"The "developing" part of "developing country" may be considered euphemistic or perhaps optimistic, as many of the poorest countries are hardly developing at all." from wiki

 Do you agree with the above statement? In my case I would certainly agree with that statement as following factors witness that....

Can Education make a difference in the country?  Just giving it free would help to develop the country?  or just making sure all the people do get educated? or just literacy is enough to develop the country? The answer is NO.  Just the education would not contribute in developing the country.  It will be yet another factor if it is not properly designed.  The purpose of this article is to discuss how the Effective education is tied with the national development. 

What is Education?

Education in its broadest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual. In its technical sense education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills and values from one generation to another.

Human development Index is as follows

The 17th Amendment was passed in the parliament in 2001 and was practice only for few years.  The purpose of bringing this amendment to the constitution was to eliminate the political interference to the national authorities which should stick independent.  17th Amendment suggested to centralize the control around independent commissions.  This would address the fundamental problem of our constitution which is having all the government entities under political branches.  However exercising this would be really challenging as this clearly discourages the political inference.

These days Good Governance is a hot topic and therefore thought to figure what does it mean?

From Wikipedia

Good governance is an indeterminate term used in development literature to describe how public institutions conduct public affairs and manage public resources in order to guarantee the realization of human rights.^[1] Governance describes "the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented (or not implemented)".^[1] The term governance can apply to corporate, international, national, local governance ^[1] or to the interactions between other sectors of society.

Source of the article: Click here for the Source: UN ESCAPE

Good governance has 8 major characteristics. It is participatory, consensus oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive, effective and efficient, equitable and inclusive and follows the rule of law. It assures that corruption is minimized, the views of minorities are taken into account and that the voices of the most vulnerable in society are heard in decision-making. It is also responsive to the present and future needs of society.

Figure 2: Characteristics of good governance

Participation

Participation by both men and women is a key cornerstone of good governance. Participation could be either direct or through legitimate intermediate institutions or representatives. It is important to point out that representative democracy does not necessarily mean that the concerns of the most vulnerable in society would be taken into consideration in decision making. Participation needs to be informed and organized. This means freedom of association and expression on the one hand and an organized civil society on the other hand.

Rule of law

Good governance requires fair legal frameworks that are enforced impartially. It also requires full protection of human rights, particularly those of minorities. Impartial enforcement of laws requires an independent judiciary and an impartial and incorruptible police force.

Transparency

Transparency means that decisions taken and their enforcement are done in a manner that follows rules and regulations. It also means that information is freely available and directly accessible to those who will be affected by such decisions and their enforcement. It also means that enough information is provided and that it is provided in easily understandable forms and media.

Responsiveness

Good governance requires that institutions and processes try to serve all stakeholders within a reasonable timeframe.

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The following article is not mine.  But it would be really interesting to read this.  Source of the article is:

Education is a human right.  All of us have the right to be educated at least the primary education.  However nowadays education has become sort of a business instead of serving the people as it used to be.  There are countries where the education system is totally free and there are some other countries where you need to have money to learn.  This articles discusses how education can serve to accomplish education in a reasonable manner. 
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Tourism of Sri Lanka was severely affected for last few decades due to the 30 years long terrorist problem. However with the termination of the rebels now the people have the freedom to choose their livelihood.

East costal area is one of the most beautiful beach sides and now the locals as well as foreigners have started to visit east recently.
The good news is now all most all the guest houses and hotels are full of tourists and indicates another developing era of the country and the people who suffered by the war.

Below is a section of my Final Year Dissertion.  I copied this from a draft report and looking forward to discuss this topic futher.   
Study was conducted based on two key aspects and the following section would explain how the study addressed those two aspects that are the lack of information availability and the lack of financial proficiency.
2.1.1 Lack of availability of effective information
As mention in the introduction there few parties involving in the whole industry namely,

Since there are approximate five parties operating in the environment the study was design to obtain information on their services and activities towards to the MSME industry. Therefore in order to develop integration system for MSMEs and other bodies there should be a thorough awareness on what are available and what are needed for the end users that are the MSME businesses. Thus few site visits were organized in order to obtain first hand information of the industry.



Here are the companies and institutions visited in order to obtain such information.

Following are the visited organisations.

In the study some basic questioned were raised that were what do you have for SMEs and from the MSMEs what do you want from such supporting organizations.

In the Study some key aspects ware traced out that might lead to amplify the breach of these two sectors namely MSMEs and all other supporting bodies.



Those aspects from supporting body’s perspectives:
• Those governmental organizations have produced valuable information and other facilities for the industry and however most of the entrepreneurs are not aware of that due to the ineffective communication.




o Eg. Sri Lanka has the South Asia’s best ornamental fish manufacturing training centre and very few have obtained its services.



o Eg. Mushroom Training Centre offers comprehensive assistance for small scale businesses and however very few have made it fruitful.



