Monday, February 7, 2011

[Owen Abroad] Does the public care about development?

11:35 PM

Does the public care about development?

8 February, 2011

Development advocates have to make the case for aid and development policy. They are right to say that development is in the national interest of the donor, but it may be a mistake to put this at the centre of the argument. Most people don't need to be convinced that development is desirable; they need to be convinced that aid works.

Development is in our national interest

It is increasingly the conventional wisdom that it is in the national interest of industrialised countries to promote development in the rest of the world. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a speech saying so a year ago at the Center for Global Development:

… development was once the province of humanitarians, charities, and governments looking to gain allies in global struggles. Today it is a strategic, economic, and moral imperative – as central to advancing American interests and solving global problems as diplomacy and defense.

The UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague, also argues that development is a key part of Britain's strategic and security interests (for example, here and here).

We've come a long way over the last twenty years. In January 1991 my father, then a British High Commissioner, sent a despatch to the then Foreign Secretary in London to mark the end of his last post in Africa, arguing that it was in the UK's national interest to pay more attention to Africa's development. His despatch said:

There is an overwhelming case on financial grounds alone for acting sooner rather than later, collectively, to provide the resources required for removing most of the debt burden from African countries (provided that they are committed to active economic reform), for arresting environmental degradation, and for restoring the physical and human infrastructure sufficiently to permit diversification of economic effort and its re-direction into areas that will eventually become self-financing – as well, incidentally, as making a more positive contribution to world economic activity.

At that time, the foreign policy establishment was very suspicious of any argument based on ethical or moral imperatives: it believed that foreign policy should be based on narrowly-defined national interests. In 1980 the Brandt Report had argued that it was in our "mutual interest" to pay attention to development and inequality, but in the decade that followed Britain's aid programme, and our attention to developing countries, had declined. Twenty years ago, when my father was making a case for paying more attention to development based on our national interest as well as our values and moral obligations, his view was regarded as so subversive that the foreign office limited the circulation of the despatch. Today it is received wisdom which is regularly the basis of speeches by the US Secretary of State and the British Foreign Secretary.

We should celebrate the fact that there is, belatedly, recognition among policymakers that promoting development is in our national interest, as well as being the right thing to do. But I am concerned that we are letting the pendulum swing too far, by placing this argument at the centre of the public case for aid. We should use every argument at our disposal for doing the right thing, of course; but if we focus too much on aid being in our national interest, we are danger of undermining the effectiveness of aid and of failing to address the real concerns of sceptical citizens.

The nature of public doubts about aid

If I had a nickel for every time someone said to me, "I don't think we should spend money helping starving people because I don't give a toss about them," I wouldn't have any nickels at all.

The foreign policy establishment may have been sceptical about focusing on the ethical dimension of foreign policy, but the public never was. Neither the British nor the American people lack compassion for their fellow human beings. My father's prescient efforts to awaken policymakers' interest in development were made several years after Live Aid, which had showed that the public needs no lessons in generosity.

I readily concede that the public is often sceptical about aid. I have witnessed focus group discussions which anybody who is interested in development would find alarming, anyway at first. In such a discussion, the person who says "charity begins at home" will initially get lots of support. But as the discussion goes deeper, it turns out that they are sceptical not because of any indifference to the plight of others, but because they are not convinced that aid works. In many such groups you'll hear Bauer's famous remark that aid is "poor people from rich countries giving money to rich people from poor countries." Many people are worried that aid ends up in the Swiss bank accounts of despots and dictators, or of corrupt consulting and construction firms. Yet when the same focus groups are given evidence of the benefits of particular aid programmes, their mood changes sharply, and they soon ask: "Why don't we give more aid like that?"

The idea that "charity begins at home" clearly resonates with many people. In part the phrase expresses the idea that we have stronger social ties and obligations to people who live in our neighbourhood than we do to people on the other side of the world. But few people really believe, on reflection, that we should pay no heed to people dying of hunger or for lack of medical facilities just because they are far away. Perhaps "charity begins at home" resonates for another reason: we can observe at first hand whether the effort we make to help our family and neighbours is actually working, whereas with foreign aid we can't, and we have a sneaking suspicion that this means that it isn't.

