Behind a Benefit Concert

A benefit concert for Haiti will be held this coming Sunday at Carnegie Hall, featuring celebrity pianist, Lang Lang.  This article from the New York Times raises some uncomfortable yet important questions about the true benefits of benefit concerts.  Who is really benefiting from fundraisers like these?  Are we, collectively speaking, too often guilty of doing something just for the sake of doing something?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/arts/music/18benefit.html

The Last Stretch

I saw a lecture on TED by Sendhil Mullainathan, a behavioral economist from Harvard University.  He spoke of the problem of the “last mile” (the last stretch of a figurative bridge that links points A and B): the failure on behavioral level to adopt the solution to a problem.   The example he gave was diarrhea and oral hydration therapy.  The latter is the best solution to the former, to date, but there are still a significant number of deaths every year due to diarrhea in areas where oral hydration salts are readily available—they are simply not being utilized.  Giving people more data does not help in convincing them to adopt this solution, Mullainathan said.   This reminds me of my first class in introductory social psychology with E. Tory Higgins, where he said that humans are faulty computers.  We do things in systematic ways, but our cognitive models are simply flawed sometimes.  Mullainathan emphasized the importance of adding more effort on this “last mile”—finding out why people are not doing what has been proven to be good for them.  This is a practical and logical approach, as the efforts devoted to technological/medical research, distribution and adoption are markedly disproportional to one another.  His stand resonates with my ongoing study of increasing clinical trial participation and raising its standard.  Without the last mile, the bridge would never connect points A and B.

 China's Donghai Bridge, the longest bridge in the world.  Image from wikimedia.org

Women's Reservation Bill in India

I started learning this week about the women's reservation bill in India, an attempt to reserve 1/3 of the seats for female representatives in Lok Sabha (also called "House of the People," the directly elected lower house of the Indian Parliament) and state Assemblies.  First introduced in 1996, the bill remains largely controversial to this day, despite its historical passing this week.  Among the dissensions is the question whether the bill would really improve the representation of all women (including those in lower class and minorities), or simply move more elitist women into Parliament without changing the plight of the voiceless.

An article from The Economist last week talks about gendercide in several countries, where the birth of boys is valued much more by society than their female counterparts, resulting in large-scale selective abortions, willful neglect, and even infanticide.  Parts of India are among those societies.  Though I am not familiar enough with the present historico-political situation to decide with certainty where I stand on the reservation bill debate (From what I have learned so far, I am more on the opposing side at this point), it is certain that the issue of female representation must be addressed with a more comprehensive approach.  Ending gender preference in some areas would be part of that approach, as would increasing education for women (literacy rate is much lower among women than men), improving access to primary health care, ending violence against women and sex trafficking, etc.

All of this boils down to the chicken-and-egg question: Which comes first--increased representation of women in the government?  Or increased effort to empower women at all levels, so that they can fight with their own merit in all sectors, including in the government?  Do lasting impacts come trickling down or building up, or both simultaneously?

Above image from http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2010/03/08/some-questions-on-the-womens-reservation-bill/

Trust and Neutrality

Medecins Sans Frontieres issued a press release today, protesting a statement made last week by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at the Strategic Concept Seminar in Helsinki.  In his speech, Rasmussen called for closer collaboration between the civil and military sectors in crisis areas, such as Afghanistan.  "In today's world, we have to realize that the military is no longer the complete answer--now it is just part of the answer.  Hard power is of little use if it cannot be combined with soft power," said Rasmussen. 

MSF objected strongly to this statement, reiterating the point made by Christophe Fournier, president of MSF International, in a speech to NATO last December: that the organization's humanitarian principle is deeply rooted in political neutrality, and the success of its operation depends on maintaining such neutrality.  This sentiment and objection to Rasmussen's statement is shared by other NGOs as well.

Trust is too precious and volatile in areas of conflict, and it simply cannot afford to be tampered with by careless words like these.