We had an interesting discussion in our office yesterday about the different kinds of thought processes that motivate a researcher to go through the pains of research - the debate came to a point where there were two sets of thought processes - the 'why' crowd and the 'what can be done - solution finding' crowd. Of course, to reach a stage where one can think of solutions to 'problems that plague the development world' (sigh - i know it's a phrase you've heard a million times!) - one must spend some time thinking about the 'why' ie. why the problem exists in the way it does. The more i think about it, i find myself in the middle - my curiosity stimulates me to delve on the 'why' but after a point, frustration takes over and i try and force my brain cells to come up with solutions.
I was traveling by the Chennai MRTS facility the other day and came to think of some issues within the 'why' and 'what can be done?' framework . The Chennai MRTS facility is impressive on some fronts - massive infrastructure, elevators, escalators in some stations and a pretty decent transport system - gets you from A to B in lesser time than by road probably. However, there are some glaring issues which may have crossed the minds of many travelers - huge, sprawling ground space completely unutilised, the whole building is not maintained well, some stations are quite desolate and may be unsafe for female passengers at night...The unutilised ground space is what puzzled me the most - could they not have vendors set up stalls there? Possibly look at conducting public health campaigns there? Or even have bank branches/ATMs or electricity/water bill collection facilities?
As my colleague Nithya Raman pointed out - the Government is all set to build the new metro project spending huge amounts of money and resources but are they just hurrying into another infrastructure project without addressing issues with existing infrastructure? As i an uniformed traveller, i am curious as to what will happen to the existing train systems - will they disappear? will the metro be the cure to all problems?
Thus, i am still dwelling on the 'why' question as far as this puzzle goes - hopefully i will have figured out some answers to move onto the 'what can be done - solution finding' phase soon!
2 comments:
To me, the 'Why; question is usually the most interesting research question - Something worked. Why? Something else didnt. Why? Why is it that X is different from Y and so on.
'What can be done' is a combination of 'what' and 'how' - again, among them, the 'how' is the challenge.
my problem is many people seem to ask the same 'why' question but in 800 different ways. i personally think that before somebody asks the 'why' question, they should look at all the others who have asked similar or pertinent questions. personally, i have never had the time to dwell on the 'why' question as much as there are always 'things to be done' to address the already asked 'why' questions - solutions.
in development particularly, too much of precious resources (time, money, effort, training) is spent on people who ask those questions but never seem to care to follow it up with action. d-world is becoming the next big fashion show. we need to be conscious about $$ spent on thinking as much as we want our solutions to be cost-effective.
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