The most popular critique of aid in recent years, Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo, does not challenge aid on the grounds that the plight of the poor is not our concern. It is a poorly argued book in many other respects, but it would be wrong to accuse Dr Moyo of callous indifference. Indeed, all the famous aid sceptics, from P. T. Bauer to Bill Easterly, explicitly accept development as the objective: they simply question whether foreign aid is a good way to achieve it.

The dangers of relying on national interest

So perhaps the public does not need to be persuaded that development matters, but needs instead to be convinced that aid makes a difference. Even so, it seems reasonable to say that we should use every argument at our disposal for aid: we should appeal to the public's self-interest as well as their moral values, and we should at the same time set out the evidence that aid works.

But there are two big risks to this approach which should lead us to think carefully about the balance of how we make the argument.

First, if we promote aid principally on the grounds that it supports our security and commercial interests, we should not be surprised when people expect that this is how aid should be used.

In the long term our national interest coincides with our moral urge to promote development and to reduce poverty. But in the short term there is often a trade-off between development and poverty reduction on the one hand, and our commercial, security and strategic interests on the other.

During the Cold War a huge amount of aid was wasted currying favour with despots for geo-strategic reasons and accordingly propping up failing industries and businesses. Even today, less than 40% of aid is spent in the poorest countries. This makes a kind of sense if your aim is to increase your influence in emerging economies and in fragile states like Pakistan and Iraq. There are many poor people in these countries, but all the evidence suggests that these are not the places in which aid is most needed and can do the most good. A significant portion of aid (though none of the UK's aid) is still tied to firms in donor nations. This makes sense if the aim is to support the donor's commercial interests but not if the aim is to have the greatest possible impact on the reduction of poverty. It is legitimate and proper for donors to want credit for their aid, to enhance both their international reputation and their image and influence in the recipient country. But this goal leads donors to give too much aid through bilateral aid programmes, on which their national flag can be stamped, and too little through more efficient multilateral institutions and other shared funds, resulting in unnecessary duplication, overheads and transaction costs.

We do not have institutions that can protect our long-term national interest in development and poverty reduction from the pressures to use aid to pursue these short-term strategic, security and commercial interests. In a world of short time horizons, our immediate interests tend to prevail over our longer-term goals. So the more we justify aid chiefly on the grounds of national interest, the greater the danger that our short-term national interest will dictate the way aid is used, with negative consequences for the effectiveness of aid and for our longer-term interest in poverty reduction.

If the public were unsure whether they cared enough about global development to give aid, then it might be worth deploying aid in ways which are most obviously in the national interest, even if that required sacrificing some of its effectiveness. (For many years, the Danish government justified tying aid to Danish suppliers on precisely these grounds.) But if the public is already convinced that development is important, and their doubt is primarily about whether aid is effective, then it makes no sense to use aid in less effective ways in an effort to win greater public approval.

The second reason why we should be cautious about focusing too much on our national interest when justifying aid is that we are in danger of setting ourselves up to fail.

Take an example which is, literally, close to home for me. School enrolment here in Ethiopia has risen from a quarter of all children fifteen years ago to more than four fifths of children today. About a third of Ethiopian children – 8 million boys and girls – are at school as a direct result of foreign aid. My house in Addis Ababa is a few hundred metres from the local primary school, so I see boys and girls going past my window to school every day.

If the British public could see as I do how their aid money is being used, they would, like me, be encouraged and touched by the good that aid does. This is a direct, demonstrable benefit of aid, and one which appeals to the British sense of justice and empathy for our fellow human beings. It would soften the heart of the hardest sceptic.

Kids going to school near my house in Addis Ababa. A third of Ethiopia's education system is financed by aid.

