Change driven by crisis

Change occurs in Maldives largely driven by crisis. This is evident when we look at political succession, public housing in Male', and the various land reclamation work that is carried out throughout the country in spite of the fact that many pristine islands remain uninhabited. Today the capital island Male' has its population living shoulder to shoulder, yet our community as a whole fails to show empathy or express sufficient outrage when injustices and abuses happen to one of us. The thread running about Dr. Niyaf on MaldivesHealth demonstrates this point in the health care which needs the services of dedicated professionals to provide the best care.

Change can take many forms and include many environments. You hear this term frequently in the corporate world and there are so many change-management programs that are used in corporations and in countries. Maldives is going through a process of change, an attempt to install the framework of good governance, separation of powers and enhancing individual freedoms.

Typically the objective of any change is to maximize the collective benefits for all people involved in the change and minimize the risk of failure of implementing the change. Change is not implemented on this basis in Maldives. For example, it has taken more than three years to revise a constitution that is nearing completion now. If the purpose of the revision is to work out a just constitution, then every effort should be made to live up to it. As things stand now, parliament itself has become a public spectacle of archaic procedures, mindless jargon, amusement and even ridicule.

We need to recognise the individual talent in Maldives to reverse this trend and provide social justice and good value to every citizen. Our biggest threat comes from proponents of radical Islam and they have found a group of our young vulnerable for indoctrination. These forces need to be defeated by our community reaching out to every vulnerable individual with intensive counselling so that extremist elements can be stopped on their track.

Contributing to social good

During the past few years, philanthropy has taken a high profile due to increased media coverage of activists like rock star Bono and his campaign to alleviate Third World debt to developed nations. The ambitious projects of the Gates Foundation's resources and initiatives, such as eradicating malaria ; and Warren Buffett's donation in 2006 of $30 billion to the Gates Foundation made world headlines.

The purpose of philanthropy has been debated in both positive and negative terms. Some equate philanthropy with benevolence and charity for the poor and needy. Others hold that philanthropy can be any altruistic giving towards any kind of social need that is not served, underserved, or perceived as unserved or underserved by the market.

Whatever the case maybe, philanthropy is a perfectly legitimate practice and there is no question that people who are prepared to give millions for the public good are entitled to respect and appreciation. But the mere fact that they can afford to give millions does not mean they should be singled out ahead of others who dedicate themselves to public service.

According to a Boston College study, Americans are sinking $5.5 trillion to $7.4 trillion into the philanthropic industry during a 20-year period that will end in 2017. Most of the activists involved in the giving are coming up through the high-finance and tech industries. They are highly engaged in their causes, investing not just money but also time, energy and oversight.

Philanthropy is a private sector means of affecting social change without recourse to government mechanisms such as those represented by aid programs.

Do the rich in Maldives help the less priviledged by engaging in various causes to build up a stronger community?

What if oil runs dry?

Humanity's way of life is on a collision course with geology—with the stark fact that the Earth holds a finite supply of oil.

No one knows for sure, and geologists and economists are embroiled in debate about just when the "oil peak" will be upon us.

Peak oil takes the premise that the amount of oil left for us to use has "peaked" (or is just about to peak). Once worldwide production begins to fall and with no corresponding decrease in demand, oil prices will skyrocket, leading to widespread chaos. Richard Heinberg, a Californian college professor paints a dire picture.

"It's not just going to be a matter of replacing gasoline with something else and continuing on our merry way. We're actually going to have to change our transportation systems and reduce the amount of transportation that we do."
Heinberg is also sceptical of the prospect of biofuels saving the day. "It's clear ethanol and other biofuels are going to entail a trade-off between food and fuel. If we try to replace gasoline and diesel fuels with biofuels we'll simply fail because we don't have enough land and people will starve in the process."

If we are to gently surf the downward slope of Hubbert's bell curve rather than precipitously tumble off the edge, Heinberg says, it will take a social transformation of no lesser magnitude than the industrial revolution. "I don't think we are going back to exactly how people lived 200 years ago but we are going to need lots more human labour in agriculture and that means the middle class is going to start shrinking."

