Coca Cola and Goodness; evil multinationals and a response to Raashid Riza

Raashid Riza carried a post about a campaign by Coca Cola to try and promote unity amongst the people of Pakistan and India. He then goes on about the supposed evils of capitalism and cites a fire in a textile factory in Bangladesh to support his argument.

I try to avoid junk food in general and sugary drinks in particular. I can't even remember the time I last drank a Coke but I have no particular object to them selling their products or other people consuming them.  

Coming to Coke's project; if the same act were carried out by a group of citizens would it be considered good? If so, why does it become bad or negative if Coke or a crook (say a underworld gangster) does it?

I think we should judge an act on its own merits. Something that promotes reconciliation or understanding is probably good, regardless of who does it.

On the subject of evil capitalists, lets take a look at a recent example; the collapse of Rana Plaza that killed about 900.

Lets consider the facts:

1. "The building was called Rana Plaza after its owner, Sohel Rana, a strongman of the youth wing of the ruling Awami League."

2. "Planning approval had been given for only five of the building’s eight storeys."

3. "Cracks appeared in Rana Plaza the day before its collapse."

4. "Both the police and the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), a powerful lobby, told the owner his building was unsafe but he ignored them and the factories stayed open. Workers said they had been pressed to show up because orders were overdue."

Bangladesh has laws and systems that could have prevented this. They did not because the owner had influence, to bend or break the rules as he wished.

That power could have been either bought for cash (the conventional idea of corruption) or the result of political patronage-the unseen, sometimes unacknowledged component of corruption.

Who is at fault here? The Government (for being incapable of enforcing laws due to corruption), the local manufacturer (Rana) or the multinationals to placed orders with Rana?

The knee jerk reaction has been to blame the "evil multinational" but what are we really saying?

That we expect the multinational to uphold standards that both the local Government and local businesses are incapable of upholding?

Most probably the only people who will do anything at all will be the multinationals, even if whatever steps taken are dismissed as being an eyewash or not going far enough.

Who is really evil here? 

Details of the collapse sourced from here. Further reading here.

Nuga Gama - brilliantly executed concept, excellent restaurant

When people told me about Nuga Gama I dismissed it as yet another Sri Lankan themed restaurant. When someone invited us over I was not especially enamoured. I could not have been more wrong.

Walking in along a path dimly lit by kerosene lamps I wondered why they did not have more light. The pathway was not lined with lamps, just the occasional one burning here and there. When one emerges into the clearing  it becomes apparent why: the lighting is what one would find in a village.

The concept has been executed with a deft hand, great care has been taken to reproduce the buildings and surroundings as faithfully as possible without degenerating into kitsch. The open space, trees and buildings work together to capture the atmosphere and spirit of the village.

When I discovered that the food was cooked in clay pots on a wood fire (for reasons explained here) I was ecstatic. It is some of the little details, such the urn from which one must wash ones hands with the aid of cut piece of Sunlight soap, reminiscent of a scene from the village well that puts it head and shoulders over every other restaurant.

Overall a great experience and a great restaurant.

Try the kurrakkan pittu with the mutton curry and coconut milk or the cuttlefish and prawn curry. Heavenly.

Arrack aged in oak casks - is it as good as the rumours claim it to be?

A friend was raving about a new arrack that he had drunk recently. He had been asked to buy it for a friend living overseas. He found it at the duty free shop  but was taken aback by the price tag - US$31 for a bottle. He bought it anyway and took it to his friend and asked him why he was paying so much for arrack.

When invited to try it he claimed it to be as good as a single malt. He can't remember what the name was, it is not available locally, but is the rage with Sri Lankans abroad. It may have been this, or one of these.

Has anyone tried it ? When one thinks about it, the casks in which spirits or wines are aged are responsible for a good part of the flavours of the finished products. Perhaps the use of oak casks, rather than Halmilla vats lends the arrack the smoothness and consistency of a good whisky?

Beautifying the capital: is it for the benefit of our lenders as well?

The streets, pavements and parks of the capital are being repaired and refurbished. Colourful stones line the pavements, walls around old buildings have been broken down and the roads have been resurfaced.

It must be said that much of the work is good. Some trees were felled unnecessarily and the size of some of the new pavements is a problem-roads that are already narrow, Jawatte Road or Darley Road for example, have lost almost a whole lane to the expanded pavement. Some of the islands and roundabouts such as the one at the end of Jawatte Road (where it meets Thimbirigasyaya Road) are far too large.

The bigger quibble is what this is costing the taxpayer and the question as to whether the money could have been better spent elsewhere. As we have absolutely no idea of this it is impossible to comment. Let us just hope that we are not walking on streets paved with gold, as in the folk tale of Dick Whittington.

