As cable TV and Internet connectivity penetrate the most obscure hamlets in Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia, the information divide is being bridged regarding have and have nots. Although electricity coverage and decent secondary education access are very much substantial issues to be dealt with, the spoken word  reaches the poor, via vernacular new channels in India even if they cannot read the written language. This access to news of the world is trans-formative. The discourse is electoral politics in India has shifted from caste and religious matters to basic utilities such as Electricity, Water and Road Access. The rich cannot survive in an island of peace around an ocean of poverty. Philanthropy makes strategic business sense. Tomorrow’s middle class is also also tomorrow’s consumer base for the corporation. Keeping the poor, poor is not good business sense.

The philanthropic endeavors of Azim Premji to start a development and education training oriented university has the potential to professionalize the non profit sector and primary education. The TATA Group were the original philanthropists who built hospitals and townships, the business of rendering social services should not be limited to the government, business is an important component of the machinery of society.  Philanthropy is good vehicle for helping out our Brothers in need in our community. Community building which the hallmark of Gawad Kalinga in the Philippines is based on the sweat equity model where companies and individuals contribute in Nation Building. A fairer society makes for a productive society. Poverty and inequity is at the heart of the Arab spring, not religion. Development is growth, and growth oriented politics means healthy democracies.

Poverty is capability deprivation of the highest magnitude. Poverty contributes to vulnerability; it is the sense of defenselessness, and inability to make the optimum choices in the presence of a stressor like a flood or drought or a earthquake. The poor do not have any power to mobilize the right capitals; economic, cultural and political and capitalize on their social capitals to extricate themselves out of the current mess. Most of the resource poor in the developing world are dependent upon the environmental commons  for their livelihoods; subsistence agriculture  and fishing. In the light of urbanization and globalization, there is displacement from rural to urban space due to work pressures and the loss of incomes from farm based occupations. Sustainable Development is a policy nightmare, balancing fiscal and environmental stressor on a level playing platform is not possible. Poverty drives people to cut tress for logging companies and for mono-culture palm oil plantations in Kalimantan and the Amazonian regions. They are the lungs of the earth and the ideal climate change buffers. Local economic factors jeopardize global climate dynamics.

Norway is linking development aid to Indonesia to forest conservation, in its ‘forest pact’. Global Philanthropic foundations are increasing climate change adaptation funds for local communities. Human migration on a large scale will happen if we do not create buffers and adequate income generating resources at the local and regional levels. Microfinance is a major tool which can provide capital to start sustainable businesses around eco-tourism ventures in Vietnam and Indonesia. Poverty alleviation, local economic development with developmental aid and micro finance is fundamental for sustainability…

Climate Change is the flavor of the season for quite some time, as visualized from Cancun, Copenhagen talks and all the global politics churning up new power equations with China and India collaborating to stifle a deal at Copenhagen and hence the Cancun talks were low on expectation and hype, where actual deal making and wheeling materialized.It is indeed a political issue. Climate Change is a master variable such as hydrogen ions in aquatic chemistry. People depend on nature for their everyday needs; food, raw materials and other essential life substrates. These are not generated in a lab, nature is the ultimate lab of GOD’s creation. Technological fixes to policy problems is partial in character. End of pipe technologies like carbon sequestration or basic electrostatic precipatators are a stop gap solution. Fuel substitution is ideal not financially feasible as the modern industrial economy is pegged to the Oil futures index and indirectly tied to gold prices. It is an inextricably weaved mess, with politics driving it and thwarting renewable energies which provide energy security to communities off the national grid. Nuclear Capitalism fuels subsidy driven cathedrals of cash known as nuclear energy reactors.

Environmental issues have reached the top table of corporate hegemony. Environmental awareness among consumers are rising, corporate social responsibility is the new buzzword with ISO 26000 certification. Greening of a supply chain is on the major agenda of of the Walmart’s of the world. Carbon footing is an indicator in a sustainability report which is prepared as an annual ritual.  This is mere green washing, it is time that we get real about climate change as top down approaches facilitate and catalyze, but ground up strategies build resilience and adaptive capacities in communities at risk from climate change led event disruption.

