AIIB: Lean, Clean & Green

The Dawn Of A New Era

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) was inaugurated today, January 16, 2016, in Beijing, China. If you look at the AIIB mission statement on its official website (www.aiib.org), you will notice the following statement in paragraph 1:

"Its modus operandi will be lean, clean and green: lean, with a small efficient management team and highly skilled staff; clean, an ethical organization with zero tolerance for corruption; and green, an institution built on respect for the environment."

While the fact that the AIIB has been created primarily to foster development in Asia (as opposed to the other major funding institutions that claim to represent the world in general) is indeed the main quality that sets it apart from its competitors, the afore-mentioned sentence in its mission statement is actually every inch as significant...because it holds out the possibility that, unlike institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) & the World Bank (WB), it may actually be concerned about improving the experience of doing business in Asia. Given below is a discussion of the concepts of "Lean", "Clean" & "Green" in the light of the business environment in Pakistan. I hope that it proves helpful in clarifying the relevance of the AIIB to the ordinary Asian trader as well as accelerating the process of Asian development as a whole.

Lean: Red Tape = Commercial Discrimination

During the years after the 2008 Financial Crisis, there was one specific phrase that became the justification for a lot of the financial ruin that hit the American economy: "too big to fail". The general idea was that there were certain firms or institutions that had grown so huge & ponderous that protecting the investment of the people who had made those entities such important factors was of less importance than making sure that "prestige" was maintained. The result was that millions of mid-level investors got obliterated from the commercial landscape. In the United States, "too big to fail" has become the title to the ultimate cautionary tale of what red tape can do to a perfectly prosperous economy.

Red tape is a problem in Pakistan, too. The only difference in the nature of red tape around here is that it comes in the wrapping of "security measures" that don't actually make anyone or anything statistically safer. They just make the smooth running of business less likely. Case in point: The PTCL biometric re-verification of Internet dongles. This measure is not for subscribers who activated these devices without giving their names; it is for people who even gave their Computerized National Identity Card (CNIC) numbers & then had the device activated. Those people are being ordered to march back to the PTCL outlets & repeat the verification process, this time with not just their CNICs but are also required to get themselves fingerprinted - at this rate, it's only a matter of time before mug shots will be standard practice, too!

But even if the implied insult is swallowed - Pakistanis are getting quite used to being viewed with suspicion on account of their nationality - what about the man-hours that are wasted every time someone wants to prove that biometric machines are not a horrendous waste of taxpayer money? As these circumstances make amply clear, red tape comes in many forms.

Clean: Ignorance = Corruption

Corruption is viewed as the choice between good & evil; but in reality, it is more a question of being intellectually up to the task. 99% of the time, the right thing is also the logical thing. But this simple fact is often blurred to those who aren't really qualified for certain responsibilities.

Take the Defense Housing Authority (DHA) scam that is currently making headlines in Pakistan. The local media is going blue in the face, spewing out corrections about the "misconception" making the rounds that the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) may be in-charge of Army General Headquarters (GHQ), but it is the GHQ (& not the COAS) who is responsible for the DHA fraud. What's the distinction?

But the real question is, are soldiers - people only trained to perform tasks linked to violence - really qualified to play such an important role in the real estate sector? Or was it just wishful thinking to expect that a group trained to perceive the unexpected as an act of war, would not make outright blunders with the increasing importance it has received in a world as fluid as the commercial sector?

Green

These days, the final word in environmental protection is the Paris Agreement. While some international media figures are upset at the importance the Agreement has given to "anthropogenic emissions" as opposed to the more limited "GHGs", it is actually a demonstration of the UN's awareness that GHGs aren't the only environmental threat to be considered.

For instance, the average Pakistani simply doesn't have the money to use his car or buy stuff from the local factories to the extent that Pakistan can be classified as a serious emitter of carbon dioxide. But that doesn't mean Pakistan doesn't face pollution problems. Pakistani environmental issues are problems like particulate matter & UV radiation. But they cannot be resolved unless the nature & source of the pollution is competently & honestly identified.

This is proving very difficult for the local authorities to do (reportedly because identifying the sources of pollution in the country would require the naming & shaming of some very sensitive parties). But if an institution such as AIIB, which has been created to accelerate Asian progress & foster Asian prosperity, were to take a special interest in this issue, maybe the average Pakistani could breathe a sigh of relief - without choking on the pollution that officially doesn't exist!