Today, as you can see, we have a very prestigious panel here on the dais and I believe we are talking about one of the key issues of this summit and that is how do we finance Myanmar's future in a sustainable way. Let me introduce the panelists very briefly. It is a huge honor to have the Finance and Revenue Minister of Myanmar here with us today. He's also recently been promoted to assume ministerial level duties for investments. So congratulations, Minister, for that. And we very much look forward to your insights on the aspirations you have for Myanmar and on your thoughts on how you will achieve that. Peter Meher, I'll just go one direction. He runs visa for most of Asia and visa, as you may again know, has already begun activity in Myanmar. And he can share with us some of the mechanisms and also share his significant expertise on financial inclusion as they practice around many emerging markets. We then go to Uthan Winn, who is from the KBZ Bank chairman, and he will bring the local flavor having operated here. And he can also talk to us about the operational challenges and opportunities that Myanmar presents. Next, we have Secretary Abad from the Philippines, and he will bring to us a regional perspective and a knowledge of what a fast-growing financial market looks like and what this might mean for Myanmar. Again, as you are all very aware, Philippines is the current flavor and favorite of the world. They have recently been upped to investment grade, and congratulations for that, Secretary. Next, we have John Frederick Baxas, who is the president and CEO of Telanor. Telanor has been very successful in new emerging markets. They are very active in the neighborhood here. So we will get some very good insights on to alternative financing from his experience and what the future of banking and communication put together might look like. And last but not least, we have Thirayanoon Sree Hong, who is the co-president, Kasekon Bank public company from Thailand. And he can give us a regional viewpoint and also make the comparisons, which will be of huge interest to us between Thailand and Myanmar being neighbors, but in a slightly different point in the cycle of economic growth and development. In terms of structure, I'll be asking our panelists for the initial thoughts on the core topic, and then we will open up the floor for questions, which you can field to the panel. We will then turn back to another conversation and discussion on the panel, and then hopefully we might have some time at the end for a final couple of questions. Let me set the scene here. Today, we have been asked to address the question of how, with less than one-fifth of Myanmar's population using formal financial systems, can the country build the foundations of an inclusive and robust financial system? This is a unique moment to have this conversation. Myanmar is an exciting country. Multinationals have long since spotted the economic potential of this vast country with its young population. Myanmar is not only rich in natural resources, such as oil, gas, and timber, but it's also strategically located between China, India, and ASEAN. It has been noteworthy that the government has shown willingness to draw upon skills and resources from the outside in order to open up Myanmar's economy. This is particularly seen in the work underway to build a modern financial system. The speed and relative ease with which we opened our representative office earlier this year in Yangon is one very good evidence of that very open and progressive mindset of the government in Myanmar. That said, doing business in Myanmar is still not easy. Something our clients are telling us. The financial system is at an early stage of development. At a retail level, very few people have bank accounts, less than 10%, I guess. And the speed of legal and regulatory change along with skilled shortages creates uncertainty. And we cannot ignore that targeted US sanctions against Myanmar remain in place, including in key areas such as financial services. However, we need to recognize that Myanmar government has opened up much faster than many would have expected. Exchange rate unification is a good example. The opening of the telecom license process to foreign players is another. Banking sector liberalization is shaping up and is very much on the radar. And it's also important that Myanmar is already a market economy. All this set a positive foundation. I would now like to turn to the panel to get their thoughts. And may we have the privilege of beginning with you, your Excellency, the Minister. Thank you. Thank you very much, Sassin.  Actually, this is the first international forum in Myanmar's file. That's why not only for me, on behalf of our Myanmar people, I'm very honored to be here with the very auspicious forum here. So nowadays, all can see very clear. Myanmar is now seems to be the center of global attention since our government took office in 2011. But we are trying and we are going underway and also we have undertaken so many significant reforms process. During this reform process, track the concern for me is the financial sectors reform also. I'm very happy to be here because I will get a chance to share or to be shared the experience to our financial sectors development. So today, I hoped we can get us some consistent solutions what we are doing for the future, especially concerning about our financial sectors development. Thank you. Minister, as has been everyone's experience who has met with you or anyone else in the government, you remain unassuming and full of humility to be still learning and gathering from others. But thank you for that. May I now turn to Secretary Abad from the Philippines to hear from him. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to be in this forum. The Aquino Administration came into power at the back of very intense desire of people for good governance and the reduction of poverty. And that's why financial inclusion is key to promoting greater equity in our society. And right now it's still a serious challenge for the Philippines to promote greater inclusivity in this area. But our recent experiences with delivering social programs has convinced us about the many advantages of moving in this direction, particularly the benefits of greater efficiency, greater inclusion as well as greater transparency and accountability in the delivery of services by government. So we believe that a more vigorous push in this direction is going to help grow the economy further, especially since the Philippines enjoys a high degree of credibility in so far as its policy and regulatory framework for finance. So despite the challenges, the silver lining is there. There are great opportunities that's available to further move in that direction. Secretary, I mean, Philippines is one of the best examples of financial inclusion among other countries in the world. And they also, I believe, are one of the most SMSed countries in the world among their citizens and residents. That leads me nicely to John, who can talk to us about mobile telephony. Thank you and your excellency and everyone else, thank you for the opportunity. And also really, thank you to World Economic Forum that basically have kept their finger on this topic for quite a number of sessions. The optimism around financial services through the mobile phone is strong in most markets and has a phenomenal potential. However, the examples of a full-fledged financial services in the mobile phone as sort of on big scale haven't really got out of the bottle yet. So in a way, there are still a way to go to say that the full formula has been found. But the strength of inclusiveness in order to achieve greater economic equality among every person in the market is very, very strong. And that comes first and foremost by connectivity as such. And to be included or to not be included, that is sort of the big difference. And on this occasion, I can't refrain from taking an example when we opened a connectivity in a local marketplace in a neighboring country. And the first person that got the mobile phone in that area came over to me and said, I had used my Norwegian phone and I called to this person on the local number. And then the person came over to me and said, please, Mr. Baxos, please make sure that I am the only one that have a mobile phone in my area. Because she in that case became the hub of all information. So immediately it was understood that when you are in control of information, you are also in control of value add. And I think that goes for the financial aspect as well. Because it's so easily understood that if you can participate in economic life through being able to carry out transactions through your mobile phone in its simplicity, domestic money transfers, for example, to begin with, then you are actually building capacities which you didn't have before. And you reduce the traveling time, you reduce all kind of practicalities. It's there because there is an outlet that you can trust and you're willing to put your money in. And there is another guy in the other end that basically takes them out again. And there is a security mechanism that the mobile phone carriers basically implement in their systems. So then we're back to the trust factor. And mobile carriers to a certain extent has that trust factor because people buy their airtime upfront. And then they take out the benefit of airtime successively. And then there is suddenly not a difference whether you put some money in at one point of time and potentially take some money out later on. Because it's your money, it's your airtime. And that is in a way the simple philosophy behind it. And one more thing, since we have a cooperative bank of ours just next to me in Thailand, where we started together the ATM SIM extending the banking services into the hands of the mobile phone. And that means that in a way the bank, in this case, was looking at the mobile phone as an extended branch. The only thing it couldn't do was to print money physically. But you could do everything else that it could do from an ATM in that sense. So the potential is there. However, it is also a lot of practicalities also on the regulatory side to get it done. Thank you, John. We've had experience as an institution working with Telenoar in many countries including somebody close to Myanmar. And all I can say, John, is I wish you all the best for the bidding in Myanmar. I hope you're active here as well very soon. Let's move on to Peter from Visa and Peter, you're already active here. Sure. So I'll talk a little bit about the experience that we've had over the last six or seven months since we signed up with a number of Myanmar banks. The first order of business for Visa is opening up card acceptance so that international visitors can use their card in the country. And we've had to be quite creative in finding solutions to the infrastructure challenges that we have. However, if you put your mind to what these things can be done, there are challenges which can be overcome. We've got a couple of hundred ATMs. The one that you see in the conference here was installed a few days ago and is working most of the time. But this is Myanmar. It's working most of the time. I've got two transactions done. We have a couple of hundred retailers, hotels, restaurants, etc. accepting cards today. This will continue. It will roll out. It will become bigger. I was just looking at the numbers before I came here. We've had about 50,000 ATM transactions for international visitors. About $7 million dispensed which has gone straight into the Myanmar economy. Now where are we going? Of course, if you look at your near neighbor who has a very successful tourism industry in Thailand, international Visa card holders will spend $6 billion in Thailand this year. A little over $6 billion. So that's the opportunity. Card acceptance will help the tourism industry in this country and bring some new skills around electronic payment services. So that's the first point. So we're making progress on that and we're quite pleased with where we've got to in a relatively short time given the challenges that we have around power and telephone lines, etc. So we're very eagerly looking forward to the telco licensing round and to see the winners roll out a telecommunications backbone in the country. I think the other area, that's the sort of traditional Visa business if you like. The other side which is the non-traditional business which is kind of amplifying what my colleague from Teleno was talking about. You know, we were in this digital era. We have some fantastic opportunities to reach parts of the community that the banks won't reach because their cost structure is different than the cost structure that you have in some of these mobile money schemes that we see increasingly around the world. And they are reaching, you know, hundreds of millions of people who had no access to financial products before. There are basic financial products, basic services, but they address the convenience. Poor people, you know, don't have much time either to do certain things and they're simple and they can be understood. Because I think one of the challenges as we get into a bank or a financially included community here is basic education and knowledge. So we find that one of the things that we do more of is training. So we have seven banks here. We work very well with the banks and the central bank to educate and pass on the knowledge that we've picked up in our experience around the world. And we find that the folks here are very eager to learn, very eager to learn, so we're very encouraged by that. But this opportunity to build a policy framework which will rocket fuel the mobile money I think is an area which the government should really focus on trying to get that right. Because if you can get that policy framework right, great things can happen. And we've seen these schemes and I know John is all over the world telling or he's been part of them. We've seen in some countries where the regulations are in place, the schemes go very well. And you can get around to building up trust and confidence in the community and you really get behind these schemes. Where the regulations aren't appropriate or a bit clunky or clumsy, the schemes don't go as fast as they could. So I think if there was one area of which I think the government should focus on is that policy framework. There are lots of experts from World Bank, CGAAP, AFI, you name it, who have a lot of learnings under their belts. And I think I know you are talking to them and I know your sort of regulations are coming soon and we're sort of eagerly anticipating that. But I think with the expansion of the banking sector, which is happening, everyone we talk to is putting out more branches the traditional way. And then the e-money and mobile money and the technology which is coming, I think you've got a great opportunity to do things quickly in this country in a matter of years, not decades. And so when we talk about cash and people in Vietnam still prefer gold and bank accounts, they're 20 years into it. I think we have an opportunity here to make very quick progress. Thank you Peter. The best example I know in our part of the world where the economy moved in a very short period from cash to plastic is Korea in a very short time. And they did it because they provided tax incentives on transacting on plastic rather than on cash. And I guess that's another idea the credit card companies will be suggesting to the minister here and to his government. Let me now turn to Tiranand from Thailand. Yes, thank you. Let me shift the gear a little bit because I'm a traditional banker and I look at this kind of thing also from the risk perspectives. I think the key to economic development is you need to have a robust, efficient and competitive private sector creating jobs, providing services to citizens and also paying tax for country development. So I think Myanmar needs to get to the basic right on banking system first. Namrish, how do you allow, would allow private sector to prosper through an efficient financial services? And that is to reduce waste in the systems right now creating efficiencies. So actually my first advice is to work on payments, work on efficient payment system, efficient clearing and settlement systems. And then also working on the deposit sites of banking creating confidence because people, I mean there are a lot of money in Myanmar right now that are not circulating in the banking systems. People just don't trust bank. Let alone I mean trusting that your money in the mobile phone will be, then in the end can really be used if there's no proper regulatory platform to ensure them that once they put the money somewhere and then they can get it back. So it is, my idea would be to first working on a robust banking infrastructure and that comprises a lot of issues to be discussed.  A lot has been said about micro credit and the credit that's given on mobile phone to me I think that's too advanced things to think about because credit is complicated. And once you talk about credit you need to have a proper risk management system and risk supervision which is a complicated things to build on. So my quick thinking right now is work on the basic infrastructures, getting more people to be in the banking system by creating confidence, creating trust and we can talk a lot more about that. Thank you. Thailand of course boasts a very progressive and sophisticated banking system so it's the closest neighbor as well so a lot to learn and to give and take from Myanmar. Uttar Vind we purposely kept you for last since we said you would be able to talk really about what the priority should be for the banking system here being a local chair of the very well flourishing bank here. But also what have you learned from the past in terms of your experience, the good things and the opportunities that might be there. Thank you and Uttar Vindoon every morning is present and the fact that the banking system is still undergoing a learning process. I just want to get things that you know to look back what we are just trying to transform the banking system. Just before I came here we came across with the ESCN and the TV crew. They came along and said we want to have some TV shots so we permitted them to show them our main branch with the bank. And they were surprised to find that a lot of cash are piling up you never see before in other countries. So the cash culture itself is ingrained in us. It's because you remember if you keep on remembering because we nationalize all the foreign banks, foreign banks exist and tend domestic banks in 1963. That was the end of the modernization process. And because of that the people itself they are far away from the banking system. Until 1993 when we first permitted the private banks to open up. I was with the central bank at the time and we were on the point of liberalization all the financial services at the time. And even at the time we already have permitted some of the private banks to issue the credit cards. But because of the financial crisis all these reforms were put to a stop. But then along with the present governments coming into a picture we also have liberalization measures to continue again. And right now some of those questioning us you keep on opening the branches there will be nobody coming to the bank. Because in fact the people are so much used to the cash culture they may not think they are coming to the bank. And we said it's okay because at least we did some service to the country. At least it may be a loss to us by opening new branches. But then along when we try to open the branches we are surprised the people have you know the flock to the bank. And then we gain a lot of the customers and even right now we have almost you know within the one and a half year period. We almost have almost a million customers with us already. And we keep on applying. And that's the reason why we want to be more stronger in the retail banking. By next year I think we are going to multiply the 100 plus branches we have with us. So that is one of the experience with us. I think the going on the second point secondly that the rule of the central bank itself you know in the past is very passive. And with the coming of this new government we want the central bank to be more proactive in the sense that we are just framing the new central bank law which is going to enjoy a little dependency from away from the from the minister of finance. Well I don't want to offend my you know minister of finance here because when you see independence being you know we are not fighting each other you know with the minister of finance and the central bank itself. I'm also advisor to the minister of finance and I hope it's not facing my excellency my boss. Well actually the we are what we are working towards the central bank independence is you know having a check and balance system and we are going to go at a degree of independence and we are not saying that it's going to be outright independence. It's a sort of autonomous status we are going to this central bank is going to enjoy. So directly accountable to the president in the first in the first instance and then later on accountable to the parliament or the PDU Luthor itself. So my final point is the the as I said we are still in a learning process and before that we tried to modernize our financial services for the moment and all the banks are bent on having this you know we have we already have the the contacted with a number of banks in the area to to to to have a correspondent bank relationship and we have installed the ATM system already a small in number and we already have the ATM outside and the banks have installed the with another two banks and I think as Peter has just said we have to I have to apologize if you find it a little difficult to getting the cash from this ATM using the the Visa card it's because not because of the Visa not because of the machine itself but because of the weather the weather is playing havoc so please excuse us for for for any difficulty you face and I think you agree with me. So for the moment in more in more design in the our banking system that the service itself well we have we have already have come up with the team up with a number of banks in the area including Kosovo Bank and other banks but but what we are finding it difficult is why we don't understand is why the worst in banks are not coming including the Charter banks, Charter Charter but where the Charter Charter is already present here we have a very preferred discussion but their presence is not King Ling fell here and I am be in you know the inviting them to come back home because as you know very well the standard Charter bank was born itself in Myanmar if you stay literally in some way if I'm correct it's 1862 so so we like to welcome back the standard Charter bank to us and also other banks in the region and not only in the region but also from international banks and the fact that we are the main challenge for us is capacity building itself because we are so far away from the international banking community community as I said we are still in a learning process and in fact some of the banks including our own banks we are trying to hiring some of the bankers in the region and it is one way of you know solving the capacity development efficiency and I think we also going along with some of the say we already set up the MPU, Myanmar-Pengyu Union you know just to team up with the some of the payment system like the visa, the master card and then we also going to team up with the GCP from Japan and China Union pay in a very near future so on the whole I think the we are just an infant you know the learning infant trying to crawl and trying to stand up so I hope very much you know we want to learn a lot from the region a lot from my own you know the prominent persons here and I hope they will render us a lot of advices for the moment thank you Thank you for welcoming us back, yes we did start here 150 plus years ago we've been here 110 of those 150 years and we look forward to our next 150 let me now introduce you to Thurakho who is the managing director of YGA Capital Limited Myanmar Thurakho is the rappator and what he will do in that role will be to do a video I think of the key themes of this session after the debate and put that out and may I turn to you Thurakho for the first question towards the audience I'll sell the DVD as well but thank you Jasper this is a topic that's taken up a lot of my time over the past a lot of my company's time over the past several months because we have been working with the central bank of Myanmar and his excellencies ministry to try and bring financial inclusion into Myanmar here by bringing a micro banking model that we've successfully invested in Indonesia and I know a number of other colleagues of ours have been trying to do this as well and as part of this and this is framing the first question I have as part of this we did a survey of street vendors and market vendors in Yangon, Mandalay and Monywa which is a second-tier city in middle Myanmar it took us about three months and we went through 500 vendors in total and one key question was how familiar they were with the banking services and the banking systems here and three key conclusions came up and practically none of them really did not use banks apart from remittances just wiring money from between families from one branch to another but three conclusions came out of that and why they did not use banks number one physical access there was physical access and just vendors having to open at 6 a.m. 7 a.m. and then close well after 6 p.m. means they cannot go to banks during opening hours plus also the physical lack of bank branches nearby and of course that's where technology and so on can overcome that the second reason was it was far too cumbersome they were fearful of walking into these banks the forms that they have to fill out the questions that they're asked they simply didn't understand it and they just felt it wasn't for them so making things simpler and less cumbersome and that's where actually on technology the Philippines has done a great job using SMS to remit billions of dollars in simple processes but the third factor and it's a key one and it's a unique one to us and it's one that we must pick is the lack of confidence and trust in the banking systems and there's been a lot of history on this we've had bank rounds and we've had government making demonetizations in the past and so on so people have been fearful of using the banking systems and that is incumbent perhaps on the banks as well to be more prudent in their lending in the past banks used to lend within their conglomerates and so on so to concern on points, risk is an important matter for banks but really that's the question that I would like to pose how do we build back confidence in the system part of it is of course a lot of it is regulation in the central bank but also a lot of it is banks and then when technology comes encouraging people to use it and to have trust whether it's plastic or whether it's mobile banking as well so I'll open with that if I may Jasper Thank you Thura as I suspect with all questions Minister your response will always be very well received so may I ask you to respond first Thank you Sunderer First of all I'd like to say we want to examine, we want to check to the root cause why people don't want to use banks systems because I think that most of our people are low income people there's one of the root cause although it can come people can go to bank to save money or some sort of use money this is one of the key factors I think that but it may be right or wrong I'm not sure because you imagine that another thing low income people or on the other hand we can say the poor people or maybe like that I can say they have lack of knowledge about the financial services access to financial services and sometimes they have lack of identity and sometimes we are lack of branches in rural areas so this is very reasonable and lack of confidence you mean confidence and trust it's very fundamental and very right solutions so we have to encourage to educate financial literacy is very important I think that we should educate to the grassroots levels about the financial services at the same time for my point of view we have to build, we have to establish we have to develop the infrastructures now we go most of the people they want to keep their money in their own safe rather than banks this is confidence and also very easy to use money in their own safe so if one of the low income people they have a maybe account in the banks they have to go to the banks and so many things to do most of our people have many difficulties many needs food and clothes and other things we have to consider that so that's why we want to develop or we want to try to reduce the poverty elevations so that's why financial access to financial services can help to reduce the poverty elevation I can think that because microfinance and others maybe small and medium enterprises financing something like that so that's why we are trying to increase the capacity of our banks and on the other hand at the same time we have to educate the people to use banks I mean this is the financial literacy this is my point of view that so maybe other can discuss and other can have some different views thank you one of the bankers like to say something I hear the secretary put his hand up please in the Philippines we have taken for granted this problem of lack of trust in the banking system because we've had a central bank that has been performing very excellently in exercising its regulatory as well as its oversight functions in ensuring that we have in ensuring the stability and the integrity of the banking system I think that's very critical the role that central banks play in promoting this the problem of financial exclusion in the Philippines has more to do with the high incidence of poverty which in itself is also a reason why despite the robustness of the banking systems branches and ATM branches they have actually been limited to town centers and urban areas and have not been able to spread out to where they are needed most our experience recently with the conditional cash transfer program that we have been vigorously implementing has given us a lot of lessons about how to promote the financial inclusion when we started out with the CCT there were just about 800,000 families and about 10 billion pesos invested in the program and when we the president took over he instructed us to make sure that by the end of his term by the end of 2015 that we would have been able to service about 4.6 million indigent households and initially the World Bank was reluctant to agree with us on that target but when we begin to move from cash base delivery of the cash subsidies to ATMs there was a dramatic increase in the ability of the program to reach the poor but still ATMs limited us to town centers and urban centers until we begin to until we discovered mobile phone banking which allowed us to reach the poor via gasoline stations grocery stores cooperatives of farmers using mobile phone and because of that this year we will be able to reach 3.8 million households investing 44 billion pesos more than a billion dollars for this program and now we're realizing that we have here a mechanism that allows us in an alternative way to reach the very poor because this program reaches the extreme poor and there is another layer of the near poor who are also vulnerable just one flood can push them down to the level of being extremely poor and so I think this mechanism we feel is going to make a very big dent on the problem of poverty and the government's ability to reach the poor which by the way for the first time in our history it was very critical for us to be able to identify who the poor are and where the poor are because the prevalence of political patronage sometimes distorts the ability to effectively reach the poor so this experience is leading us to move in other direction because we believe that the role of government in business while critical can also be limited in reaching the very poor so that it's important really to develop alternative financial institutions to get to the poor because we do have development banks owned by the government but since they operate within central bank rules they have to abide by the strict rules of the central bank and their less risk averse but transacting with the poor entails risks and it's really important for alternative financial institutions to be developed like microfinance, microguarantees and microinsurance groups and this is what we're tapping for the coming rounds of our social programs in the Philippines just to add a thing about policy on that it's having an appropriate level of regulation and not overdoing it it's a proportionate risk policy so the world got tied up with KYC and AML and FATF and all of that stuff we got ourselves into a mess such that we cannot deliver basic technology because of these rules and the greater benefit that's there and is available to us is delayed while people try and figure out whether a poor person who is dealing with small amounts of money should have the same level of risk diligence as an international large volume cash transfer system so I think you need to stick your neck out and make some choices if poverty alleviation which I believe is the number one priority here you can tell FATF how you're going to do it Thanks Peter why don't we open up for some questions from the audience and then we can come back here okay we've got a lot of hands up but why don't we start here if we can get a mic here then we'll move it around Thanks Jaspal you know the model financial inclusion means that you have to could I request you just say your name I'm Pranjal Sharma from India I want to understand what kind of model could work in Myanmar because financial inclusion means that you have to ensure that most people have access to finance either deposit or credit almost immediately to reduce and minimize inequity in the country what kind of model will work business correspondence, microfinance mobile banking there are several models in play across the region from South Asia to East Asia what do you think could work okay well I think that your question is partly answered by Excellency because for one thing we already permitted under microfinance law which we prescribed about one year ago and a lot of this institution are in place now and the one thing that we need to know is by means of microfinancing it's a way of the those living in the rural areas or even the urban areas you know they intend to have the knowledge of the of the banking itself and the basic level so I think the microfinance or the microinstitution the fact that microinstitution is also one of the things that we should be educating the people how to use the banking system from the bottom up so coming up with the the issue of the confidence I think the secretary is right that I think go along with him because the role of the central bank is very extremely important I have a modern experience where I create with my bank and there was a withdrawal we lost about 1% of the deposits at that time in one or two days and then I come up with as the Excellency because the central bank is not yet independent all we have to ask is the microfinance so the Excellency is very kind enough to render a system and then we clear out the rumors outright at that time I remember I told the press the media that I used to sleep 8 hours a day or at night but I never sleep I never lost my sleep even during this crisis I mean it's a mini crisis so I told them it's because in the past we have the experience that even by now whenever the crisis come up or when a difficult is come up it's always the central bank that's come up with the help or system we need so what we need is the role of the central bank to be more should be a rapid decision on the spot decision that should be made without delaying action that's why I said the central bank should be more proactive rather than remaining more passive it's very important so I can go along with the Secretary the role of the regulatory it's very important in instilling the confidence of the people with regard to the banking transition we have question here what we will do is since so many hands are up we'll take a few questions and then probably bring it to the audience so we have a thematic answer please in Nigeria they have about 70% of people who do not have bank accounts and they have launched a pilot project which is to combine national ID cards with debit cards and that allows people to withdraw money make deposits, make small payments but also to receive social benefits through this payment card so if you renew national ID cards every 5 years you could within 5 years have 60 million people with payment cards so is that an option for Myanmar? very good idea we come here the site, can we get the mic here right here front second row here ok we've got it there why don't you give the mic there hi my name is Abraar I'm from Pakistan there's no question but just a few comments on some of the things that all the gentlemen have been saying first on the KYC I think our central bank has been very innovative and that's something that we can probably mind mark and also learn from them that they have allowed us to go out and offer branchless banking which is correspondent based banking that allows us first of all to take the reach of the banking to the far flung areas but they've also allowed us to open low KYC accounts so there are various tiers of accounts if a person can come to a shop they can open an account with extremely low KYC practically no paper needs to be filled it's all a virtual process that happens so that gives them an opportunity to experience banking and then we allow them to operate those accounts through various channels they have mobile as an option they have plastic as an option and other channels are also available another thing that we have seen work very well with the government of Pakistan to facilitate lots of G2P payments then we have been working with lots of UN agencies to facilitate cash transfers and social transfers through these agents who are available in the remote areas what that has done in our experiences created a lot of confidence in those people in the financial system as well as in those agents as somebody who is trustworthy because they get money from them every month on a regular basis so what we are now seeing is a trend that those people are now starting to actively open accounts at these agent locations and they are starting to use these accounts for saving money, for paying of their bills for sending money to their relatives and they are actually starting to use these for making small retail payments as well so probably those are some of the things that can come in handy as Myanmar is developing their finance for all. Thank you. We've got the gentleman behind that will come to you. I'm Arno Ventura, I'm a YGL I had the opportunity yesterday to talk to the finance minister but I have a precise question now I'm the founder of Planet Finance Group, a microfinance group who invest in emerging country in the setup of new microfinance bank I think Myanmar has set up a new microfinance law which is already a very good step but we have seen worldwide and specifically in the regions most countries are allowing through regulation the setup of microfinance bank that can extend loans not only micro but also SME loans while here in Myanmar we have seen that the regulation doesn't allow to give loans beyond 500 dollars while many micro and small enterprise needs loans beyond 500 dollars the regulation doesn't allow also