Month: June 2013

The Holy Grail of the Sustainability Discourse: Linking Financial and Environment & Social Performance tangibly

Sustainability has graduated from being a definition in the 1987 Brundtland Report to being one which is embedded in to mainstream corporate strategy. A ton of business literature has been dedicated to the ‘cause’ and some companies have truly derived value from being sustainable apart from the green washing aspect, which we all know is the principal driver in most cases. Sustainability has transitioned from a being a rhetorical vantage point to an implementable procedure which could extract some impact on the bottom-line.  Resource savings to better motivated employees, every possible trick in the book has been utilized to promote sustainability. Most of it has been driven from a piecemeal perspective.

Sustainability has grown in currency as often a safety related death, an oil spill or an industrial accident is terrible for the reputational capital of the firm, which is in turn bad for the face value of the stock if it is a publically listed company.  BP collapsed from an industry giant to a takeover target post the deep water horizon disaster. The Indian Multinational Group Mahindra & Mahindra, uses Sustainability as a governing ethos of the enterprise. It is the Harvard read Anand Mahindra’s leadership and foresight to utilize Sustainability as a compass to drive inclusive growth.  In developing nations such as India, sustainability often is a business pre-requisite as an unhappy community of stakeholders will douse the flames of any tentative project flaring up into a profitable venture. POSCO and Singur are a case in point where social inclusion which is critical component of a 360 degree sustainability strategy faltered terribly.

Social Satisfaction, Safety, Happy Employees are issues which are intangible positives which cannot be translated in to the financial bottomline. The triple bottomline is popular, but the only bottomline which matters is the ROI for the share holder.  The era of Sustainability is passé, Corporate Resilience is better paradigm in a discontinuous and networked world.  New indicators will have to be devised for that Environmental & Social Performance is better communicated to shareholders. Resource Extractive Industries are on the frontline of the Sustainability Battle.  Globalization in an uncertain world demands better parameters to generate insights. This is the Holy Grail. Someone needs to unlock it?

May be a PhD topic if a University funds me 🙂

It’s a ‘Dammed’ affair: Energy, Politics and Development in Uttaranchal

In the past couple of weeks we have seen man made environmental disasters in two contrasting ecosystems in the Himalayan north of India and in the Urban & Ecological Jungles of Southern Malaysia and Singapore. The Singapore Haze Story is a man made healthcare scare and has had severe economic implications for the City State with a billion dollar hit according to Barclays. The Indonesians will perennially clear the forests for cropping and the rest of the region will to suffer unless a regional resource commons governance initiative propelled by hard cash is devised. The meritocratic and innovative Singaporean government lead by the PAP kept the population abreast of the air haze news by the minute through social media and a National Environmental Agency Smart Phone App which is commendable and a benchmark for disaster governance. The Government could not have done any more as it is a trans-boundary issue.  Quite a contrast to the abysmal standards of disaster governance at Uttarakhand vis-a-vis Singaporean standards of excellence.

The Tragedy was triggered by a cloud burst and torrential downpours in the Himalayan Uttarakhand State, which is a hydel power hotbed with numerous dams. These dams have amplified the ecological sensitivities which have contributed to the cataclysmic landslides, killing hundreds making the Uttarakhand tragedy a humbling experience for the priests of aggressive developmental drive paradigm. In a rush to feed an energy hungry northern grid, Uttarakhand led by callus leaders who ‘damned’ literally every available water stream dug their own grave, with the temple towns collapsing like a flimsy pack of cards. With job hungry Uttarachalis whose main occupation has traditionally aligned with armed forces, looking for work outside the government, the so called renewable energy industry came to the rescue. The same armed forces, which are India’s only Disaster Management competent agency, are now saving the day, in a nation which is woefully inept at saving ones backside. The Congress which is ruling the state with a wafer thin majority is all set to face the electoral music in 2014, with the state having ten seats for the Lok Sabha.  The important point being, that the congress is competitive in this state where in other places it is losing its deposit.

