Moris Zindabad!

Road networks and their users tend to offer a reliable gauge for the relative strength of the rule of law and the civic sense of residents anywhere in the world. Further insights 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 (out of 160) in the 2014

D’emblée, situons cette réprimande qui sert de marqueur à ce billet. Elle aurait aussi bien pu émaner de beaucoup de Mauriciens désillusionnés. Il s’agit ici de l’une de nos voix les plus pertinentes et engagées, en l'occurence Reaz Chuttoo, à propos de la compensation salariale. Il fustige le calcul censé corriger la perte de pouvoir d’achat : l’inflation mesurée à 3.6 % est fondée sur un revenu moyen mensuel de MUR 27000 et elle est loin de corroborer le vécu d’un citoyen percevant un salaire de, disons, MUR 8500. En clair, une grande majorité de Mauriciens sont en général sous-compensés et subissent ainsi une perte de pouvoir d’achat réelle et constante. Les répercussions sont multidimensionnelles.  Comme dans le cas du prétendu taux élevé de citoyens propriétaires d'une résidence, les politiques nationales sont fondées sur des chiffres farfelus. Résultat, rien de plus prévisible: quasiment aucun résultat. Si ce ne sont que des inadéquations systémiques et pour sauver la

Eradike ve dir fer disparet. Ti pou enn mari soulazman si ti posib eradik koripsion ek lamizer kouma ena lider politik promet. Sa kalite langaz-la demontre swa ou enn fatra lor rod solision pou bann problem ou bien ou pe sey andormi nou. Pli souvan li tou lede ansam. Komite Nobel fek rekonpans Richard Thaler ki finn demontre ki lepep pa neseserman pran desizion ki pli bon pou li ek sosiete. Souvan li tom dan fasilite. Seki lekontrer lafwa bann ideolog neoliberal. Komportman dimounn depann lor boukou fakter kouma nivo kontantman, laplikasion lalwa, lespri sivik, ki linformasion difize ek ki kasiet, lexamp dirizan done kan zot azir, labitid. Richard Thaler koumans so liv Nudge avek enn solision sinp me ranpli ek limazinasion ki erport Amsterdam finn aplike dan twalet piblik misie: depi ki zot finn kol enn stiker mous, dimounn viz bien mous-la ek p** mwins akote ! Pou koripsion rekile bizin poz kestion kifer donn baksis ek pran baksis vinn enn viza pou avanse dan boukou sitiasion.

Les pays scandinaves, l’Allemagne et Singapour comptent parmi les pays les moins rongés par la crispation que la mondialisation impose indistinctement. Bien qu'il n'existe point de recette miracle, voici les trois éléments communs qui nous semblent les plus déterminants : la Cohérence des politiques appliquées, la Complémentarité des institutions publiques comme privées et la Collaboration de toutes les parties prenantes. Evidemment, les 3 C ne se décrètent pas. L'autre C, c'est à dire la Croissance du Produit intérieur brut, n'étant pas une fin en soi, mais un moyen pour s'efforcer d'intégrer et de récompenser l'effort consenti par un maximum de citoyens. Le contenu des médias représente plut ô t fidèlement les comportements des acteurs politiques, sociaux et économiques. Au-delà de la faible proportion des faits divers relatés (sans doute symptomatiques d'un système moins tortueux et marginalisant et, en contrepartie, des «  soupapes » de str

More than a decade ago, Infotech was supposed to be an Information Technology (IT)-based fair. It would have been logical to request people to submit their mobile number for receiving SMS of details of the exhibitors. How these IT industry experts, similar to other exhibitor fairs locally, still firmly believe that doling out paper leaflets, pamphlets, brochures, etc., is mind-boggling, to say the least. But this phenomenon of advancing-in-reverse-gear appears to be entrenched in our landscape. For instance, why call ourselves a cyber-island when even the most mundane of administrative and financial transactions require your physical presence and documents, and your payment in cash? Even better: to the undiscerning eye the skyline of our CyberCity is sexily "developed" from afar, but when approaching you would be surprised to realise the operators are quite traditional: banks, accountants, consultants, call centres and some universities – you’d be hard-pressed to fi

In all fairness we must thank our collective wisdom for bringing us to accept the outcome of the polls. Since 1968 our people have been mature enough to give our full support to the verdict of the polling stations: either keeping the previous leader and his team or seeking a new one to steer the country in some other direction, but we all accepted the outcome. Our consent however deserves to be re-examined periodically: the present circumstances where our country is now being driven by someone who was not voted for his present post. This poses the question of his legitimacy. Did our three crosses of December 2014 consent to this new direction? What about the opposition - for the worse or better, our system designates them by default, i.e., a pis-aller imposed in the form of the second-best electoral candidates failing to garner the majority of votes. In a democracy, it's our collective consent that gives legitimacy to the action of representatives. Should it not also apply to t

My digital native son has always expressed his teen-spirited reluctance to embrace education that massively rewards content recall at the expense of effective learning. Any lapse at school would be blown out of proportion. I could only resort to nuancing his glaring truth. Recently, he came up with yet another statement of unconventional wisdom: “why can’t we analyse Game of Thrones instead of The Merchant of Venice?” Mindful academics at universities do use, say, more contemporary Blade Runner as support after all. This time I was floored. William Shakespeare, or any other writer or subject for that matter, however distinguished, that fails the connection test will struggle to spark the desired curiosity conducive to the ultimate goal: coaching to develop discernment and skills to blend analytics and intuition (thank you Daniel Kahneman , a psychologist of judgment and decision-making) in savviest fashion. Silo mentality, uncreative mindset and pedantism won’t smart us up, will they

Many winced in America, the self-proclaimed bastion of economic liberalism, back in 1931 when philosopher John Dewey famously shared this prescient observation. Few would have challenged him in the wake of the predictable pull out spearheaded by Donald Trump from the Paris Accord on climate change. But for savvy observers, the perfect market has always been bs. Arguably, variations do exist depending on where you are and when is your point of reference. Corporate class and mainstream political class tend to instrumentalise each other for narrow self-interest and fat rewards. Regardless how disrupted livelihoods, health and environment. The global civic rebellion merely signals a belated reaction to an earlier wake-up call. Plutocratic tendencies in smaller nations like Mauritius, where inclusive democracy is elusive, can be very devastating indeed. To mitigate the extractive drift, is there any more productive alternative than rallying all progressive energies into a forceful advocacy