Organizing Ourselves: Renewable Energy

Initiatives for renewable energy

Shyam Ponappa / New Delhi February 07, 2008

The urgent need to organize for solar power & biofuels


Recent developments in renewable energy, e.g. cellulosic ethanol and concentrating solar power, underscore the urgency of pulling ourselves together on these fronts.

Cellulosic Ethanol

At the Detroit Auto Show in January, General Motors made a startling announcement: it had invested in a biofuel startup. This startup, Coskata, is one of uber-investor Vinod Khosla’s bets in renewable energy. Coskata claims it can produce ethanol from cellulosic sources at reasonable cost. The feedstock can be woodchips, grass, straw and agricultural waste from crops such as corn and wheat, even plastic and other carbon waste such as old tires. Coskata’s process needs much less water: less than the volume of ethanol, not three to four times as for other methods. Argonne National Laboratory reports that the process generates 7.7 times the energy used, and reduces CO2 emissions by over 80 per cent compared with petrol. However, this is in the laboratory, and Coskata has to prove it can scale up. This is planned by 2011, starting with a pilot plant this year.*

Coskata converts feedstock using heat into synthesis gas or syngas, comprising primarily carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide. This gas is processed by proprietary microorganisms to create ethanol and water. In contrast, other bio-fermentation processes usually create a number of complex alcohols in addition to ethanol. Coskata’s microorganisms reportedly have greater tolerance to impurities in syngas than processes that use chemical conversion. The ethanol and water are separated using a membrane technology that is estimated to cost only half as much as processes such as distillation. Overall, Coskata achieves the highest conversion efficiencies for ethanol.

Solar Power — No Rain In Spain

Southern Spain is known for its sunshine and scarce rain. Capitalising on this “deficiency”, Spain is becoming the leader in the revival of Concentrating Solar Power (CSP), i.e. focusing heat from solar radiation to generate electricity, pioneered in California. In the 1970s, nine solar thermal plants were built at Kramer Junction in the Mojave Desert to produce 354 Mw, then forgotten in the rush for fossil fuels.

Outside Seville in Spain, 600 reflectors focus solar radiation to the top of a concrete tower 40 storeys high. This is Abengoa’s Solúcar project, which converts radiant energy into heat, driving steam turbines that generate about 10 Mw of electricity at an estimated cost equivalent to $50-70 a barrel. The capital costs are high but the fuel is free, and there are no noxious emissions. Photovoltaic generation costs nearly double CSP, but has the advantage of modularity: small units can be used for individual homes, while CSP needs large amounts of capital and land.**

A different CSP design using parabolic troughs is used by Spanish company Acciona in a 64 Mw plant commissioned last summer near Las Vegas in Nevada.**

Relevance for India

These are instances of developments that deserve focused attention in India — another area where we have an urgent need to set about organising ourselves out of our chaotic ways. My aim — fond hope — is to initiate or precipitate action. Ideally, through an agglomeration of our imagination and ability, we will develop a sound process of analysis, goal setting, and then proceed with the follow through to achieve these goals. But we have to apply ourselves for this to happen; these are complex issues, and need informed analysis and decisions.

We need a comprehensive and integrated, silo-busting, problem-solving approach. This is in contrast with coasting along on a post-feudal-colonial mélange of currents and tides, with the brigandage of opportunistic politics fed by our (the voters’) greed for short-term benefits, resulting in our grotesque populism, in lieu of the much greater deferred gratification of pleasing cities and countryside with the appurtenances of proper governance: sidewalks and drains, transport, administration and order, hospitals and schools. We have to “engineer” our way ahead, i.e. take active steps to build and develop our solutions, not passively wait for something good to happen.

This applies across the board in the broadest “spatial planning” sense that integrates housing and land use at all levels with commercial, industrial, cultural and scientific activity, transportation, and all governance and infrastructure: water, sewerage, energy, communications. Infrastructure being the first level of enablement, it is an essential starting point.

Plan Outlays — Necessary But Not Sufficient

Our leaders acknowledge repeatedly that infrastructure is India’s great need. Yet, they take no steps to marshal forces to draw up a credible strategy and execution plan. This is what needs doing. Only money won’t do, because delivery systems and processes have to be developed, i.e. planned, then built from scratch.

Finance is certainly a requirement, but it is not the only one. Equally critical is coordinated implementation. This needs human resources and organisation, with the technology, systems and processes to make it work. All these must mesh in a goal-oriented organisational form in an enabling environment for good outcomes. This requires a combination of the regulatory aspects of government together with the social aspects of human dynamics, including the availability of trained people for production and delivery, and well-developed markets with all the necessary attributes, starting with demand. Therefore, funding is only one critical step.

Creating Institutional Delivery Systems & Processes

Our need is to create the requisite institutional systems and processes. This is probably best done with an open, collaborative approach — if we can pull it off. “Our need” means primarily for the government to act, and secondarily for all of us, given how we are set up. We — in all our spheres: private, corporate and governmental —have to do this ourselves, and stop hoping somebody else will do it for us.

No individual or single-domain point of view can do the job. Just as considerable national effort is directed at expanding India’s access to fossil fuels, there needs to be serious, coordinated effort by people with diverse skills and expertise to aggregate, analyse, present information on developments, and help make decisions in these alternative energy areas. We don’t need more government agencies, but we do need to configure a group to get the job done. The key is to aggregate the domain and process expertise — from existing ministries/departments, agencies and the private sector — focused on the purpose at hand.

shyamponappa@gmail.com

* http://www.coskata.com/

** www.technologyreview.com/microsites/spain/solar/

For EU (& MENA), see www.trecers.net/downloads/summary_en.pdf

Organizing Ourselves: Spectrum Auctions

Price Discovery & Spectrum Auctions

Shyam Ponappa / New Delhi January 3, 2008

Why spectrum auctions make no sense for a developing country.

Some eight years ago, a much delayed telecommunications renaissance began in India. This was ushered in by the policy changes in the New Telecom Policy of 1999 (or NTP 1999). Though botched by its confused goals — despite my involvement — it was redeemed by one path-breaking feature: the renunciation of the onerous licence fees resulting from the auctions of 1994. These auction fees were replaced by a policy of revenue-sharing between the government and private operators. The outcomes have been nothing short of revolutionary.

We need to remind ourselves that the preceding imbroglio was because of the Indian government’s price-discovery-by-auction approach to the development of this most effective (in terms of bang-for-the-buck) form of enabling infrastructure. The primary reason for “success”, defined as growth in the number of lines, was the government’s willingness to give up this venal approach and shift to revenue sharing.

Just as it did then, the government — the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), the Department of Telecommunications, the Finance Ministry… — should be questioning the logic of indulging in price discovery through auctions for building enabling capacity in essential services, in this case, of wireless spectrum. If the government is not actively seeking to build enabling capacity in this form of infrastructure in the public interest, it needs to consider why not.

Not asking these fundamental questions results either from a lack of application of mind, or from the flawed thinking of misplaced orthodoxies. These can be of many sorts, such as of market fundamentalists, libertarians, and neo-liberals with the belief that “the market knows best”, that economic liberalism is best for promoting development, or that every interaction should be a market transaction in open, competitive markets. Or of the neo-cons, who take the approach that those who can afford whatever it is can have it. Or of those who believe that cabinet decisions once made are sacrosanct and should not be questioned. Or of those who think the Indian government should make as much money as governments in developed countries have made from the sale of spectrum and other assets. This latter argument is put forward not only by representatives of the government, but also by economists, e.g. V Ranganathan of the IIM, Bangalore, and his students Darshit Shah, et al.*

These articles and arguments ignore the essential purpose of the exercise, and divert attention from the central issue, i.e. Peter Drucker’s dictum: what is your objective? The purpose of distributing spectrum in India as for awarding franchises in infrastructure is to build enabling capacity in the public interest; it is not to collect maximum fees for the government.

