Dear Colleagues
I have put a lot of effort into the development of a website to support the TrueValueMetircs initiative. The website is a lot better than some, but also has major limitations because of my own level of technical knowledge and inability to convert ideas into practical presentations.
One of the major concerns that is driving my work is the huge problem of data overload. When I want an answer to a simple question, I can easily get a million answers ... when I really want to choose between just two or three good alternatives.
I am also concerned that modern economists and financial analysts seem to spend a lot of time doing analysis about things that are unimportant, while really big questions do not get addressed. The dialog in almost every forum seems to have a preset 'agenda' and in the end the dialog leaves you at the end just about where you were at the beginning.
I am appalled at how little of recent history seems to be presented in current debate the way I remember it when it happened just a few years back. The rewriting of history may be politically convenient, but it does not help to get important problems solved.
In the end all of this makes me even more convinced that something like TrueValueMetrics is needed, together with a platform that enables TVM to be used by everyone everywhere.
TVM builds on the idea that there is technology, society, finance and metrics and together they deliver on quality of life. I see little utility in GDP growth as a useful measure of anything. In Somalia where people are starving, some GDP growth would be of huge importance, but in the USA where per capita GDP exceeds $40,000 a year there is an urgent need to consume less and enjoy life more.
None of the media conversations seems to understand how well is just as important as how big ... we have to start changing the dialog and the website truevaluemetrics.org is a step in this direction. This link goes to a collection of material that I have found to be useful ... in due course I want to see a very specific dialog about the community and the specific association between needs, resources, activities and progress in improving quality of life.
This is the first 'blogspot' post for several months. As time evolves more and more of the TVM work will be visible on multiple platforms.
Peter Burgess
Monday, September 5, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
How to respond to turmoil in the global energy sector!
Dear Colleagues
The increasing turmoil in the oil producing countries around the world has huge risks for the continuing improvement of the US economy. To maintain profits and cash flow, many companies will very soon cut back on their investments, and consumers will cut back all they can on their consumption. It is not time for the same old same old, but time to move into a post-cheap_energy society that presently exists and get ready for tomorrow!
The following came in my email today. It was an idea used a little bit a couple of years back. Someone responded to the idea ... also below, and I have responded as well. The third item below!
The increasing turmoil in the oil producing countries around the world has huge risks for the continuing improvement of the US economy. To maintain profits and cash flow, many companies will very soon cut back on their investments, and consumers will cut back all they can on their consumption. It is not time for the same old same old, but time to move into a post-cheap_energy society that presently exists and get ready for tomorrow!
The following came in my email today. It was an idea used a little bit a couple of years back. Someone responded to the idea ... also below, and I have responded as well. The third item below!
THIS IS NOT THE 'DON'T BUY' GAS FOR ONE DAY, BUT IT WILL SHOW YOU HOW WE CAN GET GAS BACK DOWN TO $1.30 PER GALLON.Someone responded to this as follows. I was delighted to see someone looking hard at the issues in a more comprehensive way. I have not shown his name at this juncture, but hope to be in contact with him soon.
This was sent by a retired Coca Cola executive. It came from one of his engineer buddies who retired from Halliburton. If you are tired of the gas prices going up AND they will continue to rise this summer, take time to read this please.
Phillip Hollsworth offered this good idea. This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't buy gas on a certain day" campaign that was going around last April or May! It's worth your consideration. Join the resistance!!!!
I hear we are going to hit close to $ 4.00 a gallon by next summer and it might go higher!! Want gasoline prices to come down?
We need to take some intelligent, united action. The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to "hurt" ourselves by refusing to buy gas .
It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can Really work. Please read on and join with us!
By now you're probably thinking gasoline priced at about $2.00 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $3.08 at Arco and Costco for regular unleaded in Salem , Oregon and climbing every week.
Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50 - $1.75, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace..not sellers.
With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action.
The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.
How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas.
But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.
Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL.
If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit.
But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It's really simple to do! Now, don't wimp out on me at this point...keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!
I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300) ... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)... and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth group of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers .
If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!
If it goes one level further, you guessed it..... THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!
Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all!
(If you don't understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people.... Well, let's face it, you just aren't a mathematician But I am . so trust me on this one.
How long would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!
I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you! Acting together we can make a difference.