There is however another crucial benefit that this exercise brings to the rulers - it helps sustain a favourable impression of the country to foreign bankers and portfolio investors. The country may curse Western Governments but they adore Western Bankers.

This particular truth dawned on me when chatting to one such an eminent individual, a charming aristocratic old Englishman with many years of experience in India. He was a director of a fund that held several investments in the country, made over a quarter of a century. While he did express deep concern at the political developments, which he said they were watching closely (this was before the recent outburst of Islamophobia), he also said that in twenty odd years of visiting the country he had never seen the airport looking better, the city looking better or heard of so many tourists visiting the country.

Presumably he attributed this to good economic management. That the Government is a master in the art of propaganda is well known locally. Rosy statistics are published periodically that seem to show the country to be in rude economic health although this is not reflected in the living standards of most people. Many analysts have pointed out the flaws in the statistics but this has been largely an academic debate that has not been carried to the wider public. In the absence of other statistics, everybody relies on what the Government produces. Although a footnote or a qualifier may be attached at the end this is either ignored or missed out.

When the unsuspecting visitor arrives in the country and witnesses the changing landscape they are suitably impressed and the Government statistics become more tangible, more believable.

To the portfolio investor or banker who spends a few days  in the city and travels around to a few luxury hotels it appears that development is happening apace.. What they do not realise is that this is facade, almost a Potemkin village that belies a grimmer reality.

A real investor, who tries to set up factory or a business is brought to earth with a bump; confusion sets in with the first outstretched greasy palm that greets any request for an official document or form. The confusion quickly turns to dismay and horror as he is sent from pillar to post, wading through a thicket of contradictory, ever changing and confusing mass of regulations. Eventually he despairs and gives up.

This is why foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows are so low. Direct investment in businesses is what creates the jobs that are necessary to lift people out of poverty. The FDI figures published by the Government are inflated by the telecom sector which is littering the countryside with unnecessary towers (due to lack of a transparent sharing regime) and by the Chinese projects, neither of which does much in the way of job creation.Strip these out and there is not a lot left. 

The banker buying Governments bonds or shares on the exchange sees none of this; the path of the portfolio investors is smooth (especially so when compared to some other emerging markets), with sensible electronic systems in place. The returns are good, especially compared to the abysmal rates in Europe and the US, the system is smooth and the facade impressive.

The cycle of borrowing for consumption cannot last forever and sooner or later the bubble will burst and many will eventually discover, as Dick Whittington did, that the streets of Colombo are not paved with gold.

Addendum  

Fitch has highlighted some of the risks to the economy in its latest rating report on the country.

"Sri Lanka’s external debt refinancing schedule, however, remains quite heavy as an average of USD1.9bn per annum in sovereign debt is projected to mature from 2013 to 2015 (versus USD1.3bn in 2012). This may not only limit Sri Lanka’s ability to rebuild foreign exchange reserves to a much higher level, but it also means that the country’s external finances will remain vulnerable to any spike in global risk aversion,"

It also warns that "the authorities remain vigilant and maintain appropriate policy settings to ensure overheating risks and renewed strains on the balance of payments do not re-emerge. Sri Lanka has continued to make limited progress on fiscal consolidation as the budget deficit fell to 6.4% of GDP in 2012 (versus 6.9% in 2011). This was, however, partially achieved through an accumulation of arrears. Sri Lanka’s general government debt-to-GDP ratio remained elevated at 79.1% in 2012, which was significantly higher than the ‘BB’ peer rating group median of 32.6%. Low fiscal revenues weigh on the credit profile. The revenue take of 13.9% of GDP in 2012 was well below the ‘BB’ range median of 26.6% and was down from 16.7% in 2008."

The Central bank is trying to force down interest rates in a bid to stimulate the economy. This may lead to the overheating that the ratings agency warns against.

  

 
 

Burma: state complicity in attacks on Muslim minority

The parallels between Sri Lanka and Burma mean that it is worth monitoring the developments there closely, to see what it leads to. The latest HRW report on the violence lays the blame squarely on the state. The violence was precluded by an organised campaign of hate:

"For months, local Arakanese political party officials and senior Buddhist monks publicly vilified the Rohingya population and described them as a threat to Arakan State."...."In many instances, calls by monks and the RNDP [Rakhine Nationalities Development Party- a nationalist party in Burma], for the ouster of Rohingya and Kaman Muslim communities were accompanied by instructions to the Buddhist population to socially and economically isolate them."

A great deal of local organizing preceded and supported October’s violence. Arakanese political parties, monks’ associations, and community groups issued numerous anti-Rohingya pamphlets and public statements. Most of the public statements and pamphlets explicitly or implicitly deny the existence of the Rohingya ethnicity, demonize them, and call for their removal from the country,..... The statements frequently were released in connection with organized meetings and in full view of local, state, and national authorities who raised no concerns.

