Organisation theory

One of the classes I took at LKY School was Organisation theory. The class was taken by Prof. Henry Wai-Hang Yee who's sincere, enthusiastic about his stuff and did a nice job. He’s now at the University of Hong Kong (http://www.ppaweb.hku.hk/f/henryyee ).  

One definition of Organisation theory is “an attempt to explain and predict how organisations and the people in them will behave in varying organisational structures, cultures and circumstances”. However there is no theory of organisations, but a multitude of theories. The field of organisation theory is pretty fragmented with a variety of schools. “Each school is at odds with the others, each defends its own position, each claims that the others have major deficiencies”. Its a wonder that any progress gets made at all in this mess. I guess the variety of circumstances of human existence are wide enough to merit the range of theories and each has some sphere of validity. 

Reading academic papers in organisation theory can be pretty depressing work. There’s rarely any maths, so they’re wordy. They tend to be dense and theoretical with few examples. Things are pretty fuzzy and conceptual and usually not very convincing. The questions that they try to address in the first place are usually theoretical and not very interesting. 

I tried to crystallise some general things to say about Organisation theory for this post but found it difficult. So instead, I thought I would mention some of the seminal and better-written readings which might be of interest to the general reader. In this post I’ll cover some of the older readings and in a later post cover the more new-fangled stuff. You dear reader, should pick one of the articles below that fits your interest and download and read it. You might find it quite enriching.

For regular visitors to my blog here are my recommendations:
Deepak: Read the Potter and Herzberg articles
Amar: The Garbage Can model of Organisational Choice article
Suman: you should read all of them ! 

1.) Max Weber on bureaucracy: Max Weber is overwhelmingly the guy most associated with the study of bureaucracy and the guy considered the father of sociology. So I was excited to have the opportunity to study his stuff. But to my surprise it was underwhelming. The reading we had seemed pretty bland, with a collection of unexceptionable observations about bureaucracy (tasks are clearly divided, there is a hierarchy, bureaucrats are people with specialist knowledge, they get paid a salary). Finally I realised that this written in the early 19th century during the years when bureaucracy was a new phenomenon and he was the first person to pin down what differentiated it from what came before. Quite a nice read if you keep that in mind.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wox2ensxcsxlivc/Weber%20on%20bureaucracy.pdf?dl=0 

2.) Fredrick Herzerg’s  “One more time: How do you motivate employees” : On that question that all managers struggle with, Fredrick Herzberg seemed to have laid a solid foundation for the answer back in the 1960s.  This is a well-written, interesting and a relevant read for most of us. As the article summary nicely and succinctly captures it: 

“The things that makes people satisfied and motivated on the job are different from the things that make them dissatisfied. Ask workers what makes them unhappy at work and you’ll hear about a bad boss, a low salary, an uncomfortable workspace or stupid rules. Managed badly, environmental factors make people miserable, and they can certainly be demotivating. But even if managed brilliantly, they don’t motivate anyone to work much harder or smarter. People are motivated instead by interesting work, challenging and increasing responsibility. These intrinsic factors answer peoples’ deep-seated need for growth and achievement. 

Herzberg’s work influenced a generation of scholars and managers - but his conclusions don’t seem to have fully penetrated the American workplace, if the extraordinary attention still placed to compensation and incentive packages is anything to go by."

https://www.dropbox.com/s/asois7ou8ffqtbe/Herzberg%20on%20motivation.pdf?dl=0

3.) “Choices, Values, Frames” by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky : Kahneman is the winner of a Nobel Prize and one of the founders of the hot new fields of behavioural economics and behavioural nudges. In this seminal paper they introduce some key behavioural biases: like how we prefer a small certain gain, to a larger gain associated with uncertainty, and how the way a choice is stated can influence the option we make. 