• Supporting Agencies like Vidatha Centre have skilled and resource persons. However the information sources available for them would not lead to provide an effective service. There should be a better mechanism to make them thorough on the industry requirements.



• Financial Institutions have offered so many attractive business loan packages and still most of the MSMEs were not able to obtain such financial assistance. According t the bank due to the lack of planning and costing proficiency most of the business plan are usually rejected.



o When providing a bank loan the applicant must plan the payback procedure in order to make the bank convinced



o Since most of the applicants fail in satisfying such requirements and that would limit their scale in the long run.



• There are number of Non Governmental Organizations are operating in the industry in order to assist small scale businesses and they are pumping millions of money for such operations. However still most of the projects have not been as the industry is redundant.



o Trade fairs are one of the prime opportunities to hunt a potential business partner and however most of the local enterprises do not prefer to participate for such endeavors.



o In addition due to the lack of the proficiency in the internet technology most of the business opportunities are redundant as nobody is striving for it. Today internet has become the source of the business opportunities and unfortunately the use of such technology is still not as required in the local industry. Therefore Sri Lankan MSMEs always rest far behind the other MSMEs in the region.



• There are number of chamber operating in Sri Lanka and they organize training programs, workshops, exhibitions and trade fares. However according to their statistics very few have drew growing opportunities by participating for such programs.



o Chambers are known as umbrellas of the private sector and they usually organize lots of training and workshops. The participation of the local MSMEs are not sufficient to make a considerable difference in the industry.



• Local MSME often fail to derive their specific needs and therefore most of the times they would not be able to acquire the information they need.



Those aspects from MSME’s perspectives:




• The study was designed to participate to a training session organized for MSMEs in the Mushroom Development Centre in Ratmalana. During that session the study concentrated on the effective out come of the session. Even though session covered the technical knowledge it did not provide the business knowledge to carry on the business.



• Even though there are number of services available for the industry most of them are located in a centralized manner.



o Eg. There is no Ornamental Fish Training or any other related institute in Hambantota though that area contributes to the national ornamental fish production in a great manner.



• According to their examinations, they have found difficulty to obtain specific information regarding the business. Most of the governmental institutions have provided general information and that would have not led to make en effective impact in the industry. If a person needs to know about the particular subject he/she might find very difficult to obtain useful information that are directly addressing the subject.



• Most of the businessmen need to know about the potential market opportunities and most of the time governmental institutions do not provide that kind of information or service.



o Information available in the Vidatha Centre is not sufficient to make an effective impact on the industry as most of them are either out dated or less effective information.



o The efficiency of the governmental organizations have become a bottleneck for the industry



 Eg to register a proprietorship or a partnership a MSME will have wait at least half a month as it requires lots of documentations.



 Eg to register a limited liability company the average duration is at least one month in Sri Lanka where it is just one day in Singapore.



• In addition since there are number of governmental bodies for the same industry category people have found some difficulty to find out the exact location to browse the information.



• Even though the supporting entities have websites, more often there is no useful information.



• Even though banks are offering attractive business loans MSMEs have found very difficult to trace out their costing needs and other financial applications as expected by the banks. Therefore obviously most of them failed in applying financial loans.



As expressed above the fundamental problem is not the sources of information but the availability of information. Therefore that matter should addressed in the system in order to increase the availability of information even for those who are doing businesses out site the developed areas.



As addressed above the availability of the data is a key problem in the industry and more importantly that information should be in a categorized manner. Therefore the study further approached to develop a hierarchy for the MSME sector and that hierarchy is given below.



Finally it can be finalized that the main deficient section in the whole industry is the hub that enables to integrate the information sources and people those who require such information.


2.1.2 Lack of Proficiency in financial applications.




Basically better financial practices support MSME to experience high profit in the long run due to the better forecasting techniques and cost reductions. One of the main weakness of the local MSME is that they have ignored this long term benefits and that will result in diluting the company performances in the long run. This is one of the main reasons for the short life time of the MSME businesses. Every day number of new ventures started where many of them withdraw from the market within short time.



When it comes to the financial needs it is not only the money but the management of the costs and incomes. Therefore basically there are key areas that should be undertaken by a prospective venture in order to experience long term benefits.



Key financial areas to consider:



• Deriving a business idea into practice



• Developing a Business Plan for a new business or for an expansion of the business



• Maintain standard financial modules like Profit and loss account and the balance sheet



• Maintain days to day costs and records of other expenses (book-keeping).






To be Continued