Climate Change disrupts weather patterns, hence agrarian cycles get ruptured; food production and security gets effected for the millions who depend on grazing, fishing and subsistence agriculture for their livelihood. Biofuels from food based substrates like corn raised food prices in developing countries which lead to rioting couple of years back. Energy, Environment and Society are intertwined in a complex network of webs.  In the light of climate change, water cycles have amended its course; which have lead to the increase of water borne diseases. Its a Public Health catastrophic trigger. Hydro cycles impact energy production via hydro-power plants such as on the Mekong delta dams.

Climate change is a non traditional security stressor, as global human migration in thousands on a low level is happening in Chad and Sudan with the depletion of Lake Chad. At the local level, floods are happening in Singapore with increased frequency. Climate Change is every one’s problem and the NIMBY syndrome won’t work anymore….

Why do civilization oriented systems of governance not work? Faith based value systems work good at the micro scale, governing our existences from a mild variety on a social bonds orientation in secular democracies and western societies to arab monarchies which are based legally on theological grounding. Iran is a perfect case, as it was a middle eastern powerhouse under the Shah, pre 1979 revolution where even the secular middle class supported the Ayatollah in a counter movement to decadence of the secular regime of the Shah. There is a common strand between the two- the pre and post dispensations in Tehran are one party regimes, dictatorial at its least. Ahemadinejad is a bad administrator but a shrewd politician who rallies the masses on anti zionist rhetoric and its famed (infamous) nuclear program. Iran is a resource rent based state, enormous gas and oil reserves which support the infrastructure of  Shia imperialism from Gaza, Beirut to Manama. The Arab monarchies, suffering in the heat of the Arab spring are buffering themselves by the cash ions against acidic reform demonstrators.  Money talks, but for how long is the important question.  These are the most stringent theocracies in the globe, are case studies of the resource curse syndrome as governance is not really their forte.

Israel and Pakistan were the two states formed in the late 1940’s on the basis of religion. Israel is a technological powerhouse and on the other hand Pakistan is on the edge of being declared a failed state. Some ingredients for governance are universal, whether secular or religious; human developmental indicators are the stuff that the G8 are made up off.  Turkey and Malaysia are good examples. Sudan invoked religious & martial law in the 1980’s, instead on developing roads and twenty years later they are splitting into half.   People matter, whether black or white does not make a difference.

June 27, 2011 by Manishankar Prasad

In an age where 1.1 billion people do not have access to clean drinking water and sanitation services, water could be a big business opportunity which small countries with a technological edge can capitalize on. One good example is Singapore, which is well positioned to act as a hub for Blue Tech and serve the Bottom of the Pyramid Hybrid Value Chain. With the massive water technology R&D undertaken by the tertiary educational institutions and the commercial ecosystem in Singapore, this ‘Tiny Red Dot’ could be the next Israel as far as Blue Tech is concerned.

Hub for Blue Tech

By the year 2030, half the world will be living in urban spaces, where the mere provision of basic amenities will be a struggle. Mumbai is the financial capital of India, but it has half its populace living in shanty-towns like Dharavi, which is Asia’s biggest slum with a population of 7 million people [1]. Similar stories can be shared all over urban Asia. In Manila alone, 37 percent of its present population of 14 million lives in shanty towns. By 2050, the slum population in Manila is expected to reach nine million.

Water is a systemic public health issue. As it is the substrate for life itself, water can cure but it harms too if it is not potable enough to drink and may be a carrier of infections in our body. Water is also considered from the non-traditional security perspective as well because water is a matter of survival, and a potential trigger for human conflicts. Aden in Yemen will be the first ancient but modern active city to run out of groundwater completely by the year 2017.

