THE NEED FOR A SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE FOR REGULATORY AUTHORITIES

We have had a proliferation of enforcement and regulatory agencies in the recent past. These are supposed to exercise autonomous authority over specific areas of human activity.  While the current political structure is in a state of relative flux, these agencies have been given greater policing powers than they have enjoyed in a long time. Yet, as citizens, one wonders how effective they are and how well connected they are to the people, their aspirations and their grievances. 

There is a popular mantra that states that if there is monopoly involvement of an entity in any sector of human activity, then a regular’s role escalates rapidly in importance such as is the case with say, the role of the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) in overseeing electricity, petroleum and water which are all monopolies in Sri Lanka. By implication, the role of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRC) is minimal because strong competition in the sector creates the conditions for self-regulation.  Yet the situation is not that simple.

These days, sector players have a habit of banding together for mutual benefit, creating de-facto monopolies in specific activities such as easy-cash for example. 

The issue I want to highlight with the above example is that the public is certainly worried as to the level of internal awareness of a regulator on the activities of their sector. I would like to think they are fully cognizant but if so, then why is there no mention, no discussion, no action on those issues? More to the point, where do they talk to the public on such issues?

The tired mediums of leaflets, posters, “public gatherings”, “selective engagement with civil sector organizations” etc. have been flogged to death and their effectiveness is near zero at present. The issue is worsened by the complete lack of citizen responsibility on the part of Sri Lankans where they will only get serious about “responding” when their comfort zones are violated. 

The key problem I perceive is that regulators have to either deal with single individuals with unique problems who have somehow managed to cut through a mountain of red tape and barriers to obtained knowledge of where to go and what to do to find relief for their grievances or they work with a few specific interest groups. This is so because the average Sri Lankan is clueless about most things that have a direct impact on them and are generally wont to stick their heads in the sand. In most cases, critiquing the social order or the market reality is something alien. As mentioned in a previous post, they hide behind politicians and hope they come good. Not so but they have yet to be given a strong reason to believe otherwise.  Therefore, iIn many cases, problems are never brought to the surface and remain hidden from regulators.  This is tragic because some regulators such as the PUCSL and the CAA are doing excellent work in restrictive arenas while some others simply do not have a strong public engagement strategy that aligns with the type of social human being one has to deal with today. 

In today’s world, near instantaneous stimulus-response requirements have rendered most perennial methods largely ineffectual. They are not completely outdated by standing alone those engagement techniques will fail. No one is really interested in digging through pages and pages of enactments, regulations, rules, guidelines. Most believe that anything that is not in 16 point fonts on a single page is pretty useless. They also do not believe that they should be sent to halfway houses to get their problems addressed meaning that telling them to hit the local DS office or PS office is guaranteed to rise their heckles more than anything else. 

Farsighted thinkers, regulators and civil leaders met recently to thrash out why consumer movements have failed and to
attempt to chisel out a solution to the problem

NO! What the public needs is for the regulators to be able to respond to them very quickly. They do not always need a solution. They mostly need to know that a person in authority has heard them and will respond to them within a reasonable period of time. In short, they need to be active on social media like the Pakistani drug enforcement authority and many others. It requires a mindset shift in how they engage and that requires three things a) no fear b) desire to respond quickly and c) a strong citizen network to work with. Within the current set up of these commissions, authorities, boards and agencies, that is difficult. The reason is not legislative but rather recalcitrance, a complete lack of awareness on the fact that social media has taken the role of convener of masses and the lack of sufficiently enabled staff to respond to the citizen at a high level.

  

Some of the more farsighted regulators such as the CAA and the PUCSL have taken an active lead to create such groups but to engage them, it is not sufficient to have pocket meetings. Institutions such as the one’s mentioned need to get online – and quickly.  If they do so, then I suspect that there will be a domino effect with every other regulator also having a highly interactive online presence and not merely an information dissemination website. The people will certainly be happy, have more faith in grassroots action targeting enforcement and the enforcers themselves more enabled to execute their mandate. 

The key, as Kumi Nesiah, a moderator on the National Consumer Movement FB page says, is to “attract people to the ethos of criticism” and paraphrasing what he says, “the consumers are looking for faith and for the longest period of time, they have been worshipping  at the alters of megabrands, consuming advertisements and thinking they are living high quality lives when in fact, they are driven, like mindless automatons towards mega-acquisition and mega-greed that feeds them debt and feeds the brands money”. The people need to believe and they must be given reasons for a belief either beyond or separate from market-ideologies or economic-spiritualties. The regulators, along with civil groups, academics, media people and politicians have a mega role to play in that and their presence online is mandatory. 

(If you are interested in getting involved, obtaining knowledge, highlighting issues, resolving problems, please send us a membership request on Facebook – National Consumer Network of Sri Lanka.  ) 

STOP BEING VOTERS AND START BEING CITIZENS: THE NEED FOR CREATING A NATIONAL CONSUMER NETWORK

We have been railroaded into living in a consumer society. This is not a good place for the citizens of a nation but it is where we are. Time was when most of what we wanted we produced ourselves or bartered for. We were piecewise content and groupwise satisfied. Then came this folderol about growth and we embarked on a mad journey to tie ourselves to marketplaces, buy beyond our need and live beyond our means. We allowed ourselves to be taught that all of that was a great good, a wholesome and satisfying existence.

Let us said aside the insanity of the “greed is good” slogan. We have something that tops that. It is called “debt is good”. Right? Yeah. Haha! Funny one … that.  

