Conflict affected young girl in a resettled village supported by the NEIAP project, Vavuniya, Sri Lanka
So Australia is huffed that they have fallen behind South Africa and Sri Lanka, not in cricket ICC rankings but in the annual Global Gender Gap Index released a month or so ago. How ignominious to fall behind their cricketing rival, Sri Lanka, who in terms of development is a minion—far behind Australia.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions wailed “Australian employers must do more to encourage women’s participation in the workforce and close the gender pay gap.“
The Global Gender Gap report hardly made any waves here. This year, Sri Lanka has slipped 4 places to 16th place. However, the report says Lanka’s overall performance in 2008 has improved relative to 2007. “Sri Lanka continues to hold a privileged position of having the best performance in the region regarding political empowerment,” said the report. Sri Lanka was ahead of Spain (17), France (18), Australia (20) and U.S.A. (31).
So are we Sri Lankan women more prosperous and hold more equal position at the workplace than the Sheila’s in Oz?
One of the most extraordinary examples of the use of economic principles comes from the beginning of the 19th century, when England used to send a huge number of prisoners to Australia. The government originally paid the ship captain a pre-determined amount for each prisoner that boarded the ship, but half of them would die during the journey. In 1862, Edwin Chadwik, knowing that people respond to incentives, told the U.K. government to pay captains according to the number of prisoners that actually disembarked in Australia. With this adjustment, the survival rate increased from 50% to 98.5%.
This example illustrates how incentives can do wonders in some circumstances. Yet, human actions are not always guided by the same calculations made by a profit maximizing ship captain. Behavioral economists have emphasized that we respond to a deep ingrained sense of fairness. Culture and values are crucial in understanding human behavior and promoting healthy and stable societies.
Earlier this summer, Pakistan defeated Sri Lanka to win the Twenty20 Cricket World Cup. Like any triumph in an international competition, there was a great sense of national pride, this time coming in a country with great need for such a unifying force. But, as Tunku Varadarajan wrote, the victory was much more than just a boost to national morale:
“As Pakistan fights for its survival against the barbarian Taliban…its people find themselves possessed of a weapon with which to vanquish the forces of darkness. I speak here not of drones or tanks or helicopter gunships, but of the glorious game of cricket.”
This is a powerful concept: that cricket is a key weapon needed to defeat the “darkness” imposed by extremism in Pakistan. But why limit ourselves to discussing the power cricket possess to fight the Taliban? What about the effects all sports have to instill happiness, empowerment, and hope in people? Could using sports for development be an unconventional tactic for the fight against poverty?
"Hello, son, are you Ok? We just got a phone call, and someone told us that one of our sons/daughters was kidnapped. We wanted to be sure that you are fine." You can imagine how scary was the movement that these parents went through after they picked up the phone and received the ugly and unexpected message. As sad as it sounds, this situation is something that some families in Mexico have experienced. Sometimes they are lucky to find out that their relatives are fine, and that everything was faked by someone looking for a profit by creating confusion among relatives. In other unfortunate cases, the message is real and families have to go through very difficult experiences that may last several months and that not always have a good outcome.
It's not new that Mexico is having problems with violence and crime, coming either from drug-cartels or from organized mafias of kidnappers and car thieves, among others. It's also true that the entire country is not a jungle and lawless area where nobody is safe.
Over the last decade and a half, most of the approaches to solve these issues have looked at the rule of law and law enforcement elements of the equation. Better legislation that penalizes these criminal activities; well paid, trained, appropriately equipped and not corrupted police corps; military support to fight drug-cartels; better prison's system that functions as social rehabilitation centers and not as universities of crime... and the list goes on. This is a good direction to follow. However, I've always told my friends and colleagues that there are other elements in the equation that also matter a lot, namely, poverty reduction and inequality.
.jpg)
One of the most extraordinary examples of the use of economic principles comes from the beginning of the 19th century, when England used to send a huge number of prisoners to Australia. The government originally paid the ship captain a pre-determined amount for each prisoner that boarded the ship, but half of them would die during the journey. In 1862, 
Earlier this summer, Pakistan defeated Sri Lanka to win the Twenty20 Cricket World Cup. Like any triumph in an international competition, there was a great sense of national pride, this time coming in a country with great need for such a unifying force. But, as 
"Hello, son, are you Ok? We just got a phone call, and someone told us that one of our sons/daughters was kidnapped. We wanted to be sure that you are fine." You can imagine how scary was the movement that these parents went through after they picked up the phone and received the ugly and unexpected message. As sad as it sounds, this situation is something that some families in Mexico have experienced. Sometimes they are lucky to find out that their relatives are fine, and that everything was faked by someone looking for a profit by creating confusion among relatives. In other unfortunate cases, the message is real and families have to go through very difficult experiences that may last several months and that not always have a good outcome.