Environmental Issues are Force Multipliers. They might not win anyone one an election; but it will aggregate a small crisis to a regional disaster, which will surely make one lose a poll. Will the consultants/bureaucrats who did the environmental clearances for the dams be held accountable for this disaster? When will the corporate-political cartel take environmental compliance seriously?

Uttarakhand is an inflection point in the developmental & environmental governance narrative in this nation. It is time that we do not dust these lessons in to garbage bin of history and wait for another one to happen.

Arab Spring is dead

The benefit of hindsight is that it has a perfect 20-20 vision. The neo-con and the conservative lobby who claimed that an invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 shall ensure a tsunami of democracy have got it terribly incorrect with huge costs: Trillions down the drain, thousands of soldiers dead and millions displaced and killed.  The Arab Spring with Mohammaed Bouzizi’s immolation and the historic events at Maidan Al Tahrir to Pearl Square, Manama to Globe Roundabout in Sohar has lead to a democratic transition of sorts but with the wrong revolutionary actors in place. The Muslim Brotherhood and the Al Nur Salafist block have sidelined the liberals like Amr Moosa and have lead to further persecution of  two millennia old Copts in Cairo.  Hosni Mubarak was a secular, army led dictator who safeguarded the interests of Christians.  The Evangelical Right drove the neo con agenda in 2003 saying the liberal and democratic values were needed in the Middle East. They got their premonitions wrong.

Ideas have Consequences, as it is said as it drives decisions. The Wrong ideas can have cataclysmic outcomes. The neocon experiment has shown aptly.

The brothers from Bible belt in the mid western United States were simply ignorantly aiding the detractors of Christians in the Middle East say the Brotherhood to make the transition from the underground to the presidential palace.  The Cultural Context of the Middle East was not understood by the neo con establishment. A steak eating mid westerner from Ames, who has not even travelled to the east coast of the US, cannot comprehend the subtlety and complexity of the social forces at play in Allepo.

The similar story is underway in Syria. The Assads as did fellow Baathists in Baghdad always had a friendly relationship with the progressive, liberal Christian community in the Middle East. Saddam Al Tikriti’s Spokesperson was a certain Mr. Tareq Aziz, a Roman Catholic with excellent links to the Vatican. Basher Assad the Ophthalmologist from London is a secular, western man. The Alawaites are Shia-ites but they have held excellent historical ties with the Druuze and Maronite ethnic Christian Communities unlike the Salafist Sunnis. I recently saw the desecration of an ancient Orthodox Church on BBC World, in a report by Lyse Doucet in Allepo, Syria by the so call ‘Free Syrian Army’. The persecution of Christians in the post Arab Spring Middle East is intense. As the Christians sided with the dictators in the pre 2003 era, the Salafist opposition backed by Gulf States, newly Islamized Turkey and the ignorant Western Leadership are on a witch hunt to eliminate any symbol relevant to Middle Eastern Christianity.

Syria has turn into a metaphor not only for the Arab Spring but for Shia-Sunni divide for geo-political control. It is not a Syrian Control but the war threatens to suck the neighbors in too. Hezbollah, Sunni Jihadis, Gulf Petro Dollars and Western attempts to marginalize Iran all count for an explosive Molotov cocktail with a nuclear Israel along the fringes.  The revolutions in Yemen, Bahrain, and Morocco and to a limited extent Oman have yielded to insignificant changes although reforms have been kick started.

The successes of the Arab Spring are surely Tunisia and Libya. The Success Story also ends there.  Teksim Square is a blip on the radar. Shahbhag is an ongoing ideological battle. A Revolution which had showed great promise but faded out in the cacophony of various actors.

The Arab Spring is dead. We surely need to resolve Syria now to prevent more damage. My appeal to the United States is to not get involved in Damascus by supporting the rebels. Remember, the CIA created ‘the Base’ (Al Qaeda) of the Islamic Terror Movement indirectly via arming the Mujahidin in Afghanistan?

