Tag Archive for 'www.lirneasia.net'


Call for Papers: Infrastructure Regulation: What works, Why, and How do we know?
Deadline: 05 December 2008.




Beyond Tunis: Changing Policy

Beyond Tunis: Changing Policy

Rohan Samarajiva

Government is about the sustenance of hope. Yet in too many places, government is about killing hope: “you can’t make it because you’re poor/ your ethnicity is wrong / you aren’t from the right school.” When hope is dead, when the pie looks like it’s not expanding, and the game is zero-sum, the path that remains is hatred.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) shake things up. Not necessarily for the better; but with prodding of the right kind and possibly some luck and happenstance, the equilibrium can be broken in a positive way. So, I work with ICTs, not as ends but as means. Opportunity anywhere rests on connectivity: the ability to obtain credit/capital/knowledge/a job; and so on. Those who already have…