It doesn’t suffer from the usual vagueness and theoriticalness of organisation theory papers, but runs at a high-ish level intellectually so can be hard to grasp. But really worth the read the quality of the ideas and exposition. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/j2jpd6ggoh7i2pi/Kahneman%20%26%20Tversky.pdf?dl=0

4.) Michael Porter on Strategy: This is a landmark management paper and would be familiar to MBA types. Potter lays out pretty compelling vision for what 'strategy' is in business organisations (the ideas are applicable to other kind of organisations). Again well worth a read 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d9us4qu3l3564pa/Porter%20on%20strategy.pdf?dl=0

5.) "A Garbage Can Model of Organisational Choice": This is an idiosyncratic paper. It attempts to create a model of a type of organisation the authors call “Organised anarchies”. The authors (all academics) propose universities as a prime example of such an organisation. Its clear that they don’t have a high opinion of how universities are run - the model is one of major randomness; of problems, and actors floating, a set of actors coalescing to try to address a problem, then coming up with a random solution… or something like that. Its been a while since I read it. If you’re a cynic with some understanding of computer simulation, this is the perfect paper for you! 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hlurv9qye0o7zb3/Garbage%20Can%20_model.pdf?dl=0

Notes: 

The quotes are from the introduction to the book "Classic Readings in Organisation Theory" by Ott, Shafritz and Yong

For a compilation of resources on studying public policy in general and at the LKY School, see: http://despoki.blogspot.in/p/studying-public-policy-and.html 

My article on Solapur

I wrote an article for the Six Degrees  News website. Six Degrees is an international development news website that focusses on grassroots reports. My article was about a government programme called Jal Yukt Shivar in Maharashtra. Here it is:  

http://www.sixdegreesnews.org/drought-management-successes-in-solapur-india/

I’m excited about having done this. I’ve not been officially ‘published’ for a while now, if at all, though I guess there were opportunities at Arghyam that I’ve passed up due to other work. Six Degrees is founded by a friend, Binayak Das, so it didn’t require pitching from my side, and I didn’t get paid for it. 

Whatever I do (if I do anything at all!) in the next phase of my life, I hope writing will be a part of it. This blog has been a source of great fulfilment but time to grow beyond it. And it would be good to be able to generate some income from writing. 

I learnt some practicalities about journalism on the trip. One was the difficulty of really evaluating the success of a programme or initiative from a visit. Though I have a background in the water sector, I’m a generalist and not technically trained, so it was hard to really gauge. And for a large scale programme like this, unless you visit lots of locations, you can’t conclude anything with any degree of confidence. Your ideas about this will be appreciated. 

Anyway, on the visit to Solapur in Maharashtra, based on which I wrote the article, I had the opportunity to meet the current District Collector. It happened quite easily, after a couple of phone calls, which was quite surprising. At Arghyam, it was really painful getting meetings with IAS officers. He was a very cordial and a nice person. However the really interesting bit was about the previous Collector, Tukaram Munde. He really seems to be a larger-than-life person who managed to achieve spectacular results. I have some sense of administration from work at Arghyam, and this chap in my opinion is off the charts. The District Collector (or Commissioner as he is called in some districts) has a really difficult job. There’s just too much stuff, too many subjects to work on. There are around 30 government departments/programmes that he is the head for. The DC of Sholapur told me there are literally hundreds of committees that he  chairs. Then there is the lack of good quality and quantity of HR to work with, including corrupt people. And unlike the private sector, you can't fire people easily. There are many restrictions and rules to getting work done, much less flexibility than in the private sector. There is the political system to be managed, which could be quite formidable. And in the first place, many of the programmes are ill-designed and ‘dead-on-arrival’. So I’d say, as far as serious impact is concerned, the DC is also for the most part, ‘dead-on-arrival’. However, Mr. Mundhe somehow managed to crack the system and actually get it to deliver. For the life of me, I cannot visualise how he did it. He is now head of Navi Mumbai district and making waves there too. A man to watch (and you can watch some of his exploits by searching on the web). 

Back to the trip again. There is a ‘power’ element in the field trip portion of visits like these , the government staff down the line from the DC are very deferential. At the same time I also got the sense that they thought I did not understand the stuff, and were patronising. I also find it tiring to meet a large number of people in a short span - my comfort level certainly is in meeting fewer people and developing stronger connections with them. 

I wonder where Jalyukt Shivar is going. There seem to be many issues with the scheme, much more so in other districts. But it also seems to have huge potential from the Solapur experience. This programme seems to have the tantalising potential to be the ‘Holy Grail’ for water security in drought-affected districts. But many a slip between the cup and the lip. At the same time some other large scale success stories are emerging from other districts like Dewas in Madhya Pradesh. Is there a trend here ? In the past, it was always about NGO models and touting them, but there were very few examples of successes at scale. Are we entering a tipping point where we get more and and more successes at scale. I fervently hope so. 