Why then is there such widespread doubt that aid works? In part it is because people at home cannot look out of their window and see it working. But it is also because we have made extravagant claims about what aid will do. Even if it is true that aid leads to faster economic development, and that it thereby reduces the risk of global health contagions, organised crime and drug smuggling, this would be impossible to demonstrate statistically. (It would be like trying to show that the EU has prevented war in Western Europe since 1945: plausible, very probably true, but unprovable.)

People are right to be doubtful about the validity of some of the more grandiose claims for what aid can achieve. Perhaps it seems too modest to say that we pay for millions of children to go to school, and for people to have access to clean water and basic health care. But this is a reality which we can prove beyond any doubt; and for most taxpayers it will seem well worth the modest amount of money we spend on it. And it is probable, even if unprovable, that all this works in favour of our own long-term interests as well.

The public and the politicians who represent them will inevitably devote only a modest amount of time to thinking about development. If we use up scarce bandwidth making an argument with which few disagree – that poverty matters – we waste the opportunity to make the argument of which they are yet to be convinced: that development policy and aid can and do make an important difference to the lives of the poor.

The aid that was used to prop up Mobutu in Zaire during the Cold War may have served a foreign policy interest, but it did little or nothing to reduce poverty and raise living standards in that country. Money used today to buy food aid may be a convenient subsidy for American and European farmers but if we bought the food locally we could feed twice as many people with the same money and at the same time support the growth of sustainable agriculture in developing countries. The more we use aid to support our strategic and commercial interests, the less effective that aid is likely to be in the fight against global poverty, in which we have an important long-term interest.

It is in our national interest to see faster development and the end of global poverty, and we should not be shy about saying so. But we should think twice before using this as the central plank of the case for more effective development policies and more aid. People do not need to be persuaded to care about global poverty: they do need to be convinced that there is something we can do about it. Just reminding them that it is in our national interest to promote development fundamentally misses the point. The more we defend aid mainly on the basis that it is in our national interest, the more likely it is to be bent to our short-term commercial and strategic interests, the more ineffectively it will be used, the harder it will be to demonstrate its benefits, and the greater the justification for public scepticism. Give the public some credit: they don't need to be persuaded to care about poverty. Aid does work: and the first and most pressing task is to demonstrate to the public with persuasive evidence that this is so.

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Zong’s Lahore Unlimited to Mobilink’s Karachi Limited: ProPakistani

Zong’s Lahore Unlimited to Mobilink’s Karachi Limited
PTCL Bonanza Thrill Continues
Telenor Opens Sales & Service Center in Abbottabad
B.Tech Graduates in Middle of No Where, as Status of Degree is Still Undefined
Jazz Jazba Introduces Motorola Flipout in Pakistan
Internationalized Domain Names – Will We Experience?

Zong’s Lahore Unlimited to Mobilink’s Karachi Limited

Posted: 07 Feb 2011 04:38 PM PST

Zong's Lahore Unlimited to Mobilink's Karachi Limited is a post from: ProPakistani

When Zong launched its operation in Pakistan, the boom that telecom sector has witnessed in recent years had somewhat dried up. However, company has well managed to attract the masses, mainly the youth.

We have written in recent past, on how Zong managed to grab the highest number of subscribers in year 2010 by rightfully identifying the target customers and their needs.

If you look at the timeline to further figure out the exact reason for rapid subscriber addition into Zong's pool, particularly in the second half of 2010, you won't come across any major tale, except the LBC packages or what they call location based Charges.

Starting with Lahore Unlimited, and then stretching the same offer for Hyderabad, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Multan, Sialkot and then Karachi, it is said that Zong is offering its LBC packages in around or over 100 cities now.

With its LBC packages, Zong offered unlimited free on-net calling for a flat daily charge of Rs. 7 – simple as that. That's around Rs. 250 per month (including taxes) and you get the freedom of calling all Zong Numbers for free, round the clock for the whole month.

jazz khi thumb Zong's Lahore Unlimited to Mobilink's Karachi Limited

Apparently, and according to what other blogs are saying, Ufone and Mobilink were fascinated by Zong's performance, and in fact acknowledged it by following suite and offering special packages for those living in Karachi.

