[sustran] Non-Motorised Transport and Related Issues

[Ramon Fernan III]

Setty Pendakur wrote:

>I am quite surprised at Ramon's reply to my info peice on TRB Committee.
>So what next?  TRB is a technical organisation of researchers and
>professionals.  The conferecnes are attended by those who wish to learn
>and those wish to meet other professionals.  This is not limited to
>consulatants or professors or advocacy perosns or to any other particular
>group of people.

>I thought the discussion group would provide ideas and soultions to some
>our the serious questions we need to tackle.  Any program ideas, paper or
>research constructs, on-going technical work, or referrals to people doing
>useful NMT work will be very helpful to us in developing a program of for
>the next three years.  Ideas, research findings, research methods and
>country and regional studies, contacts with people conducting these
>studies will be a very productive beginning. 

>If this is primarily to vent frustrations, then we are going backwards.

Whoever said that e-mail discussion lists mostly involved someone calling
someone else a name and the latter replying in the same manner ad infinitum
was probably right. 

Be that as it may, I daresay I wasn't surprised by the reply. If no one else
finds developed country experts (mostly since people in developing countries
probably find it financially difficult to travel esp. to the USA) talking
about developing country problems ironic, well. . . I think it perpetuates
the same kind of thinking and attitude prevalent in the development field in
the sixties and seventies (yes, I'm old enough to have remembered those)
where rich country development experts "dictated" solutions to poor
countries. Yes, definitely I think we should try and move on.

Ramon