An interesting side point is that Solapur district has 2 products with the GI (Geographical Indication) tag, Maldandi jowar and Sangoli pomogranate. Here is a full list of GI tagged products in India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Geographical_Indications_in_India 

It seems this idea is taking off in India.

Some more photos from the trip below:

Check dams storing water

Compartment bunds under construction

Dry open wells that are now recharged with water

A farm pond

Local farmer

Development Economics

One of the highlights of the MPA course at the Lee Kuan Yew School was the module on Development Economics. I found myself quite often feeling a sense of wonder and exhilaration in the class that I didn’t feel in any other class and that I didn’t expect to feel in a classroom. 

It is hard to pin down where the feeling came from. I think it was the approach and worldview of economics, applied to areas that I was particularly interested in, like education and health. As I got from the course, the approach was to try to get at human behaviour in these situations and figure out what a rational individual would do to maximise their well-being. Then try to capture that in equations and you got a working model of the world. Get data from the real world and see how well things seem to fit. 

For example, in education: the basic way of looking at it is that education is a way to improve your earning capacity. So you invest now in education in order to improve your later earnings. Then it becomes an optimisation problem: how many years of education should you invest in now (and forgoing current earning opportunities too) so that your overall life-earnings are maximised. Then you can start adding complexity to the model: the situation varies from person to person - some people get more out of their education so the returns from education have to be parameterised by a person-specific co-efficient. And then you get into why education increases your earning capacity - could be through direct increase in your capability to create wealth or could be through a ‘signalling’ effect, where the fact that you’ve passed some exams etc. shows that you have some intellectual capacity. And more such stuff.

On the empirical side, many people have looked at how average incomes of large groups of people vary with education. One study in the US arrived at a figure of a 7% increase in earnings for every additional year of schooling. 

In health it works like this: health is something you invest in, in time (with its opportunity cost) and money. It also depreciates on its own every year. Good health lets you earn more, and enjoy leisure more, thereby contributing to your utility/well-being. And there are competing demands on your money other than health - like daily consumption, leisure activities etc. So again its an optimisation problem of how much you invest in it in order to maximise your utility. 

This modelling also, in theory, shows the role of public policy. People do what they do to maximise their personal utility. However there are externalities to health and education and government wants people to have more of them. So government needs to intervene in these equations :-) , in the appropriate way so that people consume more of these goods than they otherwise would. 

We also looked at other things like agriculture and credit markets. For example, the landlord/tenant relationship in agriculture can be of different types: landlord can pay for part of the cost of raising the crop, he could get a fixed amount each crop irrespective of the actual profits, or there could be profit (and loss) sharing arrangements. Its possible to model these and theoretically arrive at conditions where different types of contracts are preferred. There are some nice papers that show that the theory seems to hold in practice. 

Another highlight of the course for me was the paper reproduction exercise. Good academic papers nowadays are accompanied by an upload of the actual data and the software code used to analyse the data. So its possible to reproduce the data analysis done in the paper and see if you get the same results. There are levels of complexity to this:

• you can run exactly the same code using the same data. Of course that’s not too much fun 
• you can fiddle with the code a bit and try to do slightly different things 
• in special cases you could collect the data yourself and reproduce the results from scratch. There’s a celebrated case in academia of a famous papers’ results being proved wrong in this way.  This article nicely describes that : http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22223190 

I chose to do a paper on water that was co-authored by the very well-known economist at J-PAL , Esther Duflo. It was a very fulfilling exercise and I found some minor discrepancies too, which was a big kick. 

The original paper is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4u37kptdcdjrund/%2BDuflo_2012_Happiness%20on%20tap.pdf?dl=0 

My report on the replication is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jcv96iatph8ze9r/Paper%20Reproduction%20Report.docx?dl=0 

Yvonne Jie Chen was the teacher, and her enthusiasm for the material was infectious. 

The course textbook was “Development Economics” by Debraj Ray. Well-written, erudite as hell and an enjoyable read but pretty uphill going for me atleast because of the intellectual level of the subject matter. I finally read less than 10% of the book, but it was still pretty good! 