 Could incidents such as this, or this, be the start of more serious action in Sri Lanka?


HRW concludes that:

"Burmese state involvement in the crimes appears to have been both direct and indirect. While much of the violence appears to have been carried out by mobs with weapons, various branches of the state security forces stood by and did nothing to provide security for attacked Muslims and at times participated directly in the atrocities – this includes the local police, Lon Thein riot police, the inter-agency border control force called Nasaka, and the army and navy. Human Rights Watch found no indications that the Burmese government has seriously investigated or taken legal action against those responsible for planning, organizing, or participating in the violence either in June or October. This absence of accountability lends credence to allegations that this was a government-supported campaign of ethnic cleansing in which crimes against humanity were committed. Security forces have actively impeded accountability and justice by overseeing or ordering the digging of mass graves, or by digging mass graves themselves, in some cases after killings involving state security forces."

The outcome was as dreadful, as it was predictable. We in Sri Lanka know better, or should know better. Do we?

969, Burma's neo-Nazi Buddhist movement: a splitting image of the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) ?

“If you buy from Muslim shops, your money doesn’t just stop there,” “It will eventually go towards destroying your race and religion.”

Muslim merchants receive cash injections from Middle East oil state brethren and use these funds to undercut Buddhist rivals.

This Muslim alliance could outbreed Buddhists, steal away Buddhist women, overwhelm political offices and prohibit Buddhist ceremonies altogether. “We Buddhists allow them to freely practice their faith,”  “But once these evil Muslims have control, they will not let us practice our religion. We must be careful. These Muslims really hate us.

Fliers urge locals to bar Muslims from renting homes and farmlands and ominously warn Buddhists acting as Muslim families’ middlemen.

These statements come not from the Bodu Bala Sena but from 969, a movement in Burma (Myanmar) that has emerged with the avowed aim of defending Buddhist faith, Burmese race and the Buddhist nation from Burmese Muslims.

The similarities between the BBS and 969 are striking, but the links may go deeper than the message.  Dr. Maung Zarni, an outspoken Burmese activist academic has studied 969 in depth and what he reveals may throw some light on the situation here.

The success of 969 rests on a clear message of 'racial and religious purity', a false sense of Buddhist victimhood and cultural and economic nationalism -- not dissimilar to Germany's Nazism in the 1930s.They:

 effectively scapegoat the country's Muslims for the general economic hardships and cultural decay in society, portraying the Burmese as victims at the hands of organised Muslim commercial leeches and parasites; second, 969 preys on the historical and popular anti-Muslim racism among the majority Buddhists; and, last but not least, virtually all state institutions at all levels, including the police, intelligence, the army, local civil administration and even fire departments, under President Thein Sein's management have evidently offered this Buddhist neo-Nazi movement with both impunity and passive cooperation.  

As this report points out, self-victimisation seems to be a key. The majority must be made to feel threatened by an insignificant minority if the are to be made to react.

The 969's consistent theme is that it is Muslims who are doing all the harm to communities and the country. Similarly, the BBS claims that the whole halal issue in Sri Lanka was entirely the fault of the Muslims, they created a problem with this surreptitious system of labelling that was an affront to Buddhists. The calls for removal of mosques, shrines, the abaya/hijab and all the rest are also due to wrongs by the Muslims.

That they supposedly have constitutionally guaranteed rights to freedom of worship, association and speech are forgotten.   

The theme resonates but a neo-Nazi movement cannot work without popular support. In Burma the message is spread by through official media outlets (such as the Ministry of Defence-run Myawaddy News and President Office's spokesmen), books, pamphlets, DVD's and CD's. In Sri Lanka it is through social media, email, the internet, public meetings, door-to-door campaigns and mainstream media.

Despite a freer media (at least in comparison to Burma), the BBS generally manages to get favourable coverage. The state-controlled media gives the movement's ideology a good airing while more independent media tend to try to give it a positive slant where possible, while downplaying any negative news. There is very little by way of a counter-message in mainstream media, the only real opposing arguments are on the web.

The support of the state is also crucial. In Burma:

969 appears to work in close collaboration with Burma's security forces, the new Burmese media and the People's Relations and Psychological Warfare Division of the Ko Ministry of Defense......

...President Thein Sein's reformist government at best tolerates its categorically anti-Islam hate speeches and activities and at worst backs, if tacitly, the group and its incitement of violence against the country's Muslims.

As in Sri lanka,

his administration has not taken a single action against anyone who openly incites anti-Muslim hatred or ethnic hatred towards the Rohingya.  Nor has Thein Sein's government detained or event deterred a single Buddhist preacher of hate from any acts of spreading anti-Muslim hatred in society and inciting blatant calls for eliminating Muslims and their influence in Burmese society 'phase by phase'. 