Healing the poor

According to a report on Business Standard, villagers and slum-dwellers who are the poorest of the poor in Maharashtra, India run their own health insurance fund, with spectacular results.


Dandekar bridge slum in Pune is unlike any other slum in the country. When someone here falls ill, the family just has to dial a 24-hour helpline, whose doctor advises them which government hospital the patient should consult. The family also receives money for treatment.

The slum-dwellers are part of a health security fund, an experimental project to which each person contributes Rs 60 annually. The unique fund is run by the slum-dwellers themselves along with those living in 88 other slums in Pune, Mahrasthra. So far, 30,000 have joined the fund, which covers all Pune slums and some villages in two other districts of the state. Dandekar bridge slum in east Pune accounts for 8,000 members.


More on this scheme on Business Standard.

Lending money between family and friends

British billionaire Richard Branson who started his 'Virgin Records' business from a loan he took from an aunt knows the effect of small loans. He is today launching Virgin Money USA, a financial-services powerhouse he plans to carve out of what’s currently a small Waltham start-up.

Branson is creating Virgin Money USA out of rebranding the Circle Lending Co., a “peer-to-peer” lender that the Branson bought in May for an undisclosed sum.

Founded by entrepreneur Asheesh Advani, Circle Lending helps friends and families formalize loans to one another.

"We’ve developed a very flexible set of products where you can pick your own interest rates, miss a payment if you want - basically enjoy a freedom that’s totally different from what you get at a bank,” said Advani, who’s staying on as Virgin Money USA’s CEO. “Our vision is to build a major Boston-based financial-services company.”

Advani and Branson intend to add education loans, financial planning and other services to Circle Lending’s existing line of mortgages, personal and small-business loans.

Advani's six-year-old company emerged alongside the "peer-to-peer" lending industry that seeks to snatch business away from banks by using the Internet to match borrowers with lenders. However, unlike CircleLending, those services generally pair up strangers.

In CircleLending, because borrower and lender know one another, loans typically carry lower interest rates than banks offer -- without the unforgiving nature institutional lenders often adopt with delinquent borrowers, Advani says.

Dealing with Islamophobia from within

Wittingly or unwittingly, we have undermined our unity by allowing different religious fanatical factions to take roots in our small communities of what used to be moderate Muslims. We now have to engage the separatists in meaningful dialogue and their fears need to be addressed and listened to, not brushed aside by branding them as outcasts. Criminal behaviour will have to be dealt with according to law.

Enter Islamophobia into our small community of just over 300,000 Sunni Muslims.


Islamophobia is a political term, though controversial is an increasingly accepted prejudice or discrimination against Islam or Muslims. The term has been revived after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

Not long after Pope Benedict XVI gave a speech that enraged Muslims around the world, some people in Denmark called for a contest to depict Prophet Muhammad through drawing or caricature. The world is witnessing growing Islamophobia, a phenomenon that has existed between Muslims and the western civilization for a long time. Now the Muslims are practising Islamophobia among themselves.

Early this year, an article written by Aniya showed how sensitive Maldivian conservatives are to any criticism of religion. Aniya's article was thought-provoking and one can say she gave the wrong interpretation of the wearing of veil by women as revealed in Quran. To question in Islam cannot be considered as heresy and even if she is wrong she has a right to her opinion and those who don't agree with her will have be tolerant of different views. Instead she was condemned and forcefully dragged to Supreme Religious Council. All of us will have to learn to tolerate each other's differences. If a crime is committed, then deal with it according to law.

The Sultan Park bombing incident is a criminal act and will have to be dealt with as such. Separatist groups like the people of Himandhoo have chosen a certain way of life. We have to ask ourselves, is the problem with their way of life (how they dress, pray etc.) or are they also committing any punishable crimes? We need to deal with criminal behaviour such as getting married outside the law. If their intention is to deliberately stir trouble, that too will have to be dealt with. More of the same failed preaching by the Supreme Religious Council is not going to solve this problem. Knowledge without understanding can easily turn destructive as we are finding out in Maldives.

Teaching tolerance as Muslims and respecting diversity will be the peaceful way forward.