Notes, Further Reading:
For a compilation of resources on studying public policy in general and at the LKY School, see: http://despoki.blogspot.in/p/studying-public-policy-and.html 

Responsible tourism

When you travel, you have an opportunity to use your money in a way that supports the local people in their livelihoods. There are two theoretical concepts in this connection:

1)leakage: this is related to how much tourism money stays in the local economy and how much goes out. If the money goes to local people and they in turn use that to pay other local people, the money benefits the local economy more and more. This is good.

2.) who benefits locally. Ideally it would be nice if our money could support those lower on the economic ladder as much as possible 

As an example, I noticed that the comparatively small town of Aurangabad has some pretty fancy hotels. Of course this is because its the nearest base for the Ajantha and Ellora caves. So I can visualise that rich tourists would fly into Aurangabad, go to a fancy hotel, then take a rental car, go to Ajantha and Ellora and then back to the hotel and then back to the airport and out. If you analyse the money they spend, you can see that most of it leaks or doesn't stay in the local economy:

- flight : money mostly goes to aviation fuel, trained airline and airport personnel 

- vehicle : mostly towards fuel (a good that comes from outside) and the driver (money stays locally hopefully)

- hotel : high-end hotels usually use a lot of men and material from outside the local area, both in their construction and running. 

When you think about it, responsible tourism is pretty hard to do in India. We would like to stay in reasonably decent places, which are clean, hygienic and pleasant. Unfortunately, this isn't part of the culture in India generally it seems (see : http://despoki.blogspot.in/2016/08/a-new-kind-of-hotel.html     ) . In our food too,  given low food hygiene standards in India , we obviously would tend to try to go to as upscale a place as possible to be safe, and give the local mom-and-pop shops a miss. 

So it can be a challenge. But I think with a little thought and with crowdsourcing of ideas, we could come up with quite a lot of good ways to support the local economy as much as we can when travelling.  Here's some to start with:

1.) Homestay and hostels: These are quite interesting staying options until my "new kind of hotel" becomes a reality. The negatives of bad hotels don't seem to apply to a large extent to households in India. So the idea of homestays ( where you stay at someone's home, not a hotel) might work out quite well, though its still in its infancy now. Youth hostels tend to be decently maintained and run and are another option. So are hotels run by the tourism department, though the quality of these varies widely in practice. 

2.) Buying the local traditional arts and crafts: This is a no-brainer and something most of us love to do anyway. The more research we do before going on a trip, the better in this regard. For example, to find producers who give their workers a decent wage and to find genuine products rather than cheap ripoffs. 

3.) Hire a good tour guide please, when you go to a historical monument or area. This is an excellent way to contribute, while enhancing your own experience of the area

3.) Another idea, not for the faint-hearted, would be to give a fraction of the money you spend on your trip to an NGO or other deserving cause in the local area.  10% would be a nice starting point, and 50% would be pretty cool :-) 

In general, the longer you stay in the area and more you get to understand and appreciate the local people and culture, the better, it seems to me. Hurried in-and-out and weekend trips don't serve anyone very well, it seems to me 

I paid Rs350/- for this collection of nice geological specimens to a  random salesman on my recent trip to Aurangabad. Coral, quarts and agate he told me. I am quite happy about the purchase but I wonder how this thing works. How much time does it take to find these pieces, who does the search, whom does the money go to ?

Notes, References:

1. If you're going to Wayanad, staying at the Wayanad County resort directly contribute to the well-being of tribal workers at the associated plantation. Read the happy story:  
http://www.thebetterindia.com/66124/ias-officer-prasanth-nair-priyadarshini-tea-estate-tourism-hunger-malnutrition-tribal-people-wayanad/

Fundamentals of healthcare policy

Basically copied from Prof. M. Ramesh's excellent slides on the topic :

Health Care is a “private” good which markets can provide efficiently in a technical sense. Free competition among providers and insurers would ensure that prices are as low and quality as high as possible. Households would get the services they want and can afford and society would benefit from highest quality and lowest prices

Yet there are many features that make health care an atypical private good : 

Many public goods features

Information Asymmetries  

make estimation of quality, costs and benefits difficult

allow opportunity for supplier-induced demand

Moral hazard

Adverse selection by consumers, users and providers

Those least able to afford health care have the largest demand for it. 