If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on. I suggest that we not buy from EXXON/MOBIL UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $2.00 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK.
Dear xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxI have responded as follows. My response has some of the perspective that is built into TrueValueMetrics.
This is an excellent plan.
Unfortunately, though, its basic premise is misguided. Low gas prices are exactly the opposite of what we need. We will not rid ourselves of our dependency on this non-renewable, environmentally disastrous resource by focusing our efforts on driving down its prices. Continued reliance on hydrocarbon fuels is a losers game.
The only way to really change things is to accelerate work on finding more efficient, cleaner, and more renewable energy sources. As long as we keep gas prices low, there is little motivation for entrepreneurs and large energy companies to do so. What we need to do is help create an economic environment in which it makes sense to invest in the new and better energy technologies.
For consumers to be motivated by exactly the same kind of short-term, self-interested thinking that they abhor in industry is folly. It's like the luddites smashing looms.
Following the action plan proposed by Ms Mates may produce short term relief, but it is sure to produce long term grief.
I urge you to think it through.
Signed xxxxx
Dear Colleagues
Thank you, xxxxx for raising this question. The United States, and to a lesser extent Europe have created extremely energy intensive societies at the same time that they have created amazing innovations in productivity.
Sadly the metrics that are used to measure progress of society are fatally flawed. Corporate performance is simply money profit, with society better when it is bigger ... higher GDP, more consumption, higher stock market ... etc etc.
But society really is about quality of life ... happiness, reduced worry, family and friends, jobs, income, retirement, safety and security, good health, good education, good opportunities, beauty, spiritual support, etc. The metrics for this are conspicuously absent from the everyday dialog about economic and business performance.
In a responsible society there would be a financial reserve set aside so that we have the funding for energy when the FREE oil resources are gone. Norway is doing this. Kuwait has been doing this since the 1970s which explains why they had the money to pay the USA and others to get Iraq out of their country in the early 1990s! But the USA runs on low price energy that cannot last. The emergence of China and India as middle class economies changes the demand equation ... and people's democracy in most of the oil producing countries will change the supply equation. If there is war in the oil producing areas then supply equation is even more compromised.
The oil industry engineers are technologically amazing ... but they are not good corporate citizens for the United States, the places where they operate or the planet as a whole. They can find and exploit new resources better now than in the past, but they are merely facilitating more rapid consumption of these finite limited resources. Their profits and payout to their stockholders are based on accounting that puts ZERO cost on the oil in the ground. The reality is that these zero cost natural resources have taken a zillion years to produce, and one day we will have to be doing that in real time to have energy equilibrium for the planet.
Does this matter? You bet it does. In my own little way I want to see better metrics so that the real issues that we ought to be facing are in play!
Peter Burgess
truevaluemetrics.org
http://truevaluemetrics.blogspot.com
Friday, March 4, 2011
Income distribution in China worse than in the USA?
Dear Colleagues
Someone suggested that I should read an article about income distribution posted on the Roubini website. I do not have access to the whole article but the start is not promising. The URL is:
http://www.roubini.com/analyst-monitor/260596/just_how_rich_is_the_national_people___s_congress_
I sense from the title of the article ... Just How Rich Is the National People’s Congress? ... and the first small snippet of the main text that the idea is that the fact of huge wealth in among the governing elite in China makes the situation in the United States quite desirable. This is absolute hogwash.
Here is the snippet of text.
But the problem in the United States is that while the poor Chinese are moving up the economic ladder, the once rich Amnerican middle class is moving down the economic ladder. In absolute terms Americans are wealthy by world standards ... but they are incredible concerned about the direction of the American economy.
Until American leaders ... and that includes corporate and financial sector leaders ... take the jobs issue seriously, the USA is in trouble. President Obama cannot be a lone voice talking about jobs, when every institution in the USA is doing all it can to handle its own "agenda". Republicans in Congress have a focus on cutting government spending even though it has been government spending that successfully saved the USA and the global economy from catastrophe after many years of regulatory failure, greed and a whole lot more.
Corporate leaders have done a good job for their stockholders building back profitability ... but in the process there have been jobs lost with a huge impact on US quality of life. But that is not a corporate responsibility ... a corporate management team has responsibility to its stockholders ... and this might well be a fact of law ... but it is a bad situation for society.