From culture to cult

Culture has been called "the way of life for an entire society." As such, it includes codes of manners, dress, language, religion, rituals, norms of behavior such as law and morality, and systems of belief. Maldivians are 100 per cent Muslims and therefore they celebrate all the festivals that feature on the traditional Muslim calendar. Thus Islam is the cornerstone of the culture of Maldives.

Our educational system has principally rewarded those who have developed their ability to swallow information and regurgitate it during a prescribed time frame. This distorted thinking is further advanced by our scholars who return home after graduation from overseas institutions and impart knowledge to local communities without engaging them in critical thinking. Thus our minds which controls everything about our life is influenced, manipulated and in the end controlled by people who sometimes subvert faith and religion because of their ignorance or their madness. Many of the followers who blindly follow teachings that include the distorted ones get trapped into radicalism and extremism. Thus emerge the cults that often bring a painful end, it wrecks families and communities.

The recent bombing in Sultan Park Male' and the masked men of Hinmadhoo who stood against the police and security forces have revealed that we too have our cults who live differently, teach their children out of the mainstream schools and are prepared to fight and defend their separate way of life in small communities. This is just the beginning of our cults and if it progresses unchecked, we could hear of martyrdom and more destructive cults.

The battle against destructive and death cults can only be won when the Muslims take a forceful stance against extremism, separatism and radicalism. This view is beginning to be shared across the Muslim world and now its time for Maldives to walk its talk in making Maldives the peaceful country that it claims to be.

Is Islam a religion that has the propensity to lead to destructive cults?

Let us look at what some of this separatist groups are doing. Some of them say we should live exactly in the same exact way as the Prophet and his disciples lived. We should dress like them, eat like them and live like them. The argument is on whether Muslim men should be allowed to wear suites and ties as Westerners do or not? When they are told that why should we live like them when they existed 1500 years ago and our life today is different? Why should we ignore the current life style and not take full advantage of the technologies that exist today to our benefit? Their response is: "Don't you think that if Allah wanted to make the cloths of today lawful, He would've made the Muslims have them 1500 years ago?" How is it possible to reason out with such erratic thinking? If we can't reason out, is it possible to change such thinking and dogmatic behaviour?

A young woman's journey searching religion.

The main message that I picked out is that by learning the virtues of different religions we learn to tolerate the intolerance.

Indians abused in Malaysia

More than 200 Indian nationals working in a Malaysian factory have alleged that they were being abused by their employment agent and are desperate to return home after three of their colleagues were brutally beaten up.

The 264 Indian workers, employed at a factory in Senai in Johor state, claimed their agent started abusing them when they arrived in Malaysia two years ago.

All the major Indian newspapers carried this news. Reading through the Rediff comments, it will be observed that there are flames from some angry Indians. The anger at the abuse is understandable and action must be taken to prevent such abuse. At the same time those who perpetrated the abuse must be held accountable according to the law. While the religion of the employer who allegedly inflicted the abuse is unknown, some have called for action against Muslims because it has happened in Malaysia which has a majority Muslim population.

The abuse will have to be investigated without bringing any religion in the picture because no religion calls for abuse of rights of other people. Every time something goes wrong it may be easier to scapegoat Islam but it does not solve the underlying problems of poverty, abuse, unemployment and oppression. It only distracts focus from the underlying problems.

New York mayor takes the train to work

Michael Bloomberg is an American businessman, and the founder of Bloomberg L.P., currently serving as the Mayor of New York City.

Bloomberg entered politics as a self-made media mogul and struck a populist note early in his mayoral campaign by pledging to use mass transit. Since starting at City Hall he has invited reporters, photographers and television news anchors to ride along with him.

The mayor's spokesman said that he "walked to the subway when he first started as mayor, and he stopped doing it when cameras staked out his house every morning and walked with him." Now the mayor is driven to the subway station at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue, where he can board an express train to City Hall.

Being driven to the 59th Street station shaves the mayor's commuting time by one-third, based on a reporter's test runs. It also saves him aggravations like taking the local train and transferring to the express.

"He goes to various stops depending on where he is going and where he is coming from," said the spokesman.

