Road networks and their users tend to provide a reliable gauge for the relative strength of the rule of law and the civic sense of residents anywhere in the world. Further observations may also capture the actual competence of authorities to provide solutions to drawbacks. The Terre Rouge-Bois Marchand nexus on the dual carriageway for instance reveals how, through decades of self-absorption, bat bate has permeated our DNA. As if the third round about (Jin Fei) did not serve enough in slowing further the traffic, recently, instead of pondering the reasons behind the reluctance of pedestrians to use the footbridges and nudge them towards the revamped facilities, a zebra crossing was introduced. Worse, two policemen were posted to guide pedestrians into making the most of it. Arguably a case of world-beater in lazy thinking, problem displacement and how not to harness human capital. We are already a global laggard in terms of overall logistics. 115th precisely in the 2014 Logistics Performance Index* with even Solomon Islands fairing better. To avoid further embarrassment and alternatively continue to sell spin it seems that we conveniently opted out of the 2016 Index – obviously not as easy to game as the Doing Business Index. Ironically, identifying obstacles and striving to remove them to engineer constant flow is an over-riding principle in setting the stage to achieve stellar performance. And it must be one of the driving tenets of policymaking. In sweeping fashion. Call it strategic, systems thinking or whatever but it boils down to internalising that everything is interconnected. Reality is complex and without feedback loops that yield regularly updated information to decipher the dynamics (hello artificial intelligence) of staying adequately connected, the ability to develop our own agency and truly effective actions (to hell the outsourcing of thinking to one-track-minded consultants) will remain elusive. Unless we secretly wish for an everlasting Singapore wet dream!
* https://lpi.worldbank.org/international/global/2014 (hyperlink)
www.moriszindabad.blogspot.com
Moris Zindabad