continue (FT)
    2. Three myths about trash (Ludwig von Mises Institute)
    3. Feeling Lonely, don't come near me: Loneliness is contagious (Washington Post)
    4. Manage your time like Jim Collins (Harvard Business Publishing)
    5. Giving Feedback to a high performer (Harvard Business Publishing)

    Sunday, 6 December 2009

    Focus - Climate Change Series: Only Links (1)

    The UN Climate Change Conference begins in Copenhagen from 7th Dec till the 18th of Dec. I will update this post by adding links to my readings (interesting ones) daily leading upto and till the end of the conference on 18/12/2009. This post will go top as I add more links daily.

    Links 07/12/2009

    The conference kicks off today and you can follow it live on their website through podcasts and articles. Anywat here follows some links for the day -

    Links 04/12/2009
    Links 03/12/2009
    And Closer Home -
      Links 02/12/2009

      Rejoiner - GNH on Kuzuzangpo

      This was a rejoiner to a discussion on GNH on kuzuzangpo.

      As usual - this discussion is also on the verge of degrading into a name-calling exercise.

      Now having read everything that has been posted in this thread - I have to say that we haven’t come any close clarifying what exactly GNH is? What does GNH try to answer? What approach should we take in realising it? And who should be responsible for taking GNH forward?

      I believe any theory/concept should be an attempt to clarify an existing problem. GNH is no exception.

      Although I agree with down2earth that any concept like GNH should be able to stand the scrutiny and rigor of logic and reasoning, I don’t think that the problem here is philosophical. The philosophical underpinnings of happiness are well documented in Buddhism, the works of great philosophers and the economists. For the sake of debate we could go on discussing this aspect and of course there are merits in pursuing such a discussion. This debate is for the academics and researchers who also have the responsibility to see through that their findings are communicated effectively to the people. But for the majority of the people in the world, philosophy is a complex subject and many (including me) do not have the time to dabble in it.

      Let us not make GNH utterly complex but recognise that the problem it tries to address is a practical one – the problems of conventional development where we have externalised costs (environment, psychological, societal, health etc) to the society. Seen in this perspective, GNH is not the end but only a means to an end-state where we have the infrastructure, systems and processes in place which would enable our people, companies and the Government to make choices and decisions in consonance with our values and culture  without externalising costs.

      For GNH to be effective, what we need is a practical approach.

      According to the survey Gasa is the happiest place in Bhutan. But are they aware of many things we as human beings are capable of - intellectually and materially? Are they informed of the choices that they can/could have in life? Do they know the choices available to other villages and towns in Bhutan? If knowing all of these, their responses do not change - then our approach is right. Otherwise we might be following ourselves. I neither see the domains/indicators approach which say that a class 12 education is adequate to be happy when the aspirations of our supposedly GNH experts who want a different level of exposure and education for their children as fair nor practical.

      If GNH has failed it is not because of where we are as a society as down2earth contends. It is an easy excuse as is the blame he apportions on the civil servants. I think we are a highly capable society and this is demonstrated by the immense progress we have made over many centuries. If we really need to understand the problems in operationalising GNH, it is inevitable that we look to the people who have taken ownership of the concept, the GNH experts and the academics and the institutions that have been established to operationalise GNH within the Government and take it to the communities. May be there is some justification when some people feel that GNH has been hijacked.

      I agree with a lot of commentators that the time for experiments, conferences and philosophical debates is long over. We urgently need some real leadership on this.

      Faltering steps towards IT Hood

      Our four business process outsourcing (BPO) centers are currently being supported by the Government. Since 2007, only one has made a profit of Nu. 10,000 last month and all of them face considerable losses this year. However they still maintain that they expect the industry to take off and be profitable.

      I have the a lot of respects for such displays of optimism. But there must come a time when these BPOs ask themselves  - is this a sector where they can really excel and where Bhutan has a competitive advantage? The problems seem to be numerous. In addition to the lack of skills and infrastructure, they are dependent on companies in India to source business for them. Their profitability depends hugely on the leverage they have on the Indian partners.

      Surely - faltering signs in our aspirations to become a regional IT hub. But these problems also provide some very good lessons for our Government to ponder over and start addressing them. They have huge implications on DHI's proposed investment in the Thimphu TechPark.

      Is DHI still confident that this is a good investment and that it will generate a decent return on the investments? DHI will be investing Nu. 250m together with another company in this venture and they still do not have any committments from any IT companies.

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