Yameen and the Bridge: Disaster in the Making
It is very sad
that none of the members of the media or the several hundred educated people of
this nation to all of whom my article about this topic has been sent are not uttering
even a whimper of protest against the national disaster currently in the making
– building a bridge between Malé and Hulhumalé, which by any standards
will be an unprecedented and irreparable disaster.
The article
pointed out the following extremely alarming facts in four
overlapping areas:
1) the built-environment of Malé (total area less than 3/4 of
a square mile, some 80% of which is built-up and the remaining 20% being taken by roads and a handful of open spaces) is currently congested to the
brim by structures and motor vehicles (nearly 42,300 in 2012, of which 85% were motor cycles; current population figure stands at more than 185,000); one can hardly find parking space on the mostly narrow roads and moving about on them is becoming increasingly dangerous;
2) increasingly tall structures (up to 10 stories) are being built adjacent to each other without any space in-between and, as a result, severely limiting air circulation across the whole island;
2) increasingly tall structures (up to 10 stories) are being built adjacent to each other without any space in-between and, as a result, severely limiting air circulation across the whole island;
3) motor vehicle exhaust fumes are toxic and dangerous
to health, and contain the poisonous gases of carbon monoxide and dioxide, and
oxides of nitrogen and sulfur, not to mention heavy metals such as lead, which
have long-term retarding effects on children’s brain development, in addition
to the potentially cancerous particulate matter; air pollution has already
made the air we breathe, the most essential/basic element for sustaining life
itself, highly unsuitable; this is not to mention the noise pollution and ground water contamination from an increasing number of vehicle repair shops sprinkled indiscriminately all around the island; and, importantly,
4) much of this had happened in the
relatively brief period of only 10-15 years.
It does not require
one to be expert in anything to realize that this dangerous trend will
continue at a very much accelerated pace if a bridge was built. Cars, and even motor cycles, are symbols of
prestige for most people, not just a means of transportation. (This is the case in the developed nations as
well.) Given people’s self-image and a mindset
of comparing themselves with others, this situation will worsen at an increasing
pace over time as they see more people having better symbols of prestige, thus a
bridge across the channel will be like adding petrol to a smoldering fire. Individuals can be excused for thinking about
themselves and cannot be blamed for wanting comforts they perceive to be
desirable. Who would not want to own a
car and take the family for a drive over the bridge and across the
channel? It ought to be the role of the
government to foresee these trends and guide people in the right direction. Instead, it is forging ahead most irresponsibly with
what will be the biggest disaster the nation has ever seen – apart
from losing our independence.
In this
regard, I applaud Dr Waheed (who had made the bridge a campaign slogan in his
election bid due to its appeal to an unaware public) for his courage to drop the
issue after learning from my article its disastrous consequences and choosing the
nation’s best interest over personal gain.
And Mr Nasheed also, after having made an issue of the bridge early
in his campaign, had dropped the issue later on, probably having wised-up about
the damage such a bridge will cause.
But this
does not seem to be the case with the Mr Yameen, who seems to be unconcerned about the damage building the bridge will
inflict on the nation. This is
in spite of having sent my article to him, and his deputy Dr Jameel
(who wrote to me earlier of his appreciation for my writings) together with
many others in his camp. Winning
municipal/parliamentary elections, now that he is elected President, at
any cost to the nation seems to be Mr Yameen’s only goal.
I am not in
the least surprised at this irresponsible behaviour of Mr Yameen – he
campaigned on a platform to carry on Mr Gayyoom’s policies (policy? – sic!) which were in large part damaging
to this nation over the thirty years of his reign; many of them were no more
than about bolstering his hollow “’izzaiytherikan,” despite repeated reminders
of their damaging impacts on the nation!
All this is
besides the stupidity of it all! To allow tall ships to pass under across the existing short spans
would make the “bridge” look more like an arch, and would dwarf the entire existing cityscape and make it totally out of scale to the existing surroundings, which would make it the biggest eyesore in the entire nation! If a scheme of
an openable span is employed with an eye to reducing this downside, the risks
associated with it is huge: any mishap to the mechanism may take days or weeks
to repair, in part due to our poor technological and organizational capabilities,
and disrupt our very livelihoods and bring the nation to a standstill or
suffocate us to death; for we import virtually everything from abroad, from all types of food and medications to supplies to the tourism industry on the incomes from
which the nation depends on its survival, and that is the only reasonable route for supplies
to reach us. If that route is blocked, only Allah would know the extent of the very dire consequences we'll face!
And we are in urgent need to invest heavily in the rest of the nation to generate equitable growth – where would the money come from? If foreigners are to be involved, does that mean we allow ourselves to be practically enslaved, given the huge weight of the bridge in relative terms? This, again, is an aspect that only a few people have any inclination or mind to think about, let alone being simply aware of.
