Development is Uneven, Get Over It

Adapted from the blog post of William Easterly

This a 20 minute extemporaneous talk at UNICEF headquarters in New York on the topic of “Inclusive Growth”. After the talk, there is a question, comment, and response session with the audience.  The full video is an hour, if you are really a masochist. (Try this link if the video player above doesn’t work.)



To summarize the talk: success is intrinsically uneven, so development and growth is intrinsically uneven, not “inclusive”. (See the earlier post about the fractal stubborness of uneven geographic wealth.) In this talk, I also mention how remarkably uneven success shows up in just about every field of endeavor. One way this shows up is in a “power law”: there is such a strong negative relationship between the frequency of success and the scale of success that we have to use a logarithmic scale (i.e. a scale where every unit increase means multiplying by 10)  for both to be able to fit the extremes onto the graph, like the one below:



There is no evidence that large-scale redistribution programs can succeed without killing off growth, but targeting things like health and education to the poor has worked and could work even more. Lastly, the best thing of all you can do for “inclusive growth” is asserting the individual human rights of all, including women, gays, and religious, racial, and ethnic minorities. For more detail to fill out these ideas, please watch the video.

UPDATE: Answer to how many Beatles  hits out of 188 recorded songs on their 14 albums are hits today: 15. Even the most successful band in rock history could only produce a lasting hit about 8% of the time (please draw your own profound insights into the intrinsic unevenness of success and non-inclusive growth).

Travelouge

In plucking the fruit of memory one runs the risk of spoiling its bloom -Joseph Conard.

A journey back to Nanital has keep me guessing about this quotes. I have grown up in Nanital till the age of five years. There is always a sense of excitement attached to old memories. Especially, of the places where one grows up.

Memories are altered by present day reality and the sweetness is lost. We are grown up on the tales of childhood and in weaving an endearing and engaging past times. There is tale made by elders about ours association with these places. Only fogy scenes appear in the mind about childhood days when even memories were not even saving in the brain. Back then, life was blossoming with the present. Neither care for future and nor drag of yesterday.

When I want to re cherish those moments and reached to the place after twenty years, everything was changed. I was hoping for the time frozen land of my memories welcoming me with a cheer. All the landscape was different than imagined. Strangely, I met the faces who shared their time with me in long back. The passing age had taken place the effect and photographs of the memory were becoming altered with present.

I visited my LKG school back after 22 years. The school has become remain scant of the past. The walls are falling and the church appears as centuries old due to poor maintenance. The whole place appear as an archaeological site but the schooling is still continued. there. New people are there in the school and few classes have been converted to boarding. Memories have fallen into a abyss and given place to the reality.

I didn't visited my UKG school and old house due to this fear of change. A lot have been changed there. UKG school has been converted into hotel. And new constructions and roads have changed the old landscape. This was for the good for the people. I need store of memories to tell stories in the old age. Reality will tamper the timelessness of memories and tales.

May be I am in a making stage of romantic. Preservance slows down the decay yet life always looks full of energy in the past. Only youth and old can bear the risk of being romantic. One full with dreams, enthusiasm and idealism & another with experience and memories. A Realist turns into romantic is a sign of old age. My mind is aging faster than the body !

I am alone and thinking a line of Fyodor Dostoevsky : The characteristics of our romantics are to understand everything, to see everything and to see it often incomparably more clearly than our most realistic minds see it...

Complex System

Ecologist Eric Berlow doesn't feel overwhelmed when faced with complex systems. He knows that more information can lead to a better, simpler solution. Illustrating the tips and tricks for breaking down big issues, he distills an overwhelming infographic on U.S. strategy in Afghanistan to a few elementary points.



I agree with the talk as understanding big terms as 'development' and 'sustainablity' is like dealing with the complex system. I have myself reached this conclusion with the help of fluid dynamics. That might sound like an unconventional explanation for the readers. When you create any index or threshold level, it is like checking turbulence and laminar in the flow of fluid. Turbulence is flow characterized by recirculation, eddies, and apparent randomness. Flow in which turbulence is not exhibited is called laminar. And therefore many conditions should be included before making any empirical formula.

This talk helps in understanding interconnectivity of the subjects and diversity needed in the education. Monitoring, managing, and coordinating the information collection and cataloging of activities of a process result in huge amount of data and interconnected sub - process. The broad spectrum can only be understand in the simpler way by going from basics to complex looking phase and returning with the simpler explanation. Now, the level of dependence of process on various parameters can be well defined and analysed.

This we often do in the Mathematics. From rockets to stock markets, many of humanity's most thrilling creations are powered by math. So why do kids lose interest in it? Conrad Wolfram says the part of math we teach -- calculation by hand -- isn't just tedious, it's mostly irrelevant to real mathematics and the real world. He presents his radical idea: teaching kids math through computer programming.