Details of Ufone Karachi Offer are available here
Details of Jazz Karachi Offer are available here

Naturally, both Ufone and Mobilink were not as generous as Zong is, due to their higher number of subscribers, both the operators ended up offering discounted but not ultra appealing packages for Karachiites. This earned both the operators not very good feedback, especially from those who compared them with Zong.

An industry high-up while having conversation with me yesterday said that by offering these not-better-than-Zong packages, Mobilink and Ufone may not reap the optimum advantages as Zong did.

He was of the opinion that Mobilink and Ufone could come forward and offer better-than-Zong or even equal-to-Zong packages in relatively smaller cities, to snatch the customers of other networks. "That's how Zong did it, if you want to follow Zong, follow it strictly", he precisely said.

He further anticipated that LBC packages may become the next big thing after Sim Lagao Offers, while Zong will remain the king in this segment due to lower number of subscribers.

Image via ApnaTime

PTCL Bonanza Thrill Continues

Posted: 07 Feb 2011 03:00 AM PST

PTCL Bonanza Thrill Continues is a post from: ProPakistani

Pakistan Telecommunication Company LTD (PTCL), as a result of massive encouraging response from its valued customers towards its 'new year bonanza launch' last month, has continued a countrywide exciting package 'PTCL Bonanza Thrill'.

This limited time offer is applicable to all PTCL landline and Vfone customers from 1^st February till 28^th February, 2011.

With this bonanza thrill offer the PTCL customers can call from PTCL landline or vfone to Ufone, PTCL landline (local and NWD) and to Vfone (local and NWD) between 8pm to 8 am which will be charged for only first three (3) minutes and the remaining duration of the call will be free.

Details:

This promotion will be applicable for all calls made from PSTN and Vfone on PSTN Network, Vfone Network and Ufone Network (033X Numbers only)
First 3 minutes: Normal prevailing Tariff
After 3 minutes: No charging
Promotion will be applicable daily from 8 pm to 8 am
Launch Date: 1^st February, 2011
End Date: 28th February, 2011
(Other than Ufone: Charge as aforesaid) calls made around the clock will be charged as per normal existing tariff.
All taxes will be applicable
This Promotional package will not be available on FSTC, Payphones, PCOs and PRIs, BRIs.
This limited offer is applicable to all PTCL and Vfone customers from 1st Feb to 28th Feb, 2011

Naveed Saeed, SEVP Commercial has said that PTCL has always provided the best packages and promotions to its customers and this particular promotion will enable customers to make longer duration calls to their loved ones without worrying about the bill. He further added that PTCL has always strived to provide its customers with the best and most affordable services. And the new packages will not only reinforce PTCL image as a customer centric organization but will also encourage the usage of landline among our customers. Importance of which can not be undermined even in a cellular oriented era.

Telenor Opens Sales & Service Center in Abbottabad

Posted: 07 Feb 2011 01:08 AM PST

Telenor Opens Sales & Service Center in Abbottabad is a post from: ProPakistani

Telenor Pakistan opened its first Sales & Service Center on Main Mansehra Road near Radio Pakistan, Abbottabad, recently.

Picture shows (L to R): Malik Faisal Qayyum, Director Sales & Distribution; Aamir Ibrahim, Chief Marketing Officer; and Zil Hasnain Baluch, Manager Sales & Customer Services (North) inaugurating the new center.

The outlet will provide complete range of Telenor services to customers in Mansehra, Haripur, Nathiagali, Havelian and Sherwan.

B.Tech Graduates in Middle of No Where, as Status of Degree is Still Undefined

Posted: 06 Feb 2011 10:01 PM PST

B.Tech Graduates in Middle of No Where, as Status of Degree is Still Undefined is a post from: ProPakistani

Earlier Dawn and Today 'The News' published this story which reveals a shocking fact that degree of B. Tech is undefined in Pakistan.

Hence, anyone doing B. Tech or those who have done B. Tech may end up without any legal degree in the country, meaning that no further studies or jobs.

By the way, as per estimates, 10,000 fresh graduates pass out with B. Tech degree every year.

