Thoughts

A news article on Haveeru Online caught my attention today ( http://www.haveeru.com.mv/?page=details&id=114841 ), not because of the fees mentioned in the article, but because they have a website online which publishes "official minutes of meetings" of the council. It achieves two things: 1. Transparency - the minutes of meeting show individual stances taken by councillors on specific issues. Their constituents can actually know what they said in the Council Meetings. It's a great thing to do and I salute Male' City Council for taking this initiative. 2. Accountability and disemmination of information about Council's Activities - this is agaisnt the trend of the current political climate and again, I commend for this initiative by the Male' City Council. The question now is, will they continue this in the future? I hope so, and urge them to do so. Even if only for the sake of instilling the "democratic values" in the rest of the councils. ...

The fundamental aim of any business can be expressed as “maximizing profit for the shareholders.” There are several ways of achieving that. However, those goals and targets should be reached through widely accepted moral norms within the society including adherence to Laws governing business conduct, and employ fair trading to achieve the goals of the business through legitimate and just means. It is also about doing what is right and refrain from doing what is wrong in carrying business activities. Although some aspects of business ethics differ from society to society due to different laws governing different societies, the broader aspects of Business Ethics are still the same across all the societies in general. Some examples of Business ethics are conflicts of interest issues, corrupted and fraudulent procurement practices, abuse of confidential and critical business intelligence information, deliberate ignorance of applicable laws, ignoring responsibilities towards the emplo...

‎"1,658,266 cu.ft of marshy soil will be removed from Maakilhi wetland area to build the Convention Center for SAARC Summit according to EIA Report.... and for backfilling the area, 4,145,665 cu.ft of sand had to be mined from Hithadhoo lagoon! A reliable source has confirmed that the sand is being mined from an area planned for future reclamation..." Now I was asked if this is sustainable development in a facebook thread by Ahmed Nizam (Maavahi NGO Founder member and current Maldives NGO Federation President). I still  vividly remember that night as the darkest night of my entire civil society engagement. The public consultation meeting was ordered by the president's office, but it remotely resembled a discussion forum. It was more like a muzaahiraa against a handful of us who were trying to reason against a politically charged crowd of more than 70 people. Here is my reply to in the thread which summarizes the night and the subsequent difficulties we had. In the ...

My ranking of Apple products lie somewhere between utter rubbish and expensive toys, but I have to admit, Steve Jobs is a great visionary and a genius at his trade... and inspiring too. Steve Jobs Lays It Down For Playboy http://gizmodo.com/5821429/that-time-in-1987-when-playboy-interviewed-steve-jobs iPlayboy — In 1987, a young, brash Steve Jobs sat down with the world's preeminent gentleman's magazine. With yesterday's launch of the Playboy Commission , an editorialized guide to Heff's archives, we can take a look inside the mind of Mr. Apple. Depending on whom one talks to, Jobs is a visionary who changed the world for the better or an opportunist whose marketing skills made for an incredible commercial success. In jeans and worn sneakers, running a company that prides itself on having a mixture of Sixties idealism and Eighties business savvy, Jobs is both admired and feared. "He's the reason I'll work 20 hours a day," says one engineer. O...