History has many lessons to offer, if we pay an attentive ear.

 

Is Teksim Another Tahrir?

Recently, two of the progressive culturally contrasting Muslim States of Bangladesh and Turkey have seen counter revolutions in a sense to bring back the secular voice in the political discourse.  Shahbhag and now Teksim Square have become metaphors for the non religious actors to act up for their rightful space. Every country has a fundamentalist fringe, but the fundamentalist elements have a tendency to hijack the political conversation with the coercive use of force on the streets such as the Jamaat in Dhaka. Liberals tend to be softer with a lesser inclination for street battles. They like to fight with arguments rather than take to arms.

The conservative block has two allegations to drag down the liberal and secular voice. Firstly, they are influenced by the west and not grounded enough in native values and secondly they are corrupting moral systems by importing an alien ethos. The Justice and Development Party or AKP of Prime Minister Erdogan has been a success in the battlefield of electoral politics winning polls with a wide mandate. As a boy who grew up in a poor family in the shanties of Istanbul, his genre of politics is grounded in mild Political Islam. His Wife wears the Head Scarf, in a country which is essentially secular. The Army, is the vanguard of defending the Ataturkian vision of a modern secular Turkey has been crippled and the Judiciary has been weakened too. The secular minded youth in Turkey has been marginalized. Restrictions have been imposed against so-called immoral activities and Turkey’s overtures to be a regional behemoth with interventions in Gaza and Syria is not being appreciated by a large section of the Turkish Population, which considers it to be more European than Middle Eastern.

The Teksim Square protests originated with Government plans to convert a protest park such as Hong Lim in Singapore in to a mall. AKP has been on the economic development front aggressive and has been known for supercharged infrastructure projects even at the cost of demolishing heritage in old Istanbul.  The ideological cocktail of Faith and Economic Growth has gone heady. Anybody against the ideology of the AKP is being systematically marginalized.  The protests at Teksim Square have been coordinated through Social Media and comparisons with Tahrir or Shabhag are all but obvious.  Erdogan has called Twitter ‘evil’. It seems another Middle Eastern Leader has failed to recognize the power of 140 characters.  This is the beginning of another chapter in the Post Arab Spring Era.

Infrastructure, Welfare & the Rhetoric of Development

A few days back, Mr. L K Advani praised Shivraj Chouhan for his exemplarily efforts in transforming his ‘BIMARU’ state into a development hotbed. The locus of comparison was centered upon the notion that Narendra Bhai’s Gujarat was already progressive as Gujaratis have been culturally entrepreneurial by character. There is a grain of truth certainly in this argument.  Chouhan ji has developed Indore has an industrial hub of central India with major automotive and manufacturing majors operating out of the region. Indore has a fantastic urban transportation system too. Amdavad also has a cool BRT system in place with the Metro project under way. BJP Governments have often equated ‘infrastructure development’ with the paradigm of development. Infrastructure catalyzes regional growth by connecting the rural with the urban; the producers with the consumer. It is a growth multiplier indeed. Welfare hand-outs to the poorest of the poor such as the Right to Work Scheme helps the poor as well as yields political dividends as the UPA win in 2009. Effective public good delivery requires robust infrastructure and institutional controls to seal the leak called graft. The poorest of the poor cannot simply depend on the cruel ‘market’ for the benefits of trickle down to seep down to them. Government welfare schemes are the only way out for the weakest of our society to survive with dignity. The Right to Food Bill is vital although it accounts to humongous expenditure. In the aftermath of the Bastar carnage, the rights of the poorest are again back on the front burner of national conversation. I am just sick of the Spot Fixing Coverage. BCCI and IPL are trivial issues being used to divert the people’s attention from critical issues such as Women’s Rights, Systemic Graft and essential legislative business. India is a sub-continent in terms of religious and ethnic diversity and different solutions will be needed to deliver inclusive development. No Gujarat Model, no MP Model matters as Chairman Mao quipped as long as the cat catches mice, it does not make a difference if it is white or black.