It seems, according to Sheikh Javed – Chairman Pakistan Council of Technologists, the situation has reached this level due to government's negligence. As it is the case with Cyber Law, R&D Fund, USF and various other institutes of the country.

Following is excerpt from 'The News':

Technology (B.Tech) graduates in the country are deprived of access to higher studies, job opportunity in public departments and promotions due to undefined status of their degrees.

Over 50,000 B.Tech graduates have demanded to establish Pakistan Technology Council (PTC) for their registration, which can safeguard their rights.

Talking to APP here on Sunday, Chairman of Pakistan Council of Technologists Sheikh Javed said that a draft bill for the establishment of Pakistan Technology Council (PTC) was forwarded to the Prime Minister in February 2010, which was sent to the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) on March 3, 2010 for comments but it was still pending with the ministry.

The government had reiterated its commitment many times to work for the promotion of technical education but the PEC had prohibited the education ministry for establishing Pakistan Technology Council, Javed said.

B.Tech programme was formally launched in 1973 and the then Ministry of Education was directed to give status of B.Tech (Hons) degree at par with B.Sc Engineering/B.E degree, according to the letter No. 15-29/73-Tech.
According to the letter no PEC/4-P/QEC, the PEC stated that B.Tech degree would be considered equivalent to B.Sc/BE and the same decision was taken in 9th inter-provincial ministers conference at Quetta in 1986, 39th HEC meeting on 12-2-98, FPSC in its letter no F4-89/2002-R but now the PEC is not ready to accept their status.

The B.Tech holders study the same courses like engineers and are equally competent but they have to struggle and file cases individually to recognize their degree status, Sheikh Javed said.

The Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) has refused to register technologists while different public departments are denying to recognize their degrees, not giving them jobs. Those, who have already got government jobs, do not get promotions up to Grade 16, he said.

The full bench of Supreme Court in Suo Motu Review Petition No. 52 of 1993 gave its verdict on June 05, 1995 in favor of B.Tech (Hons) (PLD 1995 SC 701), thrashing out the role of PEC.

But, the PEC in 2004-05 managed the amendments by adding new clauses and definition of professional engineering work and section 5A of Section 27 only to null and void the decision of full bench of Supreme Court thus to interfere in the service matters and blocking promotion channels of employees possessing B.Tech (Hons) degrees.

Jazz Jazba Introduces Motorola Flipout in Pakistan

Posted: 06 Feb 2011 08:30 PM PST

Jazz Jazba Introduces Motorola Flipout in Pakistan is a post from: ProPakistani

Jazz Motorola Flipout Jazz Jazba Introduces Motorola Flipout in Pakistan

This year, On the occasion of Valentine Day as the best gift option, Jazz Jazba is offering Motorola Flipout, an android 2.1 powered touchscreen smartphone that can rotates to expose a full QWERTY keypad.

Motorola FlipOut™ comes with 3.2 MP Camera, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Motorola FlipOut is supposed to offer 6 hours of talk time on GSM networks.

Mobilink says that Motorola Flipout is available for Rs. 27,999 – which includes GPRS for three months.

Check out following promo video for Motorola Flipout

Where to Get Motorola Flipout?

This handset is only available at the following Mobilink Customer Care Centers:

Karachi: Ground Floor, Nice Trade Orbit Building (NTO), Near Nursery Shop, Shaharah-E-Fisal
Karachi: D-21/22, Block 8, Chaudry Khaliquzzaman Road, Scheme 5, Kehkashaan, Clifton Karachi.
Lahore: Mobilink House , 5 P Gulberg II, Lahore
Islamabad: 78 E Redco Plaza, Jinnah Avenue, Blue Area
Faisalabad: Building # 1298/B, People Colony Near Saleemi Chowk, Satyana Road
Multan: 60 Bridge Lane, LMQ (Lahore Multan Quetta) Road, Near Kutchery
Sukkur: Plot No. 47,48 Muslim Cooperative Housing Society, Opposite: Red Carpet Hotel, Military Road
Hyderabad: Plot No. D-1 and D-4 R.E.C.H.S, Main Auto Bahn Road, Unit No.2 Latifabad
Peshawar: Mobilink Regional Office University Road Peshawar (Adjacent to Shiraz Gathering)