Cost-benefit analysis of any project can take account of only calculable costs and benefits; it can say absolutely nothing about the multitude of non-monetizeable downsides arising from the project – which are devastatingly huge in our case, given our tiny and fragile islands. (To get a better idea, go to Google Earth, locate Malé – 4°10' N, 73°35' E – and magnify the view.) This can be clearly seen from the account given above: none of the downsides mentioned – which are the more significant costs of the bridge to us, namely, the cost to human health and impacts on our fragile physical environment – have been taken into account at all! And mentioned above are only what I could foresee with certainty! There is much else I could only feel intuitively but cannot grasp, thus are not mentioned. (It was similar / equivalent downsides of leasing our Int'l Airport to Indians that my article "Viyafaari U'sool" was about, but downsides that are sociopolitical in nature rather than health-environmental; moreover, while the impacts of the bridge are easy to visualize given their immediate nature and our being currently immersed in their general environment, those of the former are stretched over time and therefore almost impossible to imagine, not to mention the illusiveness of sociopolitical issues.) Businesses that undertake such projects are mostly interested in their bottomlines, not much else; these "else" are lumped together under the benign-sounding rubric of "externalities," which is a convenient and "politically correct" but misleading term. This is not to say that they are out there to deceive people; given the intangibility of externalities, most people, including those businesses that come forward to undertake the tasks, often have little or no idea of these illusive aspects and thus it is easy for them to downplay their ill effects or disregard them altogether and still have a clear conscience. (This, let it be noted, is usually the case, although I doubt very much that the negative impacts of our building a bridge would escape their notice – for it would be clear to even a blind person, literally – which means that those at the Government high office would also have sensed it, but such is the power of self-deceiving psychology that in view of the ass-kissing behaviour ingrained in them, the fact would not most likely have even surfaced to their conscious minds: their blindness is a direct outcome of perpetuating ass-kissing behaviour ; if not blindness, then a self-imposed desire to abide by that behaviour to both avoid repercussions for a dissenting view and curry favour***; see my article on importance of a positive sociopolitical atmosphere for effective national development, below.) It is abundantly clear that we at the receiving end of such projects are burdened with a huge moral responsibility bordering on sacred to be vigilant about all costs, and not be taken in by just the monetary costs of projects handed over by the contractors.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
*** Generally speaking, ass-kissing behaviour is the norm in totalitarian nations, portrayed by a favourite example, “Napoleon is always right”; Napoleon being the pig depicting Stalin in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. In theMaldives
And we are in urgent need to invest heavily in the rest of the nation to generate equitable growth – where would the money come from? If foreigners are to be involved, does that mean we allow ourselves to be practically enslaved, given the huge weight of the bridge in relative terms? This, again, is an aspect that only a few people have any inclination or mind to think about, let alone being simply aware of.
Cost-benefit analysis of any project can take account of only calculable costs and benefits; it can say absolutely nothing about the multitude of non-monetizeable downsides arising from the project – which are devastatingly huge in our case, given our tiny and fragile islands. (To get a better idea, go to Google Earth, locate Malé – 4°10' N, 73°35' E – and magnify the view.) This can be clearly seen from the account given above: none of the downsides mentioned – which are the more significant costs of the bridge to us, namely, the cost to human health and impacts on our fragile physical environment – have been taken into account at all! And mentioned above are only what I could foresee with certainty! There is much else I could only feel intuitively but cannot grasp, thus are not mentioned. (It was similar / equivalent downsides of leasing our Int'l Airport to Indians that my article "Viyafaari U'sool" was about, but downsides that are sociopolitical in nature rather than health-environmental; moreover, while the impacts of the bridge are easy to visualize given their immediate nature and our being currently immersed in their general environment, those of the former are stretched over time and therefore almost impossible to imagine, not to mention the illusiveness of sociopolitical issues.) Businesses that undertake such projects are mostly interested in their bottomlines, not much else; these "else" are lumped together under the benign-sounding rubric of "externalities," which is a convenient and "politically correct" but misleading term. This is not to say that they are out there to deceive people; given the intangibility of externalities, most people, including those businesses that come forward to undertake the tasks, often have little or no idea of these illusive aspects and thus it is easy for them to downplay their ill effects or disregard them altogether and still have a clear conscience. (This, let it be noted, is usually the case, although I doubt very much that the negative impacts of our building a bridge would escape their notice – for it would be clear to even a blind person, literally – which means that those at the Government high office would also have sensed it, but such is the power of self-deceiving psychology that in view of the ass-kissing behaviour ingrained in them, the fact would not most likely have even surfaced to their conscious minds: their blindness is a direct outcome of perpetuating ass-kissing behaviour ; if not blindness, then a self-imposed desire to abide by that behaviour to both avoid repercussions for a dissenting view and curry favour***; see my article on importance of a positive sociopolitical atmosphere for effective national development, below.) It is abundantly clear that we at the receiving end of such projects are burdened with a huge moral responsibility bordering on sacred to be vigilant about all costs, and not be taken in by just the monetary costs of projects handed over by the contractors.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
*** Generally speaking, ass-kissing behaviour is the norm in totalitarian nations, portrayed by a favourite example, “Napoleon is always right”; Napoleon being the pig depicting Stalin in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. In the
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