Thinking straight

Last year, Japan Sri Lanka Friendship Road, which links Parliament to the Sri Jayewardenapura Hospital Road and which was hitherto represented by an ad-hoc winding country road by the banks of the Diyawannawa, was upgraded to a four-lane dual carriageway (albeit with the central reservation demarcated in white paint).

The new road gave a foretaste to drivers of what the new national system of high-speed motorways, starting with the Southern Expressway, might hold for them. Traffic jams have made hindrance-free driving a thing of the past on the other dual-carriageways of the Colombo area, but the new thoroughfare was pristine enough for driving to be a real, stress-free pleasure.

Unfortunately, the road had been opened without the planned pavements being completed on either side. A new contractor came in to build paved footpaths. And the hitherto carefree motorists got a horrible shock.

Traffic flow

The first thing the contractor did was to dump his materials - paving bricks, sand, stone dust and road metal - on the roadway. This made the two outer lanes unusable and reduced the dual carriageway to a two-lane highway. The result was to slow down the traffic flow.

What the contractor should have done was to schedule his operation so that he dumped the material in sequence - on the footpath and not on the roadway - in such a way as he would get the material he wanted at precisely the time he required it. The Japanese call it Just-In-Time.

A road construction site. File photo

Doing this is not rocket science. The contractor must have access to at least one personal computer, but even an old-fashioned hand-drawn Gantt chart should have been sufficient. The building of a footpath is certainly not as complex as say, an assembly line for cars. The delivery schedule might have cost the contractor a little extra, but it is a cost that should have been borne in this day and age.

The type of parochial thinking - a vestige of the days in which roads were used mainly by bullock carts and little delay did not mean much - of which the above examplifies is not one confined to contractors. It happens because decision makers at all levels - from the dump-truck driver up to the ministerial bureaucrat - do not take into account the knock-on effects of their choices of course of action, or of the effect some deficiency may have on it.

Business executive

We encounter it everyday in Sri Lanka, in all walks of life: the cook who puts the food on to cook and then zips off on his bicycle to buy from the shops some ingredient which is missing; the business executive who puts off signing a payment order until the next day; the salesman who forgets to inform a customer what would happen if they press a certain button with wet hands.

It is a great impediment not merely to the development of the country, but to the ease with which people may spend their time (the maximisation of which is, after all, supposed to be the end result of development).

We come across similar sloppy thinking in our neighbouring countries in South Asia, even in the oil-rich states of the Middle East. However, it is a phenomenon rarely come across in Singapore, say or Germany or Japan - of course with the rule-proving exception of the decision to site nuclear power plant in the Earthquake - and Tsunami-prone region of Fukushima.

The secret is thinking holistically - considering logically the consequences of each action, not merely to the task being undertaken, but also taking into account how it impinges on other spheres. This is the principle behind the process of environmental impact assessment.

What might appear to be shortcut could turn out to be a disastrous detour.

A classic example was the decision in 1977 to open Sri Lanka’s economy to imports without safeguards. It did lead to massive growth and to the creation of immense fortunes, but also to the destruction of many nascent industries (including the strategic one of electronics) and to the impoverishment of sections of the population (including the Jaffna farmers) - which in turn led to the insurrection in the South and to the intensification of the conflict in the North and East.

This type of mistake could be avoided by simple techniques, such as the use of flow-charts, which take cognisance of consequences of each decision made or each action taken. This is the idea behind Buddhist meditation, after all.

Long-term benefit

However, we in Sri Lanka are still at a stage when even simple straight-forward thinking, let alone the holistic variety, is rare. Rather like a pilot taking off on his airliner without going through the checklist on starting - it might not lead to a crash, but the chances are it could.

Take a case where a certain course of action is to be decided on in government. A committee of pundits is set up to look into the matter and, after deliberating for a considerable period, they put forward their findings. However, these are put aside on the recommendation of some acquaintance - perhaps a bureaucrat who disagrees with the general verdict - of the decision-maker.

This happens all too often, and leads to all manner of problems. This is why there are standard procedures for doing things; they may involve some delay or extra cost, but they are worth adhering to because of the long-term benefit.

We, as a nation, all need to be re-educated, and our brains re-programmed.

We need to have check lists and flow-charts embossed on our minds. We need to recognise the end result of each action or decision, on both our own sphere and on others. Until we do so, no matter what our level of income as a country might be, we will remain a ‘less-developed country.’