You the reader, how would you prefer to
live? If you don’t have inherited wealth where you don’t have to work, but have
to earn an income to live the way you want, what would you ideally like to do?
In this globalized world, we may have to
leave the locations we are comfortable with, in order to pursue the vocation or
career of our choice, and so we will have to adapt to the surroundings, and
make certain compromises to our lifestyle.
What is our priority? How can we achieve
it? These are very personal questions, whose answer may differ from one person
to the next. How can we then compromise our lifestyle so we can balance all of
these, in order to lead a life we are want, bearing in mind, the income we can
optimally earn for our skill set, and the expenses we have to incur, due to the
lifestyle we have chosen? How we manage those expenses in the best way possible,
in order that we obtain a level of satisfaction we want is the challenge.
Very few people think of these
questions, when they plan what they want to do, and then after years of
surviving, according to others norms, wake up one day, and bemoan their lives,
and the choices they made, and regret, with “what might have been had I done
this or that!”.
It is impossible to predict the future.
However we can make certain lifestyle choices to improve it. What we believe is
essential, may in fact be only optional. This is particularly true in
consumption of non essentials, like, alcohol and cigarettes, as well as the
daily bet on the horses on the way home. Many don’t realize how much is spent
on such, and how much their families suffer or are denied owing to this.
In the rapidly changing world and the
era of smart phones, social media, constantly evolving markets and products,
employment flexibility is the rule and norm, and not the exception, and unless
we are able to adapt to the fast changing environment, we may both be left
behind, and also be bereft of skills needed, leaving us in a very precarious
position to even survive!
We must understand that retirement may
not be an option for many in future, the job skills may be more personal services
and not factory work. Home workers like carers for the elderly may be in
demand, and skilled production workers laid off by technology. Accordingly
personal prejudices will have to be put aside, in favor of taking jobs that are
available, even though we may believe it is not socially desirable!
WHAT
IS THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN ALL OF THIS?
The state has been singularly unable to
have a vision for the future, so they have NOT been able to inform the people,
where jobs will be, what they will be and what kind of education and training
they should be thinking of when making these tough choices as Youth.
These think tanks and seminars, such as
the recently concluded, FORESIGHT and INNOVATION summit just did not get the
best out of the people attending, as they have NOT been able to envisage a future
different to their own short term perspectives, that they can think about. It was
very poor in execution.
A long term horizon involves, a HUGE
change in behavior. JUST THINK in the short period since the end of the LTTE
insurrection, 7 years now, could we have envisaged the traffic chaos that has
increased the average commute by a WHOLE HOUR EACH DAY! That is a colossal
waste of human satisfaction lost in a BUS! So much for the PEACE DIVIDEND!
If our planners had a vision that this
would be the case, unless certain steps were taken, they should have taken
remedial steps. If you ask some, they will say that they in fact took steps.
What were they? They said the road construction and widening in Colombo was
done to take into account the extra traffic expected over 10 years, but the
traffic we expected 10 years hence came in just two years.
The fundamental flaw here was that NO
PROPER PLAN had been made for expanding, modernizing, and making speedier
public transport. That should have been the priority, NOT THE ROAD BUILDING AND
WIDENING CONTRACTS that any urban planner would say was countreproductive.
Why was there a public policy flaw? We
gave the onus to the Road Construction Lobby, led by wealthy construction
giants to make the call, and drive policy, as they had the money to influence
the politicians to behave NOT in a way that was good for the PUBLIC, but ONLY
GOOD FOR THE POCKETS of the Road Builders. This is a clear example of flawed
priorities from which many, perhaps 500,000 people are paying the price daily,
without realizing that their respective governments have caused this misery on
them.
That is why it is so important to think
about the future in a logical and rational manner, DEVOID OF PERSONAL AGENDAS,
for the public good. It is the responsibility of a well run state to make these
decisions. Just look at the world’s longest 55km Gotthard Base Tunnel in
Switzerland that was planned in 1947 and work started in 1994 and will be
opened in a few days, with full commercial use in 2017, cutting journey times
by over an hour.
THE SOCIAL CONTRACT BETWEEN THE STATE
AND ITS CITIZENS
In Sri Lanka we have been fooled by contracts
that are merely gimmicks to win Elections, and in the end lead to bad policy.
We the citizens are just as much to blame because we believe that the promise
of short term gain, is sufficient carrot to vote a party into power, only to
find that, we were misled.
I am afraid that the Good Governance
promise which was the ULTIMATE social contract of the Government with the
people who elected them, has NOT been kept, and there is no satisfactory reason
given by the elected Government as to why they have NOT been able to keep to
the terms of this contract.
THE NEED FOR A FUSION OF THE SOCIAL
CONTRACT WITH OUR PERSONAL GOALS
In order to have a personal quality of
life that improves, the state MUST play a distinct role, as otherwise without
it, we come into conflict. The state therefore has a right to provide us with
clean water, clean air, and make necessary steps that we consume food free from
harmful toxins. For them to provide those, they have to provide, good
sanitation, waste disposal, electric public transport, and recyclability of all
disposable products, and environmental conservation.
The citizen then must undertake to help
the state in its endeavors to provide this, by standards of conduct, where they
do not litter, dispose of waste, not pollute, reduce carbon footprint and most
of all, have a community spirit that takes everyone’s best interest above that
of personal interest. They must pay their taxes, without which the state cannot
provide the required services, and to this end the civic mindedness of the
individual is paramount, especially the wealthy.
There are models we can emulate, and
whilst we can have our own unique behavioral model, we can learn from Bhutan,
and from Scandinavian Countries, on how we go about doing this in practice.
PPP or public private partnerships are
the rage now. However as I have explained above the real Private Public partnership,
is the one defined here, where the State and the people work towards achieving the
one goal, of doing all that is necessary to improve the quality of lives of the
people, along with the equal corporation of the people themselves as they are one
and the same thing!
We must understand that when we say the state
it is made up of US. Not someone else, so we are talking about US, doing things
in concert, for the common good. That must include behavior, courtesy, discipline
and above all civic mindedness, for the State and the People to prosper together.
No comments:
Post a Comment