This is because infrastructure is a fundamental determinant of productivity at India’s stage of development. Essential services such as telecommunications (and energy, transportation, water and sanitation … etc.) are a basic need for people to be productive and have a reasonable quality of life. These aspects of essential infrastructure provide the underpinnings of the cost structure of the economy. If these services are unavailable or available only at a high cost, several consequences follow. One relates to the cost structure of outputs, which determines competitiveness in domestic and external markets (remember the IT services revolution and how Indian companies got their first break in foreign markets). Another is access deprivation because many people find these services unaffordable. These aspects affect productivity and competitiveness as well as the quality of life.

So, if growth in fixed and mobile lines is not an appropriate measure of success for telecommunications services, what might be a better measure? What if the government focused on user needs, instead of collecting more money for allotting the right to provide telecommunications services, or considering other factors such as incumbency, technology assumptions, the bogey of the efficient use of scarce resources — the rationing and scarcity mentality of our past and present? We could perhaps develop an alternative scenario starting with desirable outcomes, and work backwards to specify the conditions and processes required to achieve these outcomes through a process flow chart or logic diagram. Let us assume this goal is ubiquitous, true broadband (at least 500 kbps) for as many as possible in India, accepting for the moment that this would provide a basis (provided the rest of the systems follow) for hitherto inconceivable opportunities for education/training, health care, public services delivery, commerce and enterprise, information and entertainment. The question is, what mix of policy norms and incentives could deliver this result?

With the caveats that this perfunctory exercise is merely indicative, limited to a conceptual level, and necessarily simplistic, consider how broadband might develop with attractive incentives for achieving this goal. The incentives could be of many kinds, and could include, for instance, additional spectrum for wireless networks, reduced duties and taxes, area franchises, public property usage rights at favourable rates, and reducing fees as a share of revenues. These incentives could be structured to increase with incremental achievement, e.g. higher tax breaks, larger spectrum allocation levels, and reduced revenue share.

In order to be practicable, there are several levels of detailed requirements. The first prerequisite is of basic political will, a concerted multi-partisan convergence to undertake such a complex task over a reasonable time frame of months and years — and not, as a stalwart in the government in the past once told me, something that needs no more than 10 days. Such an effort requires not only the setting aside of greed and opportunism, but also of incompetence. Perhaps this is an unachievable prior condition in India, and no such effort is possible; perhaps it is.

In reality, such an effort would need to be worked out by a diverse group comprising government and private sector participants, with knowledgeable facilitation capable of understanding the technology underlay, content domains for different product-market spaces with adequate segmentation, e.g. within education and training: primary and secondary schooling, undergraduate, postgraduate, specialised modules including technical training and all-round skills such as in presentation and succinct writing, project management, group dynamics, quality, etc. as well as domain expertise, whether in telecommunications and engineering or in finance, economics, biology, sociology, history, the arts...

shyamponappa@gmail.com

*“Auctioning spectrum best for the country,” BS December 7, 2007: http://business-standard.com/search/storypage_new.php?leftnm=4&leftindx=4&subLeft=1&autono=306694
“How to run a good auction”, BS October 12, 2007: http://business-standard.com/search/storypage_new.php?leftnm=4&leftindx=4&subLeft=1&autono=300958

Dirty coal, clean water?

Choosing Between Coal-Fired Power & Hydroelectric Power


Shyam Ponappa / New Delhi December 06, 2007


It's not so simple, and good decisions need informed analysis

The fracas over the 123 Agreement led to a very useful result: finally, information is being made available about what it would mean to be able to import nuclear supplies, the pros and cons of recent developments in nuclear power generation technology versus other fuels, and the benefits and costs associated with choices. What if this process of impasse-and-reluctant-communication — a grudging divulgence of information — were reversed? Imagine how it might be if expert information from various perspectives were aggregated and disseminated early on in a process, if the public and parliament were educated about the possibilities, choices, benefits and costs. We might actually achieve some rational decision-making.

Of course, this is not our way. Our way is either by political accommodation or by committee. Political accommodation is inappropriate for engineering and management decisions, e.g., for telecommunications, and can lead to outcomes like the regulatory confusion and low level of true broadband (at least 500 kbps), or the problems of electricity supply. Solutions that depend on science, engineering, economics, and/or management simply do not work if they are based on accommodation instead of rational analysis. Committees should be able to do the aggregation of information, analysis, and problem solving to arrive at informed conclusions. However, in our environment, they can take to obfuscation or delay, or worse, resort to decisions by accommodation.

It is time we adopted better reasoning as our way. Dealing with issues that affect our lives with more rationality and expertise, so that the facts surface, is subjected to expert inputs given the state of knowledge, and we can watch and contribute to having informed opinion give shape to decisions. Begin with information and facts made public, elicit expert opinion from various domains, then develop conclusions, thereby reducing the extent of uninformed emotional argumentation.

For instance, an estimate that surfaced about the supposedly low potential for nuclear power was that it was actually the same as for the much-touted hydroelectric potential: 6 per cent by 2032. There are still problems that are glossed over associated with coal and hydroelectric power:

Problems with coal: Rarely do coal enthusiasts mention the difficulty of exploiting dirty coal, from mining our high-ash reserves, to transporting coal by our stretched railway system, to the high level of emissions from plants using this fuel. The ravages of fly ash from coal plants, which in India apparently has higher levels of silicon dioxide, aluminum oxide, ferrous oxide, sulphur trioxide, and unburnt carbon, are completely overlooked in the reckoning, as is the water needed to clean up (e.g. the effects on the Yamuna for Delhi).
Problems With hydroelectric power: Likewise for hydroelectric potential. One need only recall the difficulties of getting such projects going, especially when they involve large dams such as the Sardar Sarovar or the Tehri Dam. Granted such issues are aggravated by the lack of equitable resettlement, on which we just have to do much better, perhaps on the lines shown by JSW Steel.

Such complex issues need strong government-sponsored initiatives with private participation for the requisite depth and breadth of expertise, and neutrality (multi-partisanship), with the all-important feature of Project Management oriented to well-defined goals, to achieve good results. As always, we need to prioritise for these essential infrastructure and governance issues that are at the heart of our inadequacies. Like communications, energy decisions for transport, heating and lighting are critical areas needing attention. This is primarily from our own need to correct our trajectory for better living, rather than for reasons relating to the Kyoto Protocol.

Action at the local level, whether it is water management for conserving rainwater and applications for gardens, or energy applications such as solar water heaters, cookers or lighting, requires a much more organised effort to be practised widely and have a significant beneficial impact. So do national initiatives on fuels for transport, including petrol, diesel, and biofuels. Areas like these need focused, intense efforts at information aggregation and expert analysis, followed by solution formulation and execution. Most important, there has to be the follow-up for effective dissemination, with implementation support on the ground.

Take the example of biodiesel. The knowledge available with TERI (teriin.org), the Planning Commission’s National Mission on Bio Diesel — whose role is overall coordination? — the Petroleum Conservation Research Association’s National Biofuel Centre (www.pcra-biofuels.org), the Agriculture Ministry’s National Oilseeds and Vegetable Oils Development Board (http://novod.nic.in), the Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute at Bhavnagar, and so on, as well as information on commercial initiatives such as D1 Oils of the UK with their wide-ranging efforts in India at extensive plantation and procurement of jatropha through ventures with Mohan Breweries (D1 Mohan Oils) for the south, Williamson Magor for the northeast, and PManek for Gujarat, could be pulled together and made accessible in one place. Further, the findings and conclusions could be used for systematic, country-wide implementation with institutional processes for support.

In the case of petrol, issues relating to ethanol need equally intense efforts at aggregation, expert analysis, and solution development. I was horrified to learn that a company was considering ethanol production from corn here in association with an American company. The inadvisability of corn-to-ethanol is well known even for the US, despite its extensive corn-growing practices.

An example of a glaring anomaly awaiting attention in the subset of transportation fuels is the policy for diesel and petrol. While lower prices for diesel for mass transport and freight make sense, with our atmospheric pollution levels, the current incentives for small diesel car production and use in India appear to defy logic. The Centre for Science and Environment has been campaigning against diesel cars for so long that some of us do not see or hear their plaint. Also, many of us have been lulled by the “clean diesel” story from Europe and whatever tradeoffs they have made. But this is not Europe, and given the state of our atmosphere, the black carbon emissions as well as the oxides of nitrogen from diesel with their effects on smog creation, and the perceivable improvement in atmospheric pollution in Delhi with CNG buses followed by reversals, there is a critical need for immediate, focused, unbiased government initiative, with comprehensive policies and follow-up action.

P-notes and regulatory shocks

Stunning the market: How not to regulate

Shyam Ponappa / New Delhi October 31, 2007

Better ways to change the rules, perhaps?

Cutting through the consternation and confusion after the regulatory shock on P-notes, let’s pick our way through the pieces.

Aims: The government’s/Sebi’s objectives are, presumably, to reduce capital inflows into the stock market and change their mix to curb liquidity pressures raising (a) asset prices, (b) the rupee value, and (c) prices in general (inflation), and to increase transparency to discourage speculative circular trading, whether for profits or for sinister purposes such as inducing instability. Let us examine if these objectives are desirable, and why or why not.

Votaries of open markets want free capital flows even into developing markets such as India. Leaving orthodoxy aside, consider the benefits and costs. International capital seeking high returns in India’s stock markets have the effect of raising the perceived value of shares overall. In other words, from a staid forward PE of around 15-18, the tide can rise so that buyers will pay PE multiples of 22-24 or more, because of an upbeat interpretation of fundamental factors that augur high growth. This can be beneficial or detrimental depending on who gets to capture the value.

The Invisible Hand In Emerging Markets: If offshore hedge funds capture all the business and take out all the profits, the primary gainers are the funds and their investors. Such funds are best placed to capitalise on a quick runup, with their ready capital for precisely such purposes, as well as their agility in evaluation and execution. The companies they buy into also gain directly for purposes such as acquisitions through stock swaps, and broader, cheaper access to capital.

Apart from this, there is the wealth effect for these enterprises, a sort of increased “gravitational pull” of a well-regarded enterprise seeking opportunities and attracting resources (people as well as capital).

The losers are Indian investors, both institutional and retail, who could have otherwise captured the gains, as well as local service providers who would be involved in the execution. With local involvement, there are additional benefits from taxes collected from end to end, and the multiplier effect from the local increase in income and wealth.

However, it is likely that without offshore capital, the higher-order multiples would not be realised, because the same set of cash flows can elicit differing perceptions of value. In times of secular prosperity, the potential for high growth over a long period justifies the higher valuations, whereas difficult circumstances can circumscribe and constrain valuations and behaviour for the same data.

Positive outcomes are more likely if corporate profits continue to grow, local interest rates moderate, and more domestic funds and pension funds move into equities, as also more retail investment. These issues are left to market forces in OECD countries characterised by well-developed, liquid markets with a variety of instruments and intermediaries. In India, where a minuscule percentage of people’s money is in equity, few companies have liquid shares, and markets are not well formed with limited investment products and services broadly available, we are at a more formative stage of market evolution. In such circumstances, investment access for the public is closer to a public good, part of the financial infrastructure at the next level beyond basic infrastructure. Therefore, government and regulatory activism in facilitating investment is necessary in the public interest. Those who yearn for America’s markets should be aware of the years of strong intervention it took to develop them.*

Consequences of the government’s/Sebi’s actions(i) Capturing Value Locally: The shock announcement may reduce FII flows in the next few months; the question is by how much. If inflows were to be reduced by half and skewed towards a longer term, it would probably be a sufficient fillip to prices, while allowing room for local investors to enter and capture the value of the ride up the curve. If this were to happen, it would be very desirable for the public interest in India; otherwise, most of the benefit would go to offshore investors. If the reduction and change in the composition of inflows is insignificant, the government/regulator need to design other appropriate intervention; and if investments drop by too much, ameliorative measures with more time for adjustment would be advisable.

Why should the government or the regulator care whether or not the Indian public derives significant benefits? First, the public interest is the responsibility of the government and the regulator. Second, there are the local benefits and multiplier effects referred to earlier. These are akin to the revenue sharing gains in telecommunications, whereas FIIs booking profits spirit the gains away, yielding fewer local benefits.

(ii) Roiling the Markets: Now to the way changes are initiated. It is presumably the government’s and the regulator’s aim to maintain stable markets while effecting desirable changes. To the extent that markets have been unnecessarily roiled, there are clearly better ways of initiating change. The key is the government’s/regulator’s stance. To the extent the attitude is supportive and understanding towards market players, there are likely to be less ructions than if it is adversarial, as it appears now. Even if P-notes are to be phased out completely, there are better ways of doing it than a sudden announcement with the threat of limited time for discussion and implementation.

(iii) A Better Way?: For stability, a constructive attitude of open communication, problem definition, and resolution is most important. This is not to say that positions considered harmful to the public interest must be accommodated, or that India has an obligation to support FIIs running offshore trades (my view is that it is not in India’s interests to have extensive hedge fund participation in its markets). However, the process of arriving at conclusions after eliciting views from the players, and then communicating and implementing decisions in a manner that is least disruptive, is very important. Exploratory consultations in direct discussions and through the Internet are not that difficult to devise and implement. Also, if changes are conceived and executed in an end-to-end, systematic, integrated and phased manner, there are likely to be better outcomes than patchy interventions. Otherwise, the opacity and apparent capriciousness of our regulatory environment will constrain our ability to grow and prosper at a pace and to a level that exploits our potential fully.

* Rendezvous With Destiny; A History of Modern American Reform, Eric F Goldman, Alfred A. Knopf, 1952

Organizing Ourselves

Shyam Ponappa / New Delhi October 04, 2007


Shyam Ponappa gives instances and inspiring possibilities of institution building.

Some time ago, a perceptive ‘re-reading’ of the Babur Nama by Sunil Sethi in these pages highlighted the similarity of India’s problems and needs in the 16th century and now: essentially, the lack of purposive organisation and infrastructure.* Having failed for five centuries barring exceptions, should we then give up on organising ourselves? Or can we possibly make the effort to learn from those of our institutions and others that work as purposive systems - achievement-oriented organisations — to try to effect a transformation, to define a pragmatic way forward? Collaboration in the common interest instead of following our penchant for argumentation, and indulging in a million mutinies. Especially for self-aggrandisement in the ultra short run (because in the long run, it is in everyone’s interests to co-operate).

Some of our institutions that work, by and large:

The defence services: the Navy, Air Force, and Army.
Companies serving external markets: our IT stars were early champions, now under a cloud until they reinvent themselves. Broadly, knowledge-based companies, and some engineering and textile companies.
The Delhi Metro, Konkan Railways, some aspects of Indian Railways.
Some areas of government.
Some groups of professionals.

While there are very many excellent individuals, alas, few are part of any organised system.

The challenge: It is really up to us whether to go on in this chaotic, neo-feudal way with the specious excuse of being the largest democracy, or to buckle down to organising and functioning in our collective better interests.

The greatest impediment is our unwillingness to act in concert while carrying the baggage of sectarian inclinations, a sort of tribalism focused on the special interests of factions, the lesser loyalties of region, caste, clan, family. Our needs are exactly the opposite: aggregation of information, allowing cross-discipline analysis for problem definition — informed, correct diagnosis — and the synthesis of solutions that are workable, that can be and are executed on the ground, i.e. the organisation and prioritised management of initiatives — prime areas for nonpartisan, multidisciplinary thinking and action. The questions are whether and how issues of common interest can elicit coherent behaviour.