We have just 65 trillion dollars’ worth of useable cash in the word and the global debt right now is 57 trillion dollars and climbing at around 7 million dollars a minute and somewhere in the early part of next year, we, as a human civilization, will literally have borrowed more than we can physically cover with cash. So, it is high time that we stop attempting to hoodwink ourselves that we can “create wealth” out of debt as has been a major component of the mantra of mainstream economic theory.

We have been indoctrinated into believing that nutrients are food! 

The truth of the matter is that the belligerents of this world will have to increase the rate of cannibalization of earth resources to live a little while longer.  In that process, they will use every trick in the book, every manipulation that human negative ingenuity can cough up, every form of threat, every type of pressure to ensure that a select few, at least on paper, are going to pull through and survive past Armageddon despite the fact that “Armageddon” by its definition will wipe out all of us.  

Funny… that. Yet, while truth stares them in the face, they have already decided that they must now consume even the meager resources generally available to the large masses of people. They have decided that they must commandeer and control the food, the land, the water, the air, the medicine, the education, the rare earth metals, the fossil resources, the renewable resources and the governance of nations.

These actions speak of crazed minds broken away from anything human and blindly believing that everyone else’s death would ensure their life. Those “everyone” know better but they are in greater part to blame for their own misery. You see, that collective or the majority “we” have always been sold on the fact that those we elect have our best interests at heart. We believe therefore, that instead of taking a strong, collective stance on who flies and who dies, we will vote someone into power and let that someone figure that out. We figure that in the end, we will, willy-nilly, come out unscathed regarding not the simple stupid fact that we are part of the “everyone” already marked for death by that select few.

We must realize that no one in any kind of leadership position anywhere in the world is going to cut us even the slightest slack. We must stop being voters and start being citizens.

We must forget the various intergovernmental task forces, the leadership summits, the high level forums. As we all know, those have amounted to nothing and will continue to be less than relevant as problem solving tools for us as time goes on.

We have over 550 natural foods but our supermarkets and are small "elavalu kades"
carry just about 50 of them. Time we asked why... 

We, the people, must provide the solutions and the first part of that work is to prevent window-wash, eye-wash, shot-gun “solutions” from being promoted.  Those have political and business convenience at their root and they have failed us in the past. Miserably. We must be ready to drill down into the realities of unfair trade, unfair acquisition, unfair exploitation. We must be ready with alternative research and counters and proofs on the fairytale claims and blatant lies of vendors and manufacturers who routinely exploit people of science with money to “validate” their claims. We must be able to understand what sort of legal and regulatory relief there is. We must be aware of the ways in which we can engage directly with such frameworks and institutions. 

We must be, not simply active consumers which we are anyway, but also, very informed ones that can collectively discuss issues and come to collective agreements on solutions. We must be capable of moving beyond the voters’ mantras of “there is no other solutions”, “this is the only solution”, “it is either my way or the highway” and be clear headed, factually concise, science based, diplomatic, collectively mission driven and capable of understanding that there is, in most cases, more than one way of solving problems. We, the people, determining our own future, must be strong and collected towards third spaces, grassroots action, dialogue after action, engagement of authorities, regulators and politicians not as counters but as collaborators to ensure that we all survive.

As a trigger to action, here are a few questions that you might want to cut your teeth on for starters. Join us on the National Consumer Network of Sri Lanka (NCNSL) community pages on FB to discuss all of this further:

• All prices of most goods and quite a lot of services are “credit card prices”. These are inflated to the tune of 22% of the actual price. Now, if you pay them in cash, most sellers will offer you a 10% discount when actually they should be giving you a 22% discount. Who is taken for a ride? YOU! Why? Because you just don’t know and more importantly, you have been drugged by TV adds that have lied to you through their teeth into believing you are getting a zero interest deal on installments. Who profits? The vendor? Nah. It’s the banks! What is the Central Bank of Sri Lanka doing? Nothing. Do we want them to? Yes. How? Collective lobbying and diplomacy. Who strategizes it? We do.  Let’s discuss it.
• The amount of electronic cash that is being used for  transactions has skyrocketed in the recent past with such instruments as Easy Cash, SMS may-ins etc. They are set to become the preferred method of purchasing goods in the very near future. They are a huge bank. Who regulates it? No one. Who should? The Central Bank. Should we enforce it? Yes. How? Collective lobbying and diplomacy. Who strategizes it? We do.  Let’s discuss it.
• The biggest “growth” sector in the world today (including Sri Lanka) is health.  We have a proliferation of hospitals. Why? Because people are getting sicker now. Why? Because the air we breathe, the food we consume, the water we drink is poisoned. How should be stopping all of this? That’s the entire state machinery right there that needs to step up and do its job. Are they? Well, some of them are trying but are they able to move forwards? Not with the oil mafia, the agrochemical mafia, the gas mafia and the drug mafia. Do we take them on? Yes we do. How? Let’s discuss it.
• 4.    92% of the pediatric beds of urban Sri Lanka are filled with  children with respiratory diseases . Why? Because of the smog. Who should regulate this? The Central Environmental Authority. Are they doing their job? No. How can we get them to do that? We can go to courts, get a writ of mandamus and force them to do their job which they have shirked for years. Who is preventing them from doing it? The political machinery of the country. Do you want to vote for them again? No.  How do we get it through to them that we will no longer tolerate this? Let’s discuss it.
•  We used to have a Cosmetics, Devices and Drugs Regulatory Authority but now we have a National Medical Drug Regulatory Authority. Cosmetics are no longer regulated! Yet, they are the cause of more health issues than medical drugs. Why? Do we need this changed ASAP? YES! Can we do it? Of course – as a collective lobby. Let’s discuss it.