Terms and Conditions:

Handset is only available from the selected Mobilink Customer Care centers as listed above
*Limited time offer
FREE GPRS offer only for indigo and Jazz customers in Pakistan
Club indigo customers may contact their assigned Account manager for details
Customers with BlackBerry services are not eligible for free GPRS offer
Terms and conditions apply

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Internationalized Domain Names – Will We Experience?

Posted: 06 Feb 2011 08:28 PM PST

Internationalized Domain Names – Will We Experience? is a post from: ProPakistani

Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) are the domain names (or simply websites name) represented by local language characters.

Present domain name architecture is based on ASCII characters (the English alphabets "a-z", numbers 0 to 9, and hyphens) and doesn't interpret non-ASCII character scripts (like Arabic, Hindi, Chinese).

IDNs efforts are subject to ICANN resolution in 2000 stating "that it is important that the Internet evolve to be more accessible to those who do not use the ASCII character set,".

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a California based not-for-profit corporation established on September 18, 1998. ICANN is responsible for coordination and policy making of two most critical Internet resources i.e. Domain Names and IP addresses. Some of the major tasks performed include Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) such as .com, .net, .org and country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) such as .au, .uk, .pk name system management, and root server system management functions. We could say that ICANN is a kind of Regulator and Policy Maker for most significant Internet resources.

IDNs are implemented at the application (web browser) layer. In this regards, Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) standard was defined in 2003 followed by IDNA protocol development by IETF.

Basic idea was to support non-ASCII domain names to a suitable ASCII-based form by web browsers and other user applications. All famous web browsers like Mozilla, Chrome, Netscape and Internet Explorer support IDNA. Successful IDN test launch has been accomplished for more than 22 International languages including Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Hindi, Korean and Urdu.

According to details available at ICANN website (www.icann.org), official launch of IDNs ccTLD Fast Track was made on November 16, 2009. ICANN is accepting requests from representatives of countries and territories around the world for new Internet extensions that represent their country name and are made up of non-Roman characters (their official language).

Enabling more than 1 billion non-English users showing their presence on Internet via IDNs is noteworthy step. Countries around the globe were taking a keen interest in this program since ICANN hold pre-launch consultation process for some years. This was the reason that the first requests were received on the same date i.e. 16 November 2009.

Detail available at ICANN website explain that the first IDNs ccTLD were made available internationally on May 05, 2010 while the following countries had their respective IDNs inserted in the DNS root zone.

Egypt: مصر (Egypt)
Saudi Arabia: السعودية (AlSaudiah)
United Arab Emirates: امارات (Emarat)

Further details of this remarkable program show that by this time ICANN has received a total of 33 requests for IDN ccTLD(s) through the String Evaluation process, representing 22 languages.

A total of 22 countries/territories requests have successfully passed through the String Evaluation; 12 countries/territories IDN ccTLDs are delegated in the DNS root zone; and the rest are either in or ready for the requesting country or territory to initiate the application for String Delegation. Some of the countries whose IDN string has passed initial string evaluation are India, Morocco, Oman, Iran, Russia and Sri Lanka.

The trend shows that most developing countries have took a great interest in facilitating their Internet users to write down a website name in their own local language. This would not only proliferate the Internet usage but will also help in bridging the digital divide.

Unfortunately, there was no update found about Pakistan as an applicant for IDNs ccTLD. This is indeed a point of thinking since other regional countries are in process of IDNs introduction which is indeed an important opportunity to be availed.

Neither Ministry of IT nor any other public institute has any news or update on the subject.

Though it was heard year back that we will be applying for our IDN ( .پاکستان ) where PSEB would be acting as the management and administration of this Internet resource for the country. However, we are unable to find any such update at relevant corners. A question that arrives in mind is that will we be able to type in URDU domain names in our web browsers some day?.