He is public transportation's loudest cheerleader in New York, boasting that he takes the subway "virtually every day." He has told residents who complain about overcrowded trains to "get real," and he constantly encourages New Yorkers to follow his environmentally friendly example.

University puts courses on YouTube

Berkeley university, one of the most prestigious universities in the US, is embracing the Internet revolution by putting free videos of courses on YouTube.

More than 300 hours of University of California, Berkeley, classes and events are available online. The university plans to continually add videos to the channel, which officially launched Wednesday with about nine full courses consisting of approximately 40 lectures each.

Check them out here.

Weeding out pious frauds

What is emerging in the reports coming out from the Sultan Park bombing incident reveals that some of our youth are getting radicalised in Islam. This is starting at an early age, sometimes in high school. These issues will have to be addressed at its source before they grow big and manifest into lethal action causing harm and destruction. The problem is not with Islam but with twisted interpretations of selected texts to suit a particular thinking.

In the recent past, there were some students in Male's premier high school CHSE who were noted to be acting different from the mainstream. While we have to remain tolerant of diverse views, there is a concern in indoctrinating radical Islam in our every day life making harmonious living impossible because of the religious intolerance and extremism.

To have people in our society who cannot go their to prayers to the mosques for whatever reason and confine themselves to build a cult is not acceptable. If anyone has a grievance or takes issue with the prevailing system compelling them to form their separate groups, their issues will need to be looked into before they get out of hand.

We need to teach our children the principles of good living.

Increasing climate change refugees

Environmental degradation around the world is creating a new category of people known as "environmental refugees."

According to a National Geographic article in 2005, there are at least 20 million environmental refugees worldwide, the group says—more than those displaced by war and political repression combined. This figure continues to increase rapidly.

The inhabitants of the Carteret Islands are the first climate refugees due to sea level rise attributed to global warming and climate change. Other inhabitants of low lying islands and Island states, are also at risk. Tuvalu and Maldives are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and storm surges.

By 2010 the number of environmental refugees could grow to 50 million, the Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) predicts.

Professor Norman Myers, who is a British environmentalist and authority on biodiversity has estimated climate change will increase the number of environmental refugees six-fold over the next fifty years to 150 million.

Equatorial countries that are home to hundreds of millions of people will become uninhabitable as food and water run out due to climate change, scientists are expected to warn this week.

A report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to be published on Friday, will warn that the temperature rises of 2-3C predicted by 2050 spell global disaster for both humanity and the environment.

Australia has said that it will prepare to play its role as a part of a global coalition to do their share of assisting the low lying Pacific island states such as Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu - which sit just a few metres above sea level - are at risk of being swamped as global warming forces sea levels to rise.

Maldives needs to quickly put its house in order internally and start taking action for long term survival/relocation without being content on asking the international community to reduce the greenhouse gases. The environmental threat is already looming on the horizon and we really don't have the time to waste in playing unproductive games.

"NO TO TERRORISM! DON'T TOUCH OUR MALDIVES!"

"We don't want terrorists and terrorism in our Maldives!

Join the cyber-protest by Maldivian bloggers."

Worries over veil in Turkey

Turkey is a secular democratic republic whose political system was established in 1923 under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, following the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I. Turkey is located between Asia and Europe, often described as a bridge between the western and eastern civilizations.

The current constitution in Turkey obliges the government to ensure equality for all - a clause that women's groups fought hard to include. A revised new constitution is now being proposed, describing women as a vulnerable group in need of special protection.

Thousands of prominent men and women who make up the elite of this country are having panic attacks in the face of the possibility that Turkish universities might tolerate their students wearing the Islamic headscarf. Virtually everyday, bureaucrats, pundits and even university rectors lash out against the proposed article in the new constitution to set the headscarf free.

Under the Ataturk code, women were banned from wearing the headscarf in government offices. The Turkish military, the fiercest guardian of “Kemalism” as the cult of Ataturk is known, has used the threat to secularism as the pretext over the decades for many an intervention in politics.

Over the last 80 years, since becoming a secular country the Turks have still not got over the fear of seeing a veiled women.