Opportunities for convergent action?: Are there compelling purposes that could help us break out of this rut? Persuade us to act more responsibly, be less mindful only of our rights while being oblivious of our coequal obligations.

Could the purpose of deploying India’s currency reserves profitably for everyone’s benefit enthuse us — especially our politicians — to start thinking and acting collaboratively? The incentive could be Rs 90,000 crore a year from $150 billion invested.

Or of organising waste collection and disposal, so we can live in better surroundings some years down? From waste collection through effective, humane systems, including organising and paying rag pickers, to managing sustainable disposal, removing this great blight.

These are the issues that deserve nonpartisan attention, where a sense of our obligations would help. Such issues need breakthroughs of nonpartisan, convergent action in the common interest, with “right knowledge” (expert inputs), not merely negotiation and/or accommodation of public opinion. Everything is not best left to public opinion. We need to distinguish between issues for public debate, and those that need resolution with expertise or competence. This is impossible without abjuring sectarian interests and populism. If we go with public opinion, we will opt for “free” power and water, and stay mired in shortages and with dreadful sanitation … Few major projects — hydroelectric projects, nuclear plants, or dredging projects — will come about.

Given the realities of the evolution of Indian politics, ultimately, these initiatives probably need to be structured to tie into a fair election funding process. Either that, or the tax and PDS systems must become good enough to channel excess receipts into a decent election funding system, which will need to be developed. Without such incentives and processes, it is unlikely that our predatory politics and heedless public behaviour will change, or that we can break out of our established interest groups.

The risks of business-as-usual: Many seem to expect that because India is in the early stages of its political and economic development, things will improve with education and prosperity. For these sanguine business-as-usual-ists, there are two cautionary images. One is the highly evolved democratic processes mired in a hardliners’ deadlock, the predicament of America. The second is the unresolved, divergent paths taken by the French-speaking Walloons and the Flemish in Belgium. These educated, prosperous people have stayed apart, and not been able to get beyond their uncooperative mindsets to function as a nation.

Lessons abound: There is also much to learn from other countries if we care to, although we tend to dismiss others’ experiences as irrelevant. Small nations especially, like Belgium, Dubai or Singapore, are often viewed simplistically. It is in our interest, however, to look to wherever we need to for our purposes. Take Singapore: a closer look reveals the complexity it has had to overcome and the distance it has travelled to achieve its position. Set adrift in 1965 with a hodge podge of migrants from southern China, southern India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the archipelago, it had no homogeneous population, common language or culture. But it had plenty of examples of troubled and failing states as warnings. As venerable Singaporean leader Lee Kwan Yew puts it, “… we knew what to avoid — racial conflict, linguistic strife, religious conflict. We saw Ceylon …” Singapore’s secret is its practice of an unsentimental pragmatism that is “ideology free”.**

Many in India dismiss Singapore as a model because of its scale. But scale hasn’t stopped China from taking lessons. China’s officials have been interacting regularly and systematically with Singaporean counterparts, as they have with other countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands. Chinese ministers have meetings twice a year with Singaporean ministers to learn from them; every three months, fifty mayors of Chinese cities visit for courses in city management. Likewise, China is learning waste management from Flanders, as are Russia and Britain.

Our institutions must, of course, be tailored to our context. As a UN University report notes, successful institutional changes typically emerge as a mixture of country-specific innovation and chance developments, as well as deliberate learning.*** All we need do is select pivotal issues to galvanize nonpartisan thinking and collective action.

* “On re-reading Babur Nama in 2007”, BS August 11, 2007: http://www.business-standard.com/search/storypage_new.php?leftnm=4&leftindx=4&subLeft=1&autono=294099 ** “Lee Kuan Yew, founder of Singapore, changing with times”, Seth Mydans & Wayne Arnold, International Herald Tribune: www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/29/asia/lee.php *** “Stranger than Fiction? Understanding Institutional Changes and Economic Development”, Ha-Joon Chang, UN University Policy Brief No. 6, 2007: http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/policy-brief/pb06-07.pdf
shyamponappa@gmail.com