Doing things better
View(s):The bus driver opened the front door for passengers, then took his folder with a sheet on it and the pencil into his hand, and marked the number of passengers getting down and getting in. Then he kept the folder aside, closed the door, and drove the bus forward. At every bus halt, he does the same thing throughout his entire journey; not once in a while, but during every journey of the bus, every day and throughout the year. The bus has only one employee – the driver. There was no conductor, neither was there a supporter hanging from the footboard and helping the driver with “left-hand signaling”.
It was the bus transport service operated between the university and the Urasa station by the International University of Japan for its students, professors, and other employees of the university. The university was located in the middle of a valley in a rural area, surrounded by agricultural farms and mountains with protected forests. The journey of the bus is about five km between the university and the nearest city, Urasa – a small town with a train station in the Niigata Prefecture in the Western part of Japan.
The area was well known for Japan’s best rice that it produces as well as for the heavy snow fall. During the winter season, the area is covered with two-three meters high snowfall so that the local authorities must clean up the rural road network every day using snow-moving utility vehicles. The villagers too must clean up snow in their compounds, on house roofs and on vehicles every day in order to minimize trouble and avoid damages caused by piled up snow.
Because everybody or at least every family has a motor car for their transport requirement, there was no public transport available in the area. For this reason, the university had to have its own bus service between Urasa and the university. The university bus does not take the same route all the time for a reason. There are different places that the university students and employees have to go at different times of the day – supermarket, bank, post office, hospital and even the Montessori. As these places are located not on the same route, the bus too has to change its route at different times covering each place.
Services up, costs down
During the time I spent one whole year at the same university, I had decided to stay at a private apartment near Urasa city rather than at a university guest house. Apart from my own research work at the university, I continued to learn from my own observations too. As I too had to take the same bus to go to the university, I often noticed the bus driver’s above-mentioned routine activity throughout the whole year. Although I had presumed as to why he recorded passenger numbers at every bus halt, one day I inquired about it from the transport office of the university.
“We use these numbers to improve the transport service and to reduce its operational cost,” I was told, confirming what I had already presumed. “Then we know whether we should send a big bus or a small bus at which time of the day, and which route the bus should take. Then, we know how to provide the best possible transport service to our university students and employees. We can also keep the cost of bus operation as low as possible for the university.”
Lal – one of my former students – was also at the same university following a Master’s degree when I visited there. His research was about learning from Japanese local government system so that he had already conducted his research at many local government offices. Once he told me that, “one important thing I noticed here was that every government office as well as a private business has a ‘research and development’ section to improve their own activity. Everybody, even a rural farmer, focuses on ‘invention and innovation’ to improve what they do.”
Value for money - mangoes from a fruit stall in Tokyo
Invention here, innovation abroad
Technology is all about “invention and innovation” which originates from research and development (R&D) activities of a nation. Invention refers to the “new ideas of doing things” while innovation means “applying those ideas to do things”. It is an important source of economic development.
We have heard the stories of many, including those of university students, who bring about new ideas of doing things better (that is invention). But some of those ideas die out as time passes without opportunities for their application in businesses (that is innovation); and some of the ideas find opportunities for application in some other countries, because these students migrate with their new ideas to other countries where they find such opportunities.
For some countries, spending resources and time for R&D is a luxury, and not a necessity, thus not every government is keen in spending on R&D. Equally important is the private spending on R&D, which is even bigger than government spending in this area. However private businesses which focus merely on survival strategies also take R&D spending as a luxury.
Where are we?
The Global Innovation Index is an indicator showing the level of innovation among different countries on the basis of innovation inputs – knowledge creation, exploration, and investments, and innovation outputs – application, exploitation, and impact. As per the Global Innovation Index 2020, the top-10 innovators in the “high-income” group include only Singapore and South Korea from the Asian region. Among the “upper middle-income” countries, top-10 innovators include China, Malaysia and Thailand from the Asian region. Among the “lower middle-income” countries, the top-10 innovators include Vietnam, India, the Philippines, and Indonesia from the Asian region.
“Where is Sri Lanka?” It is in the last quartile of “poorest innovative” countries, occupying the 101st position among the total 131 countries. Along with Sri Lanka, the last quartile includes Pakistan and Bangladesh from South Asia, while most of the other countries in this group are the poor nations from Africa and Latin America.
Generally, Sri Lanka scores poorly in all areas of concern which are considered to be the pillars of the innovation index. Sri Lanka’s score is remarkably poor with respect to regulatory environment (such as quality of regulations and rule of law), general education, tertiary education, R&D, credit market, investment climate, trade and competition, and the areas of creative outputs. In Sri Lanka, the government expenditure on R&D is also as low as 0.1 per cent of GDP, compared to its value well above 2 per cent of GDP for the countries which perform well in the innovation index.
Sentimental myths
I must also address the sentimental myths of technological advancement. While our own inventions and innovations are important for economic development, national efforts for that are not deterred, but enhanced with foreign technology. Because technology is a “commodity” too, some may believe that when foreign technology enters, the local efforts for technological advancement may not survive.
In fact, one of the important reasons why developing countries need foreign direct investment (FDI) is that FDI is the main source of getting access to foreign technology, which would enhance the local technological advancement as well. Without accepting this reality, if we think of “re-inventing the wheels” for technological advancement, we may need 100s of years to fulfil our development agenda.
This is, anyway, not a pragmatic approach at least for two reasons: The first is that the economic status which we attempt to achieve in 100 years must be quite “outdated” by that time, because the world is moving ahead of us. The second is an even more pragmatic question; how long can we postpone the aspirations of a nation to receive better jobs and higher incomes? I am sure that people don’t want to wait for 100 years to reach their dreams.
By the way, as the time came for me to bid farewell to Lal who graduated with a Master’s degree, I asked him: “How much of what you learnt here about ‘local governance’ would be put into practice after you go back?” He laughed and said: “Well, you know sir, I’m going back to Sri Lanka!”
(The writer is a Professor of Economics at the University of Colombo and can be reached at sirimal@econ.cmb.ac.lk and follow on Twitter @SirimalAshoka).