Possibility of “catastrophic” health care expenses

Nearly impossible to save for all health care contingencies

As a result, market allocation of health care would lead to

Higher costs and prices

Poorer quality (except for the frills that consumers can see)

Inequity (because access related to income)

Technically, government can address the above failings :

Directly provide health care with public goods features

Pay for or provide the necessary health care to those who cannot afford it

Adopt measures to limit the market participants’ ability to exploit information advantage

Eg. Require transparency in pricing and outcomes

Regulate adverse selection

Adjust provider payment and financing mechanisms to reduce moral hazard

However, there are practical limitations to govt intervention:

Limited financial resources

Incomplete information on consumer and producer behaviour and the different medical options

Lack of analytical capacity to understand needs of the sector

Lack of administrative capacity to implement policy

Lack of political capacity to deal with conflicting demands of various stake-holders (Consumers, physicians, managers, insurers, healthy, etc )

Considering the potential and limitations of both markets and governments, an effective health care system requires health policy that employs extensive role for both to offset each others disadvantages

An optimal health care market is characterized by:

Competition among providers to attract. But competition over value rather than frills. 

Limitations on providers freedom to prescribe and charge, so that they do not take advantage of patients’ ignorance

Limitations on insurers’ freedom to select risk or set premium, so as to prevent cream skimming or passing on of costs to consumers or government

Limitations on consumers, so as to minimize moral hazard

Establish risk pooling to ensure redistribution of resources from more healthy and wealthy to less healthy and wealthy. 

Reduce out of pocket health expenditure 

Costs affordable to the society as a whole, rather than the govt. Considers TOTAL (and not public) health expenditures

A good health policy is one that sets out appropriate incentives :

Incentivize providers to improve quality while containing cost

Incentivize users to moderate consumption

Co-insurance or deductible (subject to a stop-loss)

Encourage users to use primary care facilities

Incentivize insurers to get better deal from providers on behalf of their members 

Instead of passing on costs to users or the government

Such an optimal health policy requires a strong governance structure characterized by

firm government stewardship

Functioning markets, where possible

On transparency in Singapore

Singapore’s lack of transparency in governance is almost legendary. Researchers, for example, have extraordinary trouble getting data. A couple of examples from personal experience:

-In a class with a guest lecturer from the Public Utilities Board, he cautioned us against taking photographs of some of the slides (“You do not want to be arrested later for this”). 

-In talking to people about the immigration rules and systems, I find that people don’t know how or why the decisions are taken on work permits, guest passes etc. There is amazing amount of discretion and lack of transparency. 

It would be interesting to understand the historical origins of this phenomenon. In reading extensively of the writings of Lee Kuan Yew, I did not see anything about why he did not feel transparency important. 

In the ongoing project of revisioning Singapore, I am pretty sure that transparency will help Singapore in finding a way forward.  There have been memorable debates about Asian values and Singapore-style democracy. I don’t think these addressed the role of transparency and whether lack of transparency is a part of Asian culture :-)  

 Lack of transparency is simply incompatible with a modern society. You cannot have a educated, well-to-do population that is creative and free-thinking and a society that aims to be globalised and at par with the best of them, and at the same time, hide your governance behind a veil of secrecy. 

Prof Lam Chuan Leong, a retired bureaucrat whom I respect, pooh-poohed transparency in one of his classes. I wish I had taken it up with him then!  The bureaucracy will of course protest mightily that it is simply not possible to function efficiently if you have to be able to explain everything that you do. While there can be more discussion about the pros and cons, enough developed countries have implemented Freedom of Information acts and none have reconsidered its value. Even India has one, and you don’t hear anyone complaining about it.  Certainly it could make life more difficult for bureaucrats, but making bureaucrats' life easy is not the purpose of governance! In any case, the system will re-adjust and find new ”SOPs” that are compatible with the new laws. 

Singapore continues to be a restricted society with little space for questioning the government. Transparency would be one way to open up the space for questioning. Asking an innocent question cannot be grounds for harassment or taking someone to court.