Hence there is an eminent urgent need to ensure clean water access, which is a fundamental human right, and not a privilege. Access to clean water has been taken as a given because it is a natural endowment, but as the population crosses seven billion globally combined with the scourge of advancing climate change, clean water is becoming a novelty to get because bringing it to the taps takes resources, infrastructure, capital investment and techno-scientific expertise.

Water governance in Singapore is a globally renowned success story with the ‘Four National Taps’ water strategy. NEWater or reclaimed water has reduced Singapore’s dependence on imported water. The quality of water from the taps is of drinking water grade. This is unthinkable in other parts of Asia where vector borne diseases are common.

Singapore was awarded with the esteemed 2007 Stockholm Industry Water Award for its holistic approach to water resources management which has made water use sustainable for different sectors of society in an urban island environment [2]. Singapore is also most probably the only country in the world which carries out such large-scale urban stormwater harvesting by using 7000 km long drainage system to direct the collected rainwater into 17 water reservoirs. The government has invested more than SGD 5 billion (USD 3.45 billion) to build water-related infrastructure over the past seven years, including four plants that recycle sewage water for homes and industries [3].

Singapore is the world’s largest user of membranes per capita and a pioneer in large-scale water reclamation. Singapore companies such as Hyflux and MattenPlant are exporting Blue Tech – the water technology version of clean technology to markets overseas from Algeria to Australia. Hyflux and Sembcorp is to Singapore what IKEA and SAAB is to Sweden.

Every small industrialized economy such as Finland, Belgium or Luxemburg has a particular strength in manufacturing and innovation. Singapore with its niche talent pool and with its strategic geographical location, is well positioned to become a global hub for Blue Tech serving the thirsty ASEAN region and the extended region comprising of South Asia and the Chinese speaking world.

The Bottom of the Pyramid Hybrid Value Chain

The Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) conceptual construct was pioneered by the Late C.K Prahalad, who had written his iconic book 6 years back, providing insight on how people living on less than two dollars a day are legitimate consumers for multinational companies, and how they can create value and improve livelihoods of consumers. Hindustan Unilever and ITC e-chaupal are all creating value for the consumer and the community they serve.

The Hybrid Value Chain leverages on the strengths of business and social actors. Multinational corporations contribute to the Hybrid Value Chain with their sophisticated supply chain networks, reaching to the smallest hamlet where even the government does not have its reach in the developing world. Coca Cola has market access to the smallest communities in Sub Saharan Africa, as the local Mom n Pop storewill have a bottle of the fizzy beverage. TNT was the first respondent in the aftermath of the Aceh Tsunami and Earthquake. Multinational corporations do not reach the smallest non descript ‘kampungs’ by sending its marketing representatives, they tie up with local traders and community organizations to embed itself in the commercial landscape of the community.

A crucial component of this Hybrid Value Chain is constituted by non profits, philanthropic foundations and social enterprises. Technology as an entity is disconnected to society, without the active intervention of social actors. Bringing a technology from the wet lab to the ground should involve actors such as the anthropologist, engineer, local administrator, donor, and the research staff. Hence, a sociotechnical approach is recommended to address the water problem.

Examples of players in the water Hybrid Value Chain include social enterprises such as: Waterhealth International and Aquaya providing low cost technology to communities at a pilot scale; Grameen Veolia, a social business joint venture between the Grameen Group of Bangladesh and the French environmental services major Veolia having a tie-up to provide clean drinking water at break-even cost in the arsenic ridden country; Sarvajal, a venture of the Indian Piramal Group having a franchise model of building water service businesses in the communities it serves in western India; and the World Toilet Organization, Singapore’s very own homegrown social enterprise collaborating with other institutional players in bringing clean water and sanitation to communities in Cambodia and Thailand.