And the dialog about taxation does not help. The argument goes that lower taxes stimulate the economy and create jobs ... but again taxes can be legally reduced in many different ways, but government services cannot be paid for without appropriate levels of revenue. The first job in corporate social responsibility (CSR) must be for a company to pay the right amount of taxes.
Government has a responsibility to spend money wisely, and it is true to say that there has been profligate spending in good times and then crisis job cutting in bad times. There is blame for this both on the side of the government and also on the side of the workers and their unions. But there is another issue, and that is the accounting used in government and the public sector. Most of the accounting is cash based rather than accrual based, and the balance sheets that are so important in corporate accounting really do not exist in the public sector. This means that the dialog around matters like current wages and future pensions are not included in any rigorous accounting, and over years this has become a terrible problem. Many unionized public employees are going to get great pensions that have to be paid for ... but the decisions that made this problem go back a very long time.
The concentration of wealth in China is a problem for the Chinese. The wealth differentials in the USA are different, but are also bad. Sorting it out is going to be difficult, but it must be done.
TrueValueMetrics will help because of its focus on value and the importance of a value balance sheet for all the actors in society!
Peter Burgess
Someone suggested that I should read an article about income distribution posted on the Roubini website. I do not have access to the whole article but the start is not promising. The URL is:
http://www.roubini.com/analyst-monitor/260596/just_how_rich_is_the_national_people___s_congress_
I sense from the title of the article ... Just How Rich Is the National People’s Congress? ... and the first small snippet of the main text that the idea is that the fact of huge wealth in among the governing elite in China makes the situation in the United States quite desirable. This is absolute hogwash.
Here is the snippet of text.
Just How Rich Is the National People’s Congress?In my view, the success of China is much more about many millions of very poor Chinese becoming somewhat better off. In the process the elite has also become very very rich, which is the way the enterprise system tends to work.
Adam Wolfe Mar 4, 2011 6:04PM
A Bloomberg News article from Michael Forsythe on China’s National People’s Congress is making waves today. Coming on the heels of the failed “Jasmine Revolution” in China, the article seeks to show that the NPC is representative of the widening income gap in China.
The richest 70 of the 2,987 members have a combined wealth of 493.1 billion yuan ($75.1 billion), and include China’s richest man, Hangzhou Wahaha Group Chairman Zong Qinghou, according to the research group Hurun Report. By comparison, the wealthiest 70 people in the 535-member U.S. House and Senate, who represent a country with about 10 times China’s per-capita income, had a maximum combined wealth of $4.8 billion, data from the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics show.
But the problem in the United States is that while the poor Chinese are moving up the economic ladder, the once rich Amnerican middle class is moving down the economic ladder. In absolute terms Americans are wealthy by world standards ... but they are incredible concerned about the direction of the American economy.
Until American leaders ... and that includes corporate and financial sector leaders ... take the jobs issue seriously, the USA is in trouble. President Obama cannot be a lone voice talking about jobs, when every institution in the USA is doing all it can to handle its own "agenda". Republicans in Congress have a focus on cutting government spending even though it has been government spending that successfully saved the USA and the global economy from catastrophe after many years of regulatory failure, greed and a whole lot more.
Corporate leaders have done a good job for their stockholders building back profitability ... but in the process there have been jobs lost with a huge impact on US quality of life. But that is not a corporate responsibility ... a corporate management team has responsibility to its stockholders ... and this might well be a fact of law ... but it is a bad situation for society.
And the dialog about taxation does not help. The argument goes that lower taxes stimulate the economy and create jobs ... but again taxes can be legally reduced in many different ways, but government services cannot be paid for without appropriate levels of revenue. The first job in corporate social responsibility (CSR) must be for a company to pay the right amount of taxes.
Government has a responsibility to spend money wisely, and it is true to say that there has been profligate spending in good times and then crisis job cutting in bad times. There is blame for this both on the side of the government and also on the side of the workers and their unions. But there is another issue, and that is the accounting used in government and the public sector. Most of the accounting is cash based rather than accrual based, and the balance sheets that are so important in corporate accounting really do not exist in the public sector. This means that the dialog around matters like current wages and future pensions are not included in any rigorous accounting, and over years this has become a terrible problem. Many unionized public employees are going to get great pensions that have to be paid for ... but the decisions that made this problem go back a very long time.