The fear of people to deal with complexity and maths hinders the establishing process to reach the estimative conclusion. Nature does not work in the mysterious way. The mystery element is little complex yet transparent for observation for everyone. We need for computing and less repetition !

Example: Key observations from the ICKM conference this year (October, 2010 ) by Nimmy,

Quote of the Day: Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein

We, the people

When an individual fights in enabling the voices of the powerless to be heard and exposes the corrupt game behind power corridors, one faces the persecution from the people in power. Julain Assange (wikileaks) commitment to transparency, peace and justice by exposing and holding governments to account for closed room deals, human rights abuses and for fearless challenges to censorship in any form is cheer worthy.

Exclusive: The Wikileaks Manifesto, by Julian Assange.
Interview of Julian Assange ;

I have also written on wikileaks before on my blog. : Why the world needs WikiLeaks !
Read more in detail and well crafted : Wikileaks is Good for You and Me

Personal Stand on Transparency:

Capitalism and Democratic political system may not be an effective model, but it provides relative more space to an individual. Nationalism has always served the regional interest of the elites. Socialism and Islam are forms of political nihilism, and that both contend that the life of the individual has no intrinsic meaning or value outside of their systems. One ascribes meaning to the individual as a unit of society and its servant, and no more than that. The other ascribes meaning to the individual as a debtor to and servant of a supreme being, and no more than that. Still, I prefer liberal-democratic discourse – rather than an ethnic-nationalist one over any system.

Even ISM is always hijacked by group in power to fulfill their own goals. Any political, social or economic institution/system made by human will always be incoherent and suppress the uniqueness and individuality of the participant. Only, an individual with the consciousness can change the world !

I stand for free and universal availability of knowledge in the public sector. The problem lies that we love escapism.We prefer the heavy dose of entertainment rather sharing our resources with the people. I will put ten points (thanks tai) on ours typical attitude toward anything.

1. We don’t push the envelope.
2. We reinforce stereotypes
3. We don’t know the ‘reality’ of the world.
4. We love to be divided and ruled.
5. We love the fact that the ‘system’ will take care of everything for us.
6. We don’t provide alternatives.
7. We dare not try to correct our system lest it open the Pandora’s box.
8. We are happy where we are. We are happy to be ignorant.
9. We love talking about being the victim of larger forces.
10. We are afraid of what our family, society even what the countless person will think and react about our actions.

People love 'entertainment'  and 'gossip' rather embracing the truth. That is one line conclusion of all this shouting. People feel helpless and timid in front of the problems. Hence, they reject mind and simply submit for numbness that gives an easy solution for all problems, EAT, WORK, PRAY and be ENTERTAINED at any cost. So the virtual cocooned world of create a self perpetuating cycle with no breakthrough for a new element. People have good intention but unable to take action due to their resignation of mind. Mainstream don’t think, it just follows like sheep' herd to the authority.

We, the people have just lost anger against unjust practices. We can't fight corruption in big issues and can help to keep it more transparent. This is the first step taken for the justice for everyone.

Meanwhile the optimists are looking for new hope in wikileaks with respect and honour, Indian media is being ashamed by Nira Radia tapes controversy (Thanks POC). This is India;

"There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy." — Joseph Pulitzer

Year Zero – The Silent Death of Cambodia

"John Pilger's work has been truly a beacon of light in often dark times. The realities of our time he has brought to light have been a revelation, and his courage and insight a constant inspiration." -Noam Chomsky

John Pilger vividly reveals the brutality and murderous political ambitions of the Pol Pot/Khmer Rouge totalitarian regime which bought genocide and despair to the people of Cambodia while neighboring countries, including Australia, shamefully ignored the immense human suffering and unspeakable crimes that bloodied this once beautiful country.

Year Zero – The Silent Death of Cambodia

Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia is a 1979 documentary film by John Pilger concerning first the bombing of Cambodia by the U.S. that took place in 1970, the subsequent brutality and genocide that occurred when Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge militia took over, and finally the lack of aid given by the western countries.



President Nixon and Mr. Kissinger unleashed 100,000 tons of bombs, the equivalent of 5 Hiroshimas. The bombing was their personal decision; they illegally and secretly, they bombed Cambodia, a neutral country, back to the Stone Age. And I mean Stone Age in its’ literal sense.

Today, George Bush and Tony Blair are culprit in genocide. They are radical christian nut the most of tha war is raised for Oil and Arm lobby.

The most intolerant people are also the most conformist blinded by ideologoes of nationalism and religiousness . They enjoy privilege and entertainment while the world is burning with poverty, wars and hunger. I am deluded with the life and the world full of ignorant people pretending to have good intentions.That is why I read and watch pages from forgotten history to know velied barabarity of human race.

More on this Topic : The Killing Fields is a 1984 British drama film about the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, which is based on the experiences of three journalists: Cambodian Dith Pran, American Sydney Schanberg and Briton Jon Swain.