Stop the madness

Maldives has long maintained a stand of remaining a moderate Islamic country. In all travel guides that gives advice to tourists visiting Maldives, our country is still declared as having very little crime.

The recent homemade bomb that went off in Sultan Park causing injury to 12 tourists has shocked our government and shaken our community. It has made headline news around the world drawing negative publicity to our idyllic sunny islands.

On crimes, we now know that some of the crimes committed in Maldives have become major crimes, way beyond petty crimes. The government, all the political parties and the people have condemned the attack on tourists in the strongest terms as they rightly should. Now it is time to look inward and seek answers why things have come to this stage.

Looking on the crime side, there are horrific crimes that has been committed in Maldives in the recent past. In Jan, 2000- In Thinadhoo a father-in-law was brutally killed in broad daylight by a son-in-law who attacked him mercilessly with a knife. 'He threatened to kill anyone who came near,' claimed by standers who watched in horror. More recently, on Himandhoo island last year, Wahabbis barricaded the island mosque saying that it was constructed on a burial ground. Later, an island official was found dead on the island's beach in December, after enforcing a government decision to close a breakaway mosque.

Looking at this Ramadan alone, we find that crime and violence has gone through the roof. Even the guards keeping watch on shops have not been spared and they have not been able to stop the theft. Now the shopowners themselves are losing sleep trying to keep vigil to protect their property and assets. We have come a long way from a country that has little crime.

On the moderate Islam front, in the recent past we have seen different factions of Islam making there presence felt in our society. We see the increasing Wahabi influence by men whose trousers are worn well above the ankle, and who keep long beards. They gang up in difference places spreading their brand of Islam. There is an outburst of extremism and religious intolerance. The violence that is happening in Addu makes the place look like a war zone.

On the political front, our country is going through a dramatic change when democracy and reform and setting up the institutional framework is the priority of the national agenda. Presently we have fractious unity between political parties , the government and the parliament. Nothing gets done without inordinate delays and the country is heading down on a slippery path. The only reason there is a huge outrage and a call for firm action against the perpetrators of bombing in Sultan Park is because it caused injury to 12 foreign tourists and therefore may hurt tourism. The same standard must be applied to every injustice and every abuse of the right of Maldivians. The same standard must also be applied to stop the import of drugs and eradicate drugs from our society. If it were the case we would never have come to this stage.

Unless we stop this shift to radical Islam and increasing violence, we will destroy tourism and hurt other industries and no one will be able to find any joy living in Maldives. Unless we wrench our country out of the grip of this madness more doom and destruction will follow. It is time for politicians, law enforcement agencies and the people to step up and face this daunting task.

The youngest CEO at 17.

Here's a rags to riches story where the American 17-year-old girl Ashley Quall is featured in a Fastcompany article. It is an interesting article of how a minor (legally) has really become big in business.

The power of Quall's website whateverlife.com hit home last year when Quall posted a music video of an unknown boy band on her website. This was at the behest of the creator of online video widget, similar to YouTube, who had been hired by Columbia Records to see what kind of buzz he could create with an inexpensive marketing campaign conducted purely on the web.

This is evidence of the meritocracy on the Internet that allows even companies run by neophyte entrepreneurs to compete, regardless of funding, location, size, or experience--and she's a reminder that ingenuity is ageless. She has taken in more than $1 million, thanks to a now-familiar Web-friendly business model. Her MySpace page layouts are available for the bargain price of...nothing. They're free for the taking. Her only significant source of revenue so far is advertising.

According to Google Analytics, Whateverlife attracts more than 7 million individuals and 60 million page views a month. That's a larger audience than the circulations of Seventeen, Teen Vogue, and CosmoGirl! magazines combined. Although Web-site rankings vary with the methodology, Quantcast, a popular source among advertisers, ranked Whateverlife.com a staggering No. 349 in mid-July out of more than 20 million sites. Among the sites in its rearview mirror: Britannica.com, AmericanIdol.com, FDA .gov, and CBS.com, even ahead of Oprah.com.

Now her life is centered around working in the basement of the two-story, four-bedroom house that she bought last September for $250,000.