It is surprising that the PAP, which has gone so far as to consider splitting itself in order to provide a more robust political system, has not considered the importance of transparency and implemented substantive measures in this direction. Its quite likely that 50 years of obscurity will have concealed a fair number of governance boo-boos. Whether there are more serious discrepancies between the facade and what went on behind the scenes, I do not know enough to speculate about (nor do I want to attract attention of the government by doing that!). 

Vocational Education in Singapore

I did a term paper (in two installments) on vocational education in India for my course on Social Policy Design last semester. Didn't get a great grade :-( but found it fascinating, and was considering working in that area after graduation.  The link below should show you the papers on Dropbox (let me know if it doesn't). There is a lot of dividends for the country and its people if we get vocational education right.  PM Modi is doing the right thing by placing a lot of emphasis on Skilling India.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/07mha1qkofjmy15/AADQKHcjBXg5S8BJayx7sU8ha?dl=0

In India we have a huge problem with this perception of vocational education as infra-dig so we end up churning out huge quantities of unemployable B.As and B.Scs and B.Coms, while we suffer from a dearth of good technicians, plumbers etc. As as aside,

Singapore has an excellent vocational education system, one of the best in the world. They have an institution called the ITE (Institute of Technical Education), that serves people after 10th grade. They have several polytechnics (Temasek Poly, Ngee Ann Poly, Singapore Poly) that serve people after high school. One of the things that Singapore consciously did was to combat, quite successfully, the feeling that vocational education is a 2nd class or infra-dig option. Rather, it is portrayed as an option for people with different inclinations and different talents that the traditional intellect-based classroom education. They've 'signalled' this, by, among other things, funding their vocational education institutions very well and giving them a lot of facilities.

When Chandrababu Naidu visited Singapore recently, he checked out the ITE. These from the ITE website, ite.edu.sg :



His Excellency Mr Nara Chandrababu Naidu (centre in cream shirt), Honourable Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, India, at the Precision Engineering Hub at ITE College Central, where Laser and Tooling Technology training and development for staff and students are carried out. Students gain hands-on experience by working on CNC Laser Cutting Machine, Bending Machine and Turret Punching Machine with the aid of specialised CAD/CAM software, to create a wide array of metallic products ranging from name cards, pens and serviette holders to pendants, lamp shades and wall décor




I visited the ITE too, photos below:

"Prof, no one is reading you"

Prof. Biswas with Prof. Eduardo Araral, who chaired the talk

We had a talk on 23rd September by Prof. Asit Biswas. Prof. Biswas is very well-respected in the water sector and a recipient of the World Water Prize. I'm taking a course on water policy and governance with him (and Dr. Tortajada). Its quite demanding and we're having to do a lot of writing  which is proving unexpectedly challenging, but I think I'm improving!

Dr. Biswas' talk was on  academia creating impact by writing in the popular media, more specifically writing op-eds. Op-ed = 'opposite-editorial'.  the space in newspapers given to experts and others to give their independent views on matters of public importance. They're called op-eds because they're often run next to the newspaper's own opinion pieces, the editorials. While the talk was aimed at academics, the points are very relevant for people from the NGO sector too.

Dr. Biswas talked of the increasing irrelevance of academic publishing for public policy and impact. Quoting from the flyer publicising the talk (http://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/OP-Eds_Writing-Publishing-and-Impacts.pdf): "Latest statistics indicate that 80% of papers in Humanities do not attract even a single citation. Also, if a paper is cited, it does not mean the person citing it has read the whole paper fully. We estimate an average paper in Humanities is read by no more than 10 people".

Dr. Biswas did an op-ed in the Straits Times, (http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/prof-no-one-is-reading-you) the main newspaper in Singapore on this very topic - "Prof, no one is reading you". Apparently, it has become the most read article of the Straits Times with 65000 online shares, 7000 tweets and even translated into other languages. So it would seem the topic resonated strongly with many people.

Other points from the talk:
- Dr. Biswas talked about Project Syndicate. Quoting from the Straits Times article above: " One effective model is Project Syndicate, a non-profit organisation, which distributes commentary by the world's thought leaders to more than 500 newspapers comprising 300 million readers in 154 countries. Any commentary accepted by Project Syndicate may be translated into up to 12 other languages and then distributed globally to the entire network.". Prof Biswas has now an agreement with Project Syndicate to distribute four of his op-eds each year.

