Launching my humble ‘Artwork’ Blog

Announcing the awakening of the shy, unassuming and mediocre student of J. Swampillai dormant in me for over 17 long years! I’ve launched my artwork blog on http://canvasknaim.blogspot.com . Over the next few days I’ll be making more posts.

Water shortages, ‘four-gear gifilis’, ‘futtaru’ garbage dumps and ‘transshipment ports’

Waking up to the first cock-a-doodle-doo only to stand in the early morning sun for hours on end in order to fill a 5 litre container with clean drinking water is becoming almost an annual ritual towards the end of every North-east monsoon for Shameema and hundreds of mothers like her, eking out their existences in their small villages. Shameema is not from a war-torn Afghan village but from Maldives where per capita income is almost ten times that of Afghanistan. Her island of Mulhadhoo, registered home of 350 people, located in the northern Ihavandhippolhu of Maldives is one of 60 odd islands to which her Government is contemplating on supplying reverse-osmosis drinking water on board small boats, after a prolonged dry spell.

Like most Maldivians living outside Male, Shameema and the rest of the eighty odd residents of the Mulhadhoo store their rainwater harvested from their corrugated iron roofs in polyethylene kalhuhan tanks; dispose their waste onto a dump on the seaward futtaru side of the island; and defecate into holes dug, as-and-when-nature-calls, on public beaches or ‘four-gear’ gifili latrines.

Meanwhile an army of Maldivians, mostly men anointed by their mighty political parties and financed by deep-pocketed bigwig resort-owners are preparing for their ritual once-in-every-five-years onslaught on islands like Shameema’s Mulhadhoo. This year an unprecedented 465 of them, sipping Italian Lavazza espressos in trendy cafés in Male or savoring the taste of an exotic vilaathu-sherbet in one of Maldives’ top-class luxury resorts, are meticulously planning their onslaught. Their arsenal will comprise of, among other things, an ostentatious display of verbose rhetoric on democracy, human rights, accountability and several other clichéd but little understood terms. There will also be a fool’s paradise of desalination plants that would, so they say, ensure a copious supply fresh water to all the households; diesel generators that would keep the fans and air conditioners running in houses with corrugated iron roofing sheets exposed to 12 hours of merciless equatorial sun to create an ambience that could perhaps be the envy of people living high up on the Swiss Alps. And there will also be an abundance of brand new 6 cylinder Yanmar engines that would propel fishing vessels out to the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean to enable diminutive weather-beaten fishermen to catch a glimpse of the mythical ‘minikaaraajjey gaskara’.

Shameema is no stranger to the chicanery of the Machiavellian planners. She knows that in a few weeks time she would be unable to stretch a leg without poking either a ‘rayyithunge khadhim’ or one of their lackeys. And though Shameema portrays an outward sense of nonchalance, she has a secret little reason to celebrate as well: the ephemeral treasures that come along with the politicians. The last time she was very lucky to grab a handful of those notes adorned with pictures of ‘medhuziyaaraiy’. But she remains unimpressed and nonchalant. And so are the majority of the people of Ihavandhippolhu and the rest of Maldives, for their taste for fantasy desalination plants, diesel generators bridges and flats have been cloyed by countless empty promises on phantom projects like the USD 300 million transshipment port that the previous government decided to ‘build’ in Ihavandhippolhu in the run up to the last parliamentary election.

I recently asked a good friend who I consider to be perhaps my small country’s version of Jeffrey Sachs, if he has anything to say about our politicians and Shameemas. His answer is simple. “Don’t put the blame only on the politicians. For as long as we have 142 islands with populations of less than a thousand people, there is no end to the stories of ‘empty-kalhuhan’, ‘four-gear gifilis’, ‘futtaru’ garbage dumps --- and the ‘transshipment ports’ are only a phenomenon deployed, not perhaps to camouflage trickery or finesse evil but to keep hope alive in an otherwise squalid and desolate environment”. As someone who as a child only accidentally escaped from the world of ‘fenthaangi/four-gear gifili’ induced Ascariasis,; and after thirty years, is still morbidly terrified of those horrid parasites that, ahem, creep out of the rectum after a spoonful or two of that slimy abhorrent stuff called ‘antipa?’, I can’t find any reason to disagree with him.