The concentration of wealth in China is a problem for the Chinese. The wealth differentials in the USA are different, but are also bad. Sorting it out is going to be difficult, but it must be done.
TrueValueMetrics will help because of its focus on value and the importance of a value balance sheet for all the actors in society!
Peter Burgess
Thursday, March 3, 2011
The motion is 'Clean Energy Can Drive America's Economic Recovery?'
Dear Colleagues
I would like to share this note with you. I have been contacted in connection with attending an Intelligence Squared Debate in New York. I decided that a quick note to the organizers was in order, since while the premise of the debate is interesting, it fails to address the reality that no matter how much this agenda is promoted, it will be subsumed by all sorts of other issues with bigger financial and political import.
My bottom line, as always is simply that you manage what you measure ... and nothing that is of vital importance is being measured by the key institutions engaged in policy formulation and decision making, and accordingly there is a serious disaster in the making. This is what I wrote:
I see obscene waste when 10 or 15 million capable workers are unemployed in the USA. The reason for this is that there is not enough profit in putting these workers on a payroll to do the many things that need to be done. The economy needs a better infrastructure ... but how to profit from this. Not easy, but commuters lose millions ... billions of hours a year wasting time in traffic jams ... that comes free within the prevailing system of socio-economic metrics. If there are 15 million unemployed workers (say $400 a week) that is like throwing away about $4 billion a week of lost economic product. Actually it is worse than this because social costs go up when unemployment is elevated. Nothing will change as long as the corporate community can make no money from employing these people ... and nothing will change as long as the public sector is constrained by all sorts of rules about what they can and can not do with the budget ... and I might add, when there is no value balance sheet to hold government authorities accountable for their decision making.
It is a mess ... but TrueValueMetrics is a methodology that can help.
Stay tuned ... the truevaluemetrics.org website evolves.
Peter Burgess
I would like to share this note with you. I have been contacted in connection with attending an Intelligence Squared Debate in New York. I decided that a quick note to the organizers was in order, since while the premise of the debate is interesting, it fails to address the reality that no matter how much this agenda is promoted, it will be subsumed by all sorts of other issues with bigger financial and political import.
My bottom line, as always is simply that you manage what you measure ... and nothing that is of vital importance is being measured by the key institutions engaged in policy formulation and decision making, and accordingly there is a serious disaster in the making. This is what I wrote:
Dear ColleaguesOf course, there is a lot more to say ... but what bothers me is that most of the people that engage in the dialog avoid the core issue of unbelievable waste of available resources while bemoaning the lack of resources that are in short supply. Nothing is going to change until profit is diminished in importance and value adding is increased in importance.
Thank you for inviting me to come to the next of your debates. The motion is 'Clean Energy Can Drive America's Economic Recovery?'
I am very interested in the topic and have been for a long time ... but the current dialog about this and many other important issues really disappoints me.
There are huge opportunities but most of the time the dialog misses the point. If one starts off with the premise that technology is now more productive by an order of magnitude or two or more ... that is resource use effective ... then the progress of modern society on a global basis is rather pathetic. There are real reasons for this, notably that leadership has made poor decisions over and over again and the high powered high profile analysts and the dialog in the media avoids looking at this.
The prevailing metrics that are the starting point are fatally flawed. Most decision making ... that is allocation of resource ... metrics are simply about money and profit, about GDP growth and about the performance of the capital markets. These have some importance, but other metrics have importance as well, such as the progress in improving quality of life and issue regarding sustainability.
There are a number of well known people who have highlighted the issues around economic metrics besides myself. The huge mistakes that get made by investors and macro-economic managers as they focus on profit and growth without looking hard at the socio-economic and sustainability dimensions make it difficult to be optimistic about any future for the American economy. If profit, measured as it is now, is the only goal then the corporate community will use low cost workers and as a result will leave the American economy a hollowed out shell. The government will be asked to help unemployed more and more and more ... and it is not inconceivable that there will eventually be economic revolution in the US just as there is now in North Africa and the Middle East.
A value construct would change the trajectory of the US economy in meaningful ways. The profit one will send the US economy over the cliff ... essentially the same cliff that almost consumed the US just over two years ago.
Green jobs can make a huge difference to the United States and the world ... but it is a value construct that is an essential prerequisite in order for decision makers who have resources to flow funds into that segment of the economy. Neither the media nor the well-known academics, economists and policy analysts seem to have any deep understanding of this ... and it scares me to death.
Peter Burgess
truevaluemetrics.org
//////////////////////////////////////////
These are points make FOR and AGAINST the motion
FOR
** The current administration expects its clean energy policies to generate 800,000 jobs over the next two years, laying the foundation for lasting economic growth.
** Consumers can save billions of dollars relying on clean energy sources and increasing energy efficiency, leaving more money to be spent on other goods and services.
** Major investment in clean energy will lead to innovation and new technology.
** Reducing dependence on imported energy frees us to spend our limited resources domestically and protects us from fluctuations in oil prices and climate change.
AGAINST
** The Department of Energy’s own job creation estimates are far more modest than those of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.
** A significant portion of clean energy funding has gone to foreign companies who have the advantage of having been heavily subsidized by their own governments for a number of years.
** Clean energy jobs face the same problems any other industry faces--competition from cheap foreign labor.
** A real green economy wouldn’t rely on government regulation and taxpayer financed subsidies.
____________
Peter Burgess
Meaningful Metrics for a Smart Society
www.truevaluemetrics.org
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I see obscene waste when 10 or 15 million capable workers are unemployed in the USA. The reason for this is that there is not enough profit in putting these workers on a payroll to do the many things that need to be done. The economy needs a better infrastructure ... but how to profit from this. Not easy, but commuters lose millions ... billions of hours a year wasting time in traffic jams ... that comes free within the prevailing system of socio-economic metrics. If there are 15 million unemployed workers (say $400 a week) that is like throwing away about $4 billion a week of lost economic product. Actually it is worse than this because social costs go up when unemployment is elevated. Nothing will change as long as the corporate community can make no money from employing these people ... and nothing will change as long as the public sector is constrained by all sorts of rules about what they can and can not do with the budget ... and I might add, when there is no value balance sheet to hold government authorities accountable for their decision making.
It is a mess ... but TrueValueMetrics is a methodology that can help.
Stay tuned ... the truevaluemetrics.org website evolves.
Peter Burgess
Friday, February 25, 2011
Sustainability ... important, but far from the mainstream of business
If it was not so serious you would have to laugh!
The organizer of a corporate responsibility conference sent me a message announcing the good news that the CEO of a big success story among successful sustainability companies would be a speaker. The success was based on the DOW-Jones SAM sustainability indexes.
I did not know much about the Dow-Jones SAM sustainability indexes so I did a bit of research. Well it is good that someone is trying to measure these things ... I suppose.
And then I looked at the company that was this big success ... and again good that they have the word sustainability in their vocabulary. But I had to laugh when I found the reference to sustainability in their stockholder report. I quote (from their website):
This is a chemical company. They make all sorts of products that are bought to improve quality of life. They employ people and pay good wages (I believe). They use raw materials that may or may not be part of sustainable society, and the by-products and waste may or may not be damaging to the environment. I know nothing about this company and society ... and they are not telling me much.
It's a joke ... I want to laugh ... but instead I am mad as hell!
Peter Burgess
The organizer of a corporate responsibility conference sent me a message announcing the good news that the CEO of a big success story among successful sustainability companies would be a speaker. The success was based on the DOW-Jones SAM sustainability indexes.
I did not know much about the Dow-Jones SAM sustainability indexes so I did a bit of research. Well it is good that someone is trying to measure these things ... I suppose.
And then I looked at the company that was this big success ... and again good that they have the word sustainability in their vocabulary. But I had to laugh when I found the reference to sustainability in their stockholder report. I quote (from their website):
Sustainability PerformanceMy first read had me thinking that safety was the highlight of their sustainability, but then I realized that safety was a freestanding idea ... which is OK. But in the section of the website about sustainability most of the talk is still about how much return the stockholders are going to get from what the company does.
Chairman's Statement on the Report 2009
Our sustainability agenda gathered momentum during 2009. I took great pride in the fact that AkzoNobel was again listed among the world leaders in the Chemicals sector on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, with a second place rating. Our clear objective is to remain in the top three. Safety – just one part of our broader sustainability agenda – also remained paramount and continuous step-by-step improvements have been made in our performance. In fact, the total reportable rate of injuries for our employees and contractors improved by around 20 percent during 2009, while we are still striving to achieve our ambitious 2010 target of two or less injuries per one million hours worked. I feel confident that we will get there.
Despite the challenges we faced during 2009, there can be no doubt that it was a year in which we demonstrated the fundamental strength of our company. We have the utmost confidence in that strength, and in the ability of our management to successfully guide AkzoNobel into the future. We will therefore propose a dividend at the upper end of the dividend policy range to our shareholders at the forthcoming Annual General Meeting.
Visit the 2009 Report website for full details about our sustainability performance.
This is a chemical company. They make all sorts of products that are bought to improve quality of life. They employ people and pay good wages (I believe). They use raw materials that may or may not be part of sustainable society, and the by-products and waste may or may not be damaging to the environment. I know nothing about this company and society ... and they are not telling me much.
It's a joke ... I want to laugh ... but instead I am mad as hell!
Peter Burgess
Informal settlements ... migration into urban areas
Dear Colleagues
I got an e-mail from an organization in India about a problem in Mumbai ... a problem that exists in communities all around the world. Here is the message. My reply follows.
I got an e-mail from an organization in India about a problem in Mumbai ... a problem that exists in communities all around the world. Here is the message. My reply follows.
Do suggest solutions to tackle pavement takeovers in MumbaiThis is my reply .. addressing a bit of the issue, but not all of it by a long way.
info@karmayog.org to me
Posted by Namita in www.karmayog.org - a platform for social and civic issues
100 yards from the Anti Corruption Bureau office on P B Marg, right in front of the sprawling Kamala Mills Compound, diagonally opposite the Hard Rock Cafe, a large group of migrant labourers have taken up residence... with plastic sheets, tiles uprooted from the pavement, railings and bamboos pilfered from a nearby worksite, and bits and pieces salvaged from trash heaps. They have even built a makeshift temple very recently out of these scraps where elaborate puja is conducted by the women.
The pavement is completely blocked. So they have spilled out on the road. They have set up cooking fires on the road itself and defecate and bathe openly on the road itself. They also use the road itself to make their wares ... garlands and baskets and trinkets and food items which they sell. The children, specially the very young, crawl directly on the road.
This road has become a very busy thoroughfare recently, due to all the offices in the neighbourhood. But half the road is taken up by the squatters. Pedestrians inch their way down the middle of the road, trying to dodge buses and cars. Young girls working at the BPOs in adjacent offices, run the gamut of walking through crowds of young men lolling around in their underwear, squatting on the road.
At times, violent fights break out between the inmates, spilling out into the opposite lane. At peak hours, huge traffic jams start as the traffic moves forward in a single lane, barely inches away from the cooking fires burning away on the road. And at night, buses and trucks roaring down the ill lit road are in grave danger of running down the barely seen huddles of people sleeping directly on the road.
Apart from being filthy, insanitary, a breeding ground for disease, apart from being a traffic hazard and a safety hazard, apart from being a complete trangression of all BMC and RTO rules, it is unthinkable that human beings are being given permission to live like this on such a busy thoroughfare - and they must be given permission by SOMEONE, because they can't just live like that in open sight, breaking all the rules without someone in authority turning a blind eye.
So who is this someone we need to speak to? Who is there in BMC who can help? Or the POLICE? The local police have obviously been looking the other way and it obviously is worth their inattention. So nothing to be gained by complaining.
Any ideas?
Posted by Namita in www.karmayog.org - a platform for social and civic issues
Do reply via http://www.karmayog.org/messages/message.aspx?id=4001
Do inform if you do not wish to receive such emails from us.
Dear Colleagues
This is a great question. Most easy "solutions" are not solutions at all and merely move, hide or destroy the problem. A "top down" view and top down solutions tend not to be very effective.
Why are these migrant labourers settled in this location? Perhaps they see it as the "best" place to be. Why? Is it the potential for work? Is it a better place to be than the alternatives?
In Harlem, New York, some years ago street vendors pretty much took over a big part of Central Harlem. Eventually a local group in cooperation with the city authorities set up a more formal market area where vendors could operate. There was a lot of noise because the location was not as well trafficked and it was a change ... but several years later the new location is itself now part of the Harlem scene and on tour bus routes! The new location was "better" because (1) it solved the problem of informal street vending on the main streets AND (2) it allowed the vendors to maintain a livelihood. It was not an easy thing to implement but it worked better than some people expected.
Your situation is not the same ... but there has to be (1) a better place for migrant workers to live than where they are and (2) there has to be more potential for livelihood than where they are. These are both tough questions for society to address. Rural area to urban area migration has become a huge issue around the world and is not addressed in the normal metrics used by decision makers responsible for financial fund allocation. Money moves to increase profits but rarely moves to improve quality of life, especially the quality of life of people at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP). The capital markets do not give any credit to people and organizations that improve quality of life unless they make profit doing it. This is an unsustainable idea.
Again, using New York as an example. Several years ago there was a quality of life problem caused by drug dealing in open spaces around the city and homeless people occupying these places. There has been (1) a massive improvement in the performance of the police in addressing unlawful behavior ... but in a constructive way, and (2) an improvement in the social service intervention to help the homeless and address drug addiction. This has been expensive in terms of both police costs and social service cost but for every resident it has improved quality of life substantially. The value proposition for society has been positive. There has also been a "good economy" for much of this time which helped to diminish one of the root causes.
The challenge of poverty is complex. Better health services and better education help, but it is better opportunity to earn a decent wage that is the big item. Again, the profit market metrics are very good to put some people to work, but leave out a big segment of society. I want to see value metrics in play as well so that NEEDS can be matched with underutilized human capacity to satisfy needs. This model cannot easily be profitable, but this model is value adding for society in an amazing way.
This is already too long ... so let me stop now. This is an important subject.
Peter Burgess
truevaluemetrics.org
Monday, February 21, 2011
Testing a link to a page within TrueValueMetrics.Org
Dear Colleagues
I have been struck by the power and the complexity of the modern social media networked world in part because of the dynamic of the protest movements in North Africa and the Arab World ... and indeed perhaps also in the old industrialized world ... places like London, UK and Madison, Wisconsin, USA!
In the next few weeks I will be doing all I can to take advantage of the linking tools that are available to join websites, to blogs, to Facebook, to Twitter and hundreds, maybe even thousands of similar emerging platforms. The following was automatically generated from a "button" on one of the pages of the TrueValueMetrics.org website. This particular page is about "organizations" and it does enable a user to get to a specific page ... which is good. TrueValueMetrics.Org
Maintaining control over user access and security is important ... and fortunately the basic architecture of the website code probably will make it relatively easy to have that fairly strong and fairly easy to use at the same time.
What is particularly confusing is that many different developers have created similar tools, and they all work in pretty much the same way ... but the statistics associated with all these different approaches is unlikely to make much sense.
I have concluded that ignoring social media platforms is no longer an option ... and in due course I hope you will be seeing a very coordinated TrueValueMetrics presence on all the main platforms that are being used globally.
One step at a time. This is just a test. In due course the buttons on the truevaluemetrics.org website will be working, and content will be flowing between all the platforms. We are trying to simplify data to make it meaningful, but the technology to do it seems to get more and more complex all the time!
Stay tuneds
Peter Burgess
//////
I have been struck by the power and the complexity of the modern social media networked world in part because of the dynamic of the protest movements in North Africa and the Arab World ... and indeed perhaps also in the old industrialized world ... places like London, UK and Madison, Wisconsin, USA!
In the next few weeks I will be doing all I can to take advantage of the linking tools that are available to join websites, to blogs, to Facebook, to Twitter and hundreds, maybe even thousands of similar emerging platforms. The following was automatically generated from a "button" on one of the pages of the TrueValueMetrics.org website. This particular page is about "organizations" and it does enable a user to get to a specific page ... which is good. TrueValueMetrics.Org
Maintaining control over user access and security is important ... and fortunately the basic architecture of the website code probably will make it relatively easy to have that fairly strong and fairly easy to use at the same time.
What is particularly confusing is that many different developers have created similar tools, and they all work in pretty much the same way ... but the statistics associated with all these different approaches is unlikely to make much sense.
I have concluded that ignoring social media platforms is no longer an option ... and in due course I hope you will be seeing a very coordinated TrueValueMetrics presence on all the main platforms that are being used globally.
One step at a time. This is just a test. In due course the buttons on the truevaluemetrics.org website will be working, and content will be flowing between all the platforms. We are trying to simplify data to make it meaningful, but the technology to do it seems to get more and more complex all the time!
Stay tuneds
Peter Burgess
//////
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