But, why would the state do such a thing ? This is what liberals find almost incomprehensible. Apart form being downright evil it is also absolutely stupid . To quote Dr Zarni:

What does the Burmese government have to gain from this violence?

There are three goals, as far as I can tell. One is, the military leadership has swapped their generals’ uniforms for civilian clothing, but at heart, they still remain irredeemably authoritarian and dictatorial. They are security obsessed and some of them feel the reforms that are unfolding in the country are going too far. So they want to slow it down and roll back the reform process. In order to do that, they must create social instability and use volatile situations as an excuse to say, “The people can’t handle freedom of speech, freedom of movement, and freedom of organization. Therefore, we need to have a strong handle on the situation to make sure people stay in line and don’t kill each other.”

Secondly, when all these waves of violence against Rohingya Muslims started last year, the military and the proxy political party of the military was in a worrisome situation because it lost by a landslide in the elections. So within two months of their defeat, they decided to create this very powerful anti-Muslim communal sentiment around the country. And now, [activist and political leader An San] Suu Kyi is in a difficult situation because she can only speak the liberal language of human rights and democracy, which is not as powerful as the ideology that the military and these neo-Nazi monks have whipped up. When it comes to fighting this kind of abnormal religious movement, the language of human rights is never enough.

Thirdly, I think the military is not leaving anything to chance. They have another round of elections in 2015, and they want to make sure that they have a new proxy political movement that they can use to square off Suu Kyi’s party. As a result, the 969 neo-Nazi movement is the most popular movement in the country.

As Burma's junta reluctantly move towards elections, the 969 movement seems to be a campaign to ensure that they win. With elections looming in Sri Lanka and the regime losing some of its popularity could the same motive be behind the BBS? It seems to be the only explanation that makes sense. Given the cosy relationship between the two could the junta have provided some helpful advice to their counterparts across the pond?
 
Not surprisingly, the justification for the two movements is similar.

To its campaigners, 969 is about protecting race and religion by peaceful means. In practice, it is explicitly an anti-Muslim campaign, not about preaching people the Buddha-nature of all beings, as taught and practiced by Lord Buddha himself. In many townships across Burma, including capital regions, there are local 969 committees that organize events and religious sermons and distribute anti-Muslim materials such as CDs, books and leaflets.

"I’m not discriminating against race or religion. I’m not a racist. But I have the right to love my race!”

Whenever criticism builds, the movement will issue contradictory statements, which serve to dilute the message from the opposition and to deflect from the charge of racism.

In his Burmese language Facebook pages, Wirathu has been posting rather irreconcilable messages; in the morning he would post messages of religious tolerance and compassion and in the afternoon his message would be provocatively anti-Muslim, crying foul of 'forced conversion of Burmese women who marry into Muslim families' or change their Burmese names to Muslim and Indian names.

Like the 969, the worst of BBS's messages are not posted in English which limits their scrutiny by the world at large.

Dr Zarni concludes that

969 movement cannot be understood  outside the interface between Thein Sein's Government and the racist society at large, nor can be explained without examining the respective roles of a) the State which in effect offers Burma's neo-Nazi Buddhists impunity, b) President Thein Sein's inactions, and c) the Burmese opposition leadership's moral bankruptcy.

The 969 movement has resulted in violence across Burma, the most serious taking place a few weeks ago. Unless something is done now, Sri Lanka will end up following in Burma's footsteps.

Sources: Global Post, irrawady.org, maungzarni.com. 

Changing lifestyles - the evolution of bottled water in Sri Lanka

Sbarrkum had written something on bottled water and reading it set off a train of thought.

There was a time, when we were very small, when the standard advice given was that water should always be boiled. Tourists and rare visitors from overseas were repeatedly cautioned as to the dangers of unboiled water.

When traveling, the only safe thing to drink (or so we were told) were the bottled soft drinks; Elephant House or the odd Pure Beverages bottle.Vendors on trains would cry "Barrley Barrrley", a short form for the popular Orange Barley and which, in practice meant any carbonated soft drink. In the worst of situations, tea could be considered an option; although it usually came out of grimy kettles or a metal cup, at least the water should have been boiled.

Fruit juice was unknown, but king coconut could sometimes be found. People did not travel widely so there was no market catering for travelers as such, one had to try ones luck at the small shops (called 'boutiques') that served the people of the area.

Wayside taps were a plenty, but were supposed to be only for washing or topping up the radiator of a car, which tended to boil on long trips.

If someone said that we had to pay for water we would have thought them quite mad. Water was always free. Now bottled water, even in small homes is common. I think, on a per litre basis, bottled water almost as expensive as petrol.

How times have changed.