Our Special friendship with India: beyond the mirch-masala of Bollywood?

India has always been our special friend. In Foreign Minister Dr. Shaheed’s words, “our primary strategic interests lie with India. And there is nothing that can change this plain fact”. India, despite the current economic chill, isn’t too far away from making its behemoth economy a global economic powerhouse.

We have with India strong military cooperation; bilateral trade, albeit, heavily skewed in favour of India; assistance in human resource development; and of course there is India’s unwavering relief and rescue, come the tidal surges of the south-west monsoon.

With a retired Lieutenant General as our government’s envoy in India, the relationship that was fostered under Gayoom, particularly in the aftermath of ‘Operation Cactus’ was largely centered around ‘defense and military cooperation’ which left us with, among other things, white elephants like INS Tillanchang. I, of course, don’t downplay the significance of IGMH, MITE, the recent USD 100 million budget support loan and the innumerable times India had lent a helping hand to us.

While we were deeply engrossed in Bollywood’s copious outflow of never-ending sultry mirch-masalas and India’s military toys, another small country Mauritius, located off the coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean signed a double taxation avoidance treaty with our mighty neighbour in 1983. Under the treaty no resident of Mauritius were to be taxed in India on capital gains made on the sale of shares of Indian companies by investors resident in Mauritius. The treaty did not have any affect until 1992 when India opened the country for foreign financial investors. During the same year Mauritius tactically allowed foreigners to register companies in the country for overseas investments. Foreign investors eager to reap the benefits of the Indian economy’s boom quickly routed their investments through Mauritius as this exempted them from capital gains tax completely. According some estimates nearly 40% of the $45-50 billion FDI inflows into India between 1991-2006 came through the tiny African state of Mauritius.

Luxembourg and Liechtenstein, two microstates in the heart of Europe, perhaps offer some interesting clues on the type of synergies that we could develop with India. Luxembourg and Liechtenstein with populations of around half a million and 40 thousand respectively, are among the richest nations in the world – thanks to their highly successful banking and financial sectors.

Nasheed’s government appears to be working towards steering the course of our special relationship with India to gear it more towards commercial ties. With key figures within MDP’s top brass who are known for their India-centric policies at the steering wheel, the day we could become to our behemoth neighbour what Liechtenstein is to Europe is perhaps not far way.

Thank you President Nasheed

Not one iota of harm and no hardship whatsoever to anyone’s job or prospects for career advancement will be caused on account of any criticism or dissatisfaction with the government. This is the unequivocal statement President Nasheed has for anyone who is dubious of his commitment to free speech and democracy. The statement couldn’t have come at a more opportune moment. Of late, I have noticed that a growing number of bloggers are becoming increasingly apprehensive of the Government’s stance on what my good friend Hilath calls “the noble principles of democracy and free speech”.

Carbon Neutrality: Can A.S.I Moosa beat Pope Benedict XVI?

If there’s any single quality in President Nasheed that differentiates him from the rest of us ordinary folks, it has to be his intrepid and almost uncanny ability to dream big even in the direst circumstances. In relative terms his ambitions to construct 10,000 housing units, build up a reserve of USD 800 million and keeping a market determined rufiyaa exchange rate at Rf 10 for a dollar at the end of his five year term, would rival even the most audacious hopes and dreams of Barack Obama - the name that has already become the epitome of dreams, hopes and ambitions for hundreds of millions of people throughout the world. And our President Nasheed is far from being done with setting goals and ambitious targets. On the environmental front he has a new dream – the target to make Maldives a carbon neutral country within the next 10 years! He has given this seemingly insurmountable challenge to A.S. Moosa (Sappé).

