Some time ago I went for a walk along some village trails I hadn’t walked before. Bangladeshis will often ask questions to Bideshis, but on this particular trip I was struck by how many started with “Kothay geyechen?” meaning “Where did you go?” I thought it was sort of an odd place to start. In Bangladesh the first question to a stranger is generally “What is your country?” “How are you?” or maybe “Any problem?” often followed by, “What are you doing here?” I get these sorts of questions on partner visits while with someone who is known to the community. The context of this particular walk was perhaps a little different. These villagers might have known about the local Bideshis so they might have had some context, but to ask the the question “Where did you go,” is to ask a question that focuses on history. There are a lot of interesting assumptions and givens in that starting place. This is maybe a question that comes from a rooted lifestyle. The questions of “who are you?” and “where are you going?” are perhaps meaningless in communities where one has spent enough time that for everybody encountered is known. Thus you wouldn’t even think about asking them when finally presented with a stranger.

That rootedness is a bit of an illusion though. I think I’ve mentioned how little rock Bangladesh has. It sits on a delta and is silt a long way down. I may be crazy, but I think that this contributes to a sense of instability at some level. Last week there was an earthquake in Sikkim and all the buildings in Dhaka wobbled. I was on the 7th story of a building close to the MCC office in Dhaka at the time and the rattling made me pretty nervous. People ran out of their buildings and were scared to return. Earthquakes are a problem that is in the back of many peoples minds. There have been big earthquakes in Bangladesh’s past, and if a large one ever hits again, all previous disasters in Bangladesh are going to pale in comparison. Unfortunately like so many issues here, nothing has really been done about it because there are more immediate problems.

I find myself thinking a lot about stability, especially now that after 3 years, my term in Bangladesh is quickly winding down and I’m not sure what’s next. I’m waxing nostalgic about where I went and how long that journey has been. There have been times of deep contentment and also pain. In a little while I will return to the US and hope to reconnect, but I will find you at a different point in your life. With this in mind, I ask the question, as you sit back and think about the last 3 years, Kothay Geyechen? Where did you go?

I am guilty of thinking that I know how the world works. Oh sure, I might not know everything, but I know many of the general principles and if I need to, can do the research to find out the details. Thing is, I sometimes get blindsided by ideas outside of my discipline, for example there are hugh swaths of psychology, social science, etc. etc. that I have no idea about and these are sometimes very relevant to understanding a situation. I might observe something, but not have a framework to really talk about or understand it. One such idea that comes from psychology is functional fixedness. According to wikipedia, functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used. We tend to approach problems through the frameworks and Architects and computer scientists, might use the language of a design pattern. An psychologists and engineers might look at problems in very different ways because they both have a different toolkit for understanding. If they are talking together and shaping each others perceptions, then I think that together they’ll understand what is going on more fully.

In Bangladesh if you need some work done at your house, you’ll call a mistri or tradesman. I think it literally might mean master, as in master of a trade though that sometimes might be a bit optimistic. The mistri will show up barefoot, with a little bag of tools consisting of a saw, a few chisels, a plane, or maybe some trowels if he works with brick, but there will almost be a hatul or hammer. A hammer is the tool of choice for everything. Bangladeshi’s have a penchant to pound. Specialized equipment like motorcycles and bicycles often needs some special wrenches to work on certain parts. However if you don’t have that wrench, a screw driver and hammer tapping at a protruding corner might work. Tools are used to death in Bangladesh and often don’t last as long as I think they should. For physical things don’t there isn’t a sense of permanence. Maybe it’s because things are changing so quickly, or maybe it’s because at the very core Bangladesh is a delta and even the land isn’t permanent. There are very few old ruins in Bangladesh. Other thinking on the other hand seems to change very slowly, for many Bangladeshis, no meal is complete without rice–without it, it’s just a snack. I eat a lot of Bangladeshi food, but when I try to share dishes from other places I’ve lived, it often goes unappreciated. I’ve heard it said by Bangladeshi’s, “your food is not suitable for us.” From my perspective, what Bangladeshi’s consider suitable food, is very limited.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a certain amount of functional fixedness that is required in society. It allows one to make assumptions that form the basis of further development. Without a core foundation of assumptions or design patterns, it is difficult to design or build upon previous work and a project that makes sense when it was started can very quickly become irrelevant when those assumptions become invalid. To compensate, projects either need to be over engineered or restarted and both drastically increase costs. Sustainable technology work is in many ways on the edge. Sustainability implies a very long time, yet we talk about technology as having a lifespan, often very short. Most new technology, either the product or the idea behind it, doesn’t come from Bangladesh, and importing it without adaptation often puts it into conflict with local thinking and structures. When it comes to technology, I understand many ideas that are simply absent in most of Bangladesh, and am often asked to share them, but it’s difficult because often they are premature and simply won’t work here or if they did would require too much time or expense to get working. The idea behind sustainable technology is to bring wisdom rather than just knowledge and that is much more challenging. I’ve had conversations about how tools improperly used soon become noshto or broken and I’ve tried using the phrase. “shudo hatul takle, shop shamosha perekei moto decade” – If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. While I think it’s grammatically correct, all I get is blank stares. I guess the idiom doesn’t translate.

One way I sometimes pass the time in Bangladesh is watching talks from TED. One that I enjoyed was when Rory Sutherland spoke about the strange disproportionality of work in human problem solving, especially when it involves human psychology. He says that we generally think big important problems need big important and expensive solutions, however as he says, “It is the tendency of organization or institution to deploy as much force as possible, where it is the tendency of the person to be influenced almost in absolute reverse to the amount of force being applied.”

He claims that when we can graph stuff that costs a lot of money against stuff that has a big effect. Stuff that is very expensive and very effective is strategy. Things that are neither are trivia and he also observes rather tongue in cheek that consultancy is both expensive and not very effective. The final category he claims doesn’t have a name and is where details are key and have an effect out of proportion with the effort involved. Personally, I think that last category is tactics.

I’ve been thinking about how that applies to Bangladesh. If you look at it’s problems the first thought I have is that what seems to be lacking is strategy. A recent study showed that cost of traffic congestion in Dhaka last year was about 3 billion $US. It would seem this is the result of poor logistical planning. However, there is a plan. From what I understand it’s not even a bad plan. The problem is that it isn’t followed; buildings get built in designated free space, bridges are built too narrow and the materials saving pocketed, etc. etc.

My knee jerk reaction is regulation, but thats not exactly the problem either. Bangladesh bureaucracy is legendary, but it is mostly just a barrier to entry. From what I can tell the missing piece is enforcement: between corruption and culture, enforcement and penalties are for all intents and purposes absent. The biggest problem with corruption is not that it siphons off money, but that it actively sabotages much needed improvements. pukur churi koreche – they stole the pond…

The expression ” stealing the pond” needs some explanation. The village pond or pukur is the center of rural life so it refers to a really terrible sort of theft and is probably appropriate in this context.