Singapore can be a hub for Blue Tech and serve the Bottom of the Pyramid Hybrid Value Chain by using its leverage in the global marketplace as a ‘connector’ linking businesses, technology providers, social enterprises, research institutions and financial backers in the water industry. Investments in Singapore’s water industry have already doubled in the last five years up from SGD 660 million in GDP value-add in 2005 [4].

[1] http://www.macalester.edu/courses/geog61/espencer/slums.html

[2] http://www.nrf.gov.sg/nrf/strategic.aspx?id=146

[3] http://www.alternet.org/water/141025/singapore_becomes_a_model_for_water_technology_and_reuse/

[4] http://www.greenbusinesstimes.com/2011/05/27/water-industry-investments-doubled-in-singapore-news/

The author would like to acknowledge Ms Shriyanka Nayak’s contribution regarding data inputs for this article. Ms Shriyanka Nayak is a recent graduate of the Environmental Engineering Program at NUS.

Democracy as said is the next best system of participatory representation to no representation at all. It is a very flawed system with lots of loopholes with which it can be subverted and sabotaged. Democracy in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines are dynastic and feudal. It is the feudal in character as if we are serfs and they are landlords. Democracy amplifies social stratification and does not break them down or bring about a social change. Billions of dollars are spent in any provincial poll in India, with a price on every vote with the rate varying from rural to urban constituents. Majority of Indian public representatives  are millionaires with vested business interests in the system. Industrialists sit on parliamentary committees where legislation are drafted and passed regarding their own businesses. This is gross conflict of interest.

Mass movements are the fuel that chastises a decadent regime.   They are regime breakers but the challenge is to be governance transformers. Freedom fighters don’t make good administrators as history teaches us. Hamas is a revolutionary organization, but it has made a mess of the Gaza Strip, forcing it to collaborate with Fatah; whom are fighting, but those are the people who have experience in running the set up. This is a major flaw in democracy, popularly elected leaders do not carve competent policies. A new system which infuses participatory representation and skilled governance is required. The Palestine prime minister is a former World Bank Technocrat, who has changed the picture into a brighter one.

As is seen in the Lok Pal Movement (anti graft legislation for the uninitiated), the civil society activists are the individuals who are well intentioned, popular and have the skill set for running a system; they are lawyers, bureaucrats and career political activists who have a sense of the ground. They have a drawback that they are not elected by the people, and the political class are defaming them that they are illegitimate spokespeople for the masses.  They should probably run for office next time around in 2014, that will bring in some good people into the mainstream.  Mamata di has brought in some technocrats in to her cabinet such as Amit Mitra and Bratya Basu, post the counter revolution in the Bengal May Polls. Most politicos in India have some kind of criminal charge against them in contrast, which does not evoke any awe out of our leaders.

In this networked era, where digital activism is on the surge with the Arab Spring and post the Singaporean polls,  a new social contract for democracy needs to be worked out if our Faith in democracy as a system has to be restored.

The world’s economic balance is tilting towards the east- namely the Chinese speaking world and India along with Korea,  and Singapore. The Chinese have a trillion plus USD in their reserves and are the factory line of the world, in the past three decades 300 million Chinese have been lifted out of poverty and the Gulf based sovereign wealth funds are lapping up assets in the west as the economic free market structure crumbles under housing and consumer debt. Greece defaulted on its debt repayment plans and the Eurozone shivered, Spain and Ireland are next on their way to the financial clinic to check in to the ICU. Bail outs since 2009 have been the order of the day. America is bail out central. GE and the biggest american brands have received government funds to survive. Its the socialization of the losses and privatization of the profits. It seems an irony that these are the same people who call for limited government intervention and the free market in boom times. America stopped manufacturing since the 1970’s by outsourcing it first to Korea and Singapore in 1970’s, the Asian Tigers in 1980’s and finally bangalore’d their strength; the service sector to India, South Africa, Philippines and Eastern Europe in the past two decades. Apple is the benchmark of American Innovation, but it only design’s its products in Cupertino and its manufacturing its done by the Taiwanese major Foxconn in its industrial estates in China, employing millions and not thousands like in America as Apple does; that too very highly skilled talent from Berkeley, not the high school diploma out of the public school system in Brooklyn. American graduates teach English in schools from Sharjah to Shanghai as there are no jobs in US itself. An average American college graduate has a starting debt of 24k when he begins his first payable full time post. American Political Commentator Fareed Zakaria has called for an overhaul of the innovation ecosystem to create jobs in his series on CNN.

In short, economic growth without job creation is meaningless with the demographic bomb exploding in Africa, Middle East and South Asia.  Social implications of a society are huge with three skipped meals acting as a trigger for a revolution as the vegetable seller in Tunis that ignited the Arab spring. In India, Maoists have capitalized on this sentiment of dis-entitlement where the tribal and the Subsistence farmer have no option to give away fertile agricultural land at throw away prices to loan sharks or to corporate land grabbers for the real estate scam called the SEZ or an economic free zone. Free zones in the Middle East are created on arid desert land like the Ras Al Khaimah Free Zone or the Salalah Free Zone in Southern Oman where land is not for agriculture. India has 100,000 farmer suicides and is a net importer of food. Our so called demographic dividend as Nandan Nilekani calls in his lucidly written book ‘Imagining India’ can be only materialized if education is reformed to make it inclusive as half the engineers in India are not employment ready and companies have to re-train them before work. Manufacturing is stuck in the matrix of antiquated labor laws and land acquisition.  Agriculture needs the most reform to make it viable career option once gain.

Services by nature will cater to the very educated cadre of the work force, apart from Singapore or the Scandinavian nations, but larger countries would have to be be manufacturing nations by creating home grown Samsung or Haer to satiate the social need for work and livelihoods, to avert another Jasmine Revolution or a Singur.

We have been hearing a lot of hooplah over the term civil society in India since the anti corruption movement picked up pace. According to a recent article penned  Centre for Policy Research Think Tank honcho Pratap Bhanu Mehta in the Indian Express post on the civil society space (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/that-seventies-feeling/804154/) . He writes about impending new media regulations and the financial harassment norms for ngo’s which get funds from overseas. The civil society is composed of a myriad spectrum of actors made of of millions of small groups to behemoths like SEWA and Centre for Science and Environment. Of course moral entrepreneurs in ngo’s and civil society, peddle ideas as their products for the mass market.

Nelson Mandela was not democratically elected and he was the voice of the anti apartheid movement, Abu Amar aka Yasser Arafat was not democratically elected too, but he made palestine into an issue from a non issue post 1967. Anna Hazare, Mr. Kejriwal, Ms. Bedi and the Bhushans are not elected, but electoral democracy is a monetarily driven process, not a battle for ideas at the operational level, its a battle for power and control. The civil society is like any other estate of society, its either good and effective or ineffective and detrimental. The best of laws are drafted by thinktanks and policy formulations are done by profs at grad school research centers. Not every thing has to go through the proverbial people’s court, people have their ideas and since the platform of the web 2.0 have opened up like blogs like this one and ngo websites like avaaz, that catalyze mass movements like the Lok Pal Bill movement recently. It was India’s first digital democratic enterprise. For a vibrant civil society, economic accountability and transparency is fundamental, because they lobby for policies and the public has a right to know the drive behind the move. The Civil Society is the crucible for smoldering politics at its best, a wake up alarm for those in power to improve their ways. The Arab Spring  and the former soviet summer in 2005, was amplified by civil society actors. Lech Walesa was from Civil Society in Poland to made it to presidency in the early 1990’s. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch highlights excesses in countries which do not have democratic mechanisms to guard their own countrymen such as Burma and Sub Saharan Nations.

Civil Society is an effective lever for change, when traditional mechanism fail, its a safety valve in the processing plant called human society….