I did a bit of googling on the idea of carbon neutrality and to my utter surprise the task President has assigned to Sappe is in fact far more challenging than I initially thought. To succeed in his assignment, A.S.I Moosa would have to tussle, for the next ten years, with none other than Pope Benedict XVI. Almost a year and a half before President Nasheed set the carbon-neutral goal for our small country, the Vatican announced its plan to become the first carbon neutral state in the world through its climate forest in Hungary. Four other nations - Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Costa Rica, have the same plan.

Carbon neutrality refers to achieving net zero carbon emissions by “balancing a measured amount of carbon released with an equivalent amount sequestered or offset”. Whether this is a feat A.S.I Moosa could possibly perform for our small, acutely resource constrained island nation that the UNDP has identified in its Oil Price Vulnerability Index (OPVI) as the most vulnerable country in the World to oil prices hikes, remains to be seen.

We are yet to know how A.S.I Moosa plans to go about to confront his daunting task. I don’t have any background knowledge to say anything about the issue from an environmental angle. But one thing I know for sure is that a lot of Maldivians are convinced that we need to do something to reduce our precarious dependence on imported fossil fuels. When oil prices hit USD 147 in July last year, I, for one, thought doomsday wasn’t too far away for our small country. With the unprecedented oil price hikes of 2007-2008, we were clearly caught off-guard as no developments plan in the country had factored in oil at the prices prevalent in the world market during that time. We were saved from an oil-price induced bankruptcy only by the dampened demand for oil brought about by the global financial meltdown.

Most Maldivians would presumably agree that despite the presence of high levels of sunlight and vast expanses of ocean which are potential sources of alternative solar and tidal energy for the country, our government under Gayoom did little to tap into these sources of power. This might very well be the approach A.S.I Moosa would take in his bid to beat the Holy See in the race to become the World’s first carbon neutral country.

Development plans and ‘the art of doing nothing’

It’s been a while since I started maintaining a small personal archive of documents covering key economic areas of the Maldives. One thing I’ve noticed while doing this is that both the sheer number of documents and the depth and breadth of their coverage are quite astounding, to say the least. In fact, I don’t think I’ll be way off-beam to presume that there are probably few other microstates that could come anywhere close to where we are in terms of the sheer number and depth and breadth of coverage of our development plans.

The sad story, though, is that there is no single institution or agency in the Maldives that’s doing anything to keep track of these plans and documents. After having invested many hours to collect such documents, I’m convinced that, with perhaps a few possible exceptions, there is certainly a very comprehensive plan to cover every possible area of socioeconomic management and development in the Maldives – thanks to the umpteen number of TAs we received from our development partners in the last two decades or so. Surprisingly, the existence or whereabouts of these documents, stacked somewhere in the dark silverfish infested shelves of some of government building, collecting dust and spawning termite colonies, are known to few. And more surprising to me is the fact that a large number of these documents and development plans are applicable with only minor alterations even to today’s situation. Today, I skimmed through some of the documents in my small archive. Among the documents I have, I found the following to be particularly interesting.

1. Seventh National Development Plan, Ministry of Planning and National Development, 2006-2010
2. Strategic Economic Plan, Ministry of Planning and National Development, 2005
3. Third Tourism Master Plan, Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation, 2007-2011
4. Development of a Framework for Financial Sector Restructuring (ADB-MAL-TA2265)

The Strategic Economic Plan, 2005, developed by the International Trade Institute of Singapore tops my list. A country of our size and stage of development doesn’t need to look beyond this document for development plans. Every development plan that we would need at least for the next two decades or so is elaborated in this document in a very clear cluster based approach.

I have no clue as to why we didn’t we implement these plans. A good friend of mine once shared his explanation on this --- while the silverfishes and termites were busy quite literally building their empires in our development plans, we were busy pretending to be teaching ‘the art of doing nothing’ to foreigners. Unfortunately, we never taught any art to anyone but instead we did quite successfully master ‘the art of doing nothing’.