- Ministers and policy makers pay attention to what gets published. A typical method of doing this is for the Ministers' staff to create a roundup of all relevant news across key media outlets every day. Prof Biswas cited examples from his personal knowledge from Canada, India and Qatar of Ministers who do this

- Examples of recent impact from op-eds:
    An article he wrote on Think Tanks in the "Diplomat" magazine (http://thediplomat.com/2015/09/the-rise-of-asias-think-tanks/)  was shared by the wife of the Prime Minister of Singapore on her FB page, and presumably reached the PM too
    An op-ed in the Straits Times on the haze (http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/to-tackle-haze-win-over-the-indonesian-public) got a response from the Singapore Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Vivian Balakrishnan, who wrote back that he liked it and that his minstry is seriously looking at the suggestions.

- Media needs a peg. There was once a request from a Chinese publication for an article on drought, followed by a urgent communication that rains had started and unless they moved really quickly the article could not be run until the next drought!

- Media needs you to take a stand. No 'on the the one hand, on the other hand' business. The job of the editor is to 'sell newspaper' so if you want to get published you have to be aligned with that. Being controversial does not hurt! Winston Churchill said: "You have enemies? Good. That means you have stood up for something in your life"

- Media's deadlines are significantly more demanding than for academic publication and you need to be prepared for that. Prof. Biswas has stayed up late nights on occasion to do what was needed to get a piece out in time to a media outlet.

- A corollary  is that media will occasionally edit what you say, even without asking. Sometimes that results in significant distortion of what you meant. Again, something you have to accept and be prepared for if you want to play the public impact game. 

- Invest your time in developing relationships with good newspaper editors and journalists. They get a lot of submissions and reject 95% of them. If you have a relationship with them, they will trust you. Occasionally have lunch/coffee with them to understand their challenges,what they need, what they're looking for.

- One way to get their attention in the first place is to be active on social media. At least 300 media personalities from many countries follow Prof. Biswas on LinkedIn. 

- Op-ed sizes are coming down and nowadays they are looking for around 650-700 words. You must be able to make your point in that space

- Nowadays Prof Biswas writes an average of one op-ed a week.

- Prof. Biswas writes a lot op-eds with graduate students, which gives them visibility and training and many of them go on to do a lot of such writing on their own. He expressed some disappointment with the general graduate student body at the LKY School. Students do not seem to be interested in taking up this valuable opportunity to get trained in writing op-eds and thus improving public policy

-----
Addenda: An article in the Guardian that nicely builds on some of the points here

http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/sep/04/academics-are-being-hoodwinked-into-writing-books-nobody-can-buy

A recent followup article by Prof Biswas
http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/prof-no-one-is-using-your-ideas 

Kissinger jokes

Henry Kissinger's work has many examples of what decent people would find enormous inversions of justice. Like, for example, that he was given the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing an end to the Vietnam war, when he was in actuality responsible for things like the massive bombing of Cambodia as part of that war. Giving him the Nobel was appropriately labeled 'the death of satire' when it happened.

Chomsky is not usually given to humor, and one of the few examples I've seen is in relation to Kissinger, whose guts he really hates.  Debunking one of Kissinger's arguments where he says that that Western civilisation has a culture of 'toleration' (never mind a couple of World Wars and decades of colonial cruelty), Chomsky comments with an undertone of frustration and bitterness: "One can always count on K for some comic relief, though in reality, he is not alone" ( http://www.iran-bulletin.org/history/chomsky3.html)

And finally one from that fantastic commentator on US political affairs, Gary Trudeau author of the Doonesbury cartoons. In a series of strips, Kissinger is visiting faculty at a Washington DC university and leading a course while doing his stuff as Secretary of State. While he tries to use the seminar to talk about realpolitik and world domination and such, there are one or two idealists in the class who keep bringing up useless questions about truth, justice and the suffering of the common man. Finally Kissinger in frustration bursts out "Human rights! Human rights! I'm sick and tired of human rights!"

Touche. Sometimes I feel a similiar sentiment : "Climate change! Climate change! I'm sick and tired of climate change!"

For perhaps a more rounded portrayal of Kissinger, see the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger