President Obama's message to President Nasheed and other leaders of the world

"....there are some who advocate for democracy only when they are out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others. No matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy."

President Obama's Speech on 04th June 2009

Fixing the education system

In my previous post, I highlighted the failures of the educational system in our country. In this post, I am going to look at some ideas that I think might help fix it. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but just a few thoughts.

Our schools produce a product for which there is no market and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand. As a developing country and as a country heavily dependent on tourism, we need to train our students in planning, construction and hospitality through our school system.

If our education system is to produce a product that is in demand we need to:

1. Restructure the curriculum to align itself with the demands of the job market. Transfer more responsibility onto teachers and students and devise a system to reward teachers who do well.

2. Create problem-focused subjects and programs. For instance, we can expand on tourism and construction related subjects.

3. Increase collaboration between the secondary schools and Maldives College of Higher Education. Faculty and other resources at the college can be used to teach the secondary school students. This is a win-win situation for both the schools and the college. The schools will have more dynamic programs and the students enrolling in the college will be of a higher calibre and better prepared for undergraduate studies.

4. Transform the testing system. Instead of having students take exams in which they just reproduce facts discussed in class, we should incorporate more research papers and term projects. Original scholarship and research must be encouraged and rewarded.

5. Expand the range of options available to students. At the moment, all the students go through the same program, with only limited choices. But instead, if we can have custom-made programs for each student as much as possible, it will help the students to do well, as they will be more likely to enjoy what they are doing.


Some of the ideas expressed here are originally from Mark C. Taylor, the chairman of the religion department at University of Columbia.

Islam, Virgins and Grapes by Nicholas D. Kristof

Cambridge O’ Level results indicate a bleak future for the country

More than 7000 Maldivian students sat in the Cambridge Ordinary Level exams held in late 2008. Of these, only 27 % passed. That’s right; 73 % or 5110 students failed the O’ levels! More than 2000 of these did not pass even a single subject. What does this mean to the future of the country?
This means 5110 youngsters who finished school last year will have no chance for a higher education. This means 5110 youngsters will be looking to join the work force. Since these youngsters are not qualified for most jobs on offer and since our job market is not growing at a rate to absorb 5000 new workers every year, this means a majority of these youngsters will be unemployed. This means, with nothing better to do, these youngsters will turn to drugs and gangs to kill time. This means these youngsters will be hardened criminals and drug addicts in a couple of years. I will leave it to your imagination what this would mean to our country’s economic and social fabric in a few years.

What worries me even more is that it seems that nobody cares about these kids anymore. The fact that more than 5000 students failed the O’ levels was only mentioned as a side note in the media under the headline that the top 10 has been announced. None of the so called journalists, pundits, and analysts seemed to have even noticed that our education system has failed miserably.

In one of the articles in the media, it was mentioned that more than 9 million Rufiyaa was spent to seat those kids who didn’t pass a single subject. The writer was apologetic and tried to portray that money as been wasted. I disagree. I don’t think it was wasted money and I think we should spend another 9 million if necessary to seat these kids again next year so that they can become productive members of society. Or else the cost will be much more than 9 million Rufiyaa when these kids turn out to be hardened criminals. We still remember the 50 million Rufiyaa incurred by the state when hell broke in Maafushi jail recently.

As a country, we need to wake up from our slumber, without politicizing everything, if we are to have any hopes for the future. As of right now, that future is looking very bleak.

Carbon neutral blueprint does not make the cut on close review.

The following article by Ahmed Naish appeared on Minivan News on 05th April 2009.
The first step towards carbon nuetrality

And here is my response to this article:

With all due respect to Chris Goodall and Mark Lynas, anybody with a college degree could have come up with their plan. Everybody knows that wind, solar and biomass energy sources are inherently better than fossil fuel. That’s the stuff for school textbooks. What the authors have failed is to conduct a case-specific cost-benefit analysis of the transition. They have failed to test if their assumptions are valid and economically or otherwise viable. The authors themselves acknowledge that they have not been on the ground in the Maldives to test out the coral limestone and sandstone foundations that are assumed would cut costs. Public available information on subjects like this in the Maldives is inadequate and incomplete to be considered as primary sources for such a draft, because such information is not based on any credible research or data collection. On the other hand, most government officials don’t know what they are talking about on issues like this because they are misinformed and they have never travelled to the islands themselves to double check their facts and assumptions.




Before we go any further with this plan and make financial commitments, I urge Chris Goodall and Mark Lynas to come to the Maldives and get their hands dirty. Putting together a text-book esque plan is easy. What is hard is making sure it works.

What do you guys think?

We are not stupid

While rapid climate change and sea level rise is a fact, Maldives will not go under, as predicted by most, even in the next 500 years. There is no absolute data showing that there is an actual sea level rise relative to the islands in the Maldives. On the other hand, there are some theories that the coral platforms the islands are on are actually rising. We all know that the announcement by President Nasheed to buy land in a foreign country was a political trick by the government. When President Nasheed came into power in November, the state funds and reserves were very low. Therefore, in order to buy time, he needed to run a story which will take the attention away from the real issues. With no precedence in history and all kinds of sovereignty issues he knows it will be nearly impossible to buy land in a foreign country even if we had the money (which we don’t). The President’s goal was achieved with the story running in all major international news outlets and having the local populace excited about an issue other than government mismanagement.


Two weeks ago, the President made another big splash in the international media by announcing that Maldives will become a carbon-neutral country by 2020!

Again, this is a political trick by the government. Achieving carbon neutrality by 2020 is completely unrealistic! Even if we had the will and the money, 10 years is way too short. It is estimated that the project will cost $ 1 billion over the 10 years. The gross foreign currency reserves in MMA is $257 million while the country’s net reserves is a mere $116 million. While we hardly have any money in our coffers, we are not going to attract any foreign investments by portraying the country as environmentally doomed. The majority of carbon emissions in the Maldives are from airplanes bringing in tourists from all over the world. So if we are to become carbon neutral we may have to stop the flights which bring in the tourists. That’s probably not a very good idea for a country in which 78% of the economy is based on tourism. Even if we miraculously become carbon neutral, that is not going to change anything with regards to climate change and sea level rise since we are not contributing even 1 percent of the world's carbon emissions. Therefore, there is no logical reason for Maldives to spend $1 billion on carbon neutrality when the country doesn’t even have a good education or health care system.

While climate change and global warming are real issues faced by Maldives, it seems that the President and the government are trying to use science to advance other agendas.