to get loans from international finance institutions nor from the bank or in a very limited manner I would like to know whether there are plans to improve the regulation in the current months or in the current years so that local or international investors such as us which are specializing in microfinance can consider investing in Myanmar. Thank you. Thank you. The lady here. Hi. I am concerning going back to Koh Thirat survey research of why people are not using banks in Myanmar so I think I think there are two points of views one is whether our current banks are providing the services that people require and the second point of view is that the players in the primary banking are there are not many players in the primary banking and currently banking sector is highly restricted and it's only restricted to a few players and for the local companies private companies they are not allowed to participate in the banking activities and we are hearing that the government will allow foreign companies, foreign banks to operate after 2015 but then we still do not see or do not get any sense whether the government will allow local companies to participate in the banking industry and we understand that government is taking a slower approach because they want to be very cautious because of the past bad experiences and past crisis but then but then since the banking development is key to the economic development is this cautious hamming the development of the country, that's my question Thank you we'll take one from that side since we've done a lot this side and we'll take that as the last and come back and see if we have time for the last one. Yes, please. I'm Teng Tando from Myanmar I would like to ask for the many mobile wallet operation which kind of organisations should be able to do banks or name banks to do this this one question and another question is that the regulations now the existing regulation cannot be enough for these new services this is a really new service for our country so how the regulation should be I mean in the beginning it should be very restricted or it should be start with some a man according to the experience Thank you. Those were very rich comments and questions let me sort of bring it back to the stage so that and if we have time we go back Minister we won't trouble you this time for answering but we do want you to take away some very useful suggestions on the Nigeria experience of having a card which has got which then allows you to transact financially but also to receive subsidies and grants from the government so I think it's very powerful it's proven it's there for you to learn the other very good idea from Abraar which was really about have tier KYC and let's not use one sort of quote for everyone and sort of have it properly particularly for the low income banking sector but let me sort of go a little bit to the bankers and talk about two things the first thing is I think there was from the local resident lady here a question on competition local versus foreign is one angle of her question but the other question was we're not getting sufficient services as well so you know so we need more expertise but is it right to bring in foreign competition at this point and may I ask the bankers I mean you're from a vested interest point of view and we'll hear from Thailand with real experience where it has actually happened in whichever order you would like well if I wear my hats of being one of the foreign banks I would say yes just open up as quickly as possible but that's not going to be the case because I think banking is so for the economies and I think a country should be very cautious on opening up the banking sectors because you certainly want to have some controls over how the banking is going to be conducted and how the resources of the country financial resources should be directed to ensure that certain development need to be done together with the development of banking systems for examples in Thailand in the past we have regulations that if we open a branch and this is imposed on just the local banks if we open a branch in a city one branch in a city three branches in rural areas also there are certain countries who said the same thing about the electronic cash deposits and withdrawal systems if you want to install in a supermarket then probably you also need to install certain numbers in the places that you usually would not want to do and this is a kind of regulation you might want to impose to actually to respond to your need on inclusiveness and that usually I found based on Thailand experience it works best when you work with the local banks not the foreign banks the foreign banks will start yelling no, no, no, we can't take all of that and also banks have crucial roles in allocating credit to companies and you want to make sure that they do it right they do it in the same direction that you want to develop your private sectors and that would be done via a close cooperation from the finance ministers economic ministers and the banking systems so I think introducing competitions introducing newcomers are beneficial don't get me wrong, okay and you should do that but you should also clearly define the roles of the local financial institutions which has already been here which has already doing good business and I think they are willing to work together with you to develop it further thank you I think just in the interest of time so we can address all the questions I would request the pan members to be very brief in their response but crisp as well and Uttanwan would you like to add to the competition versus the services gap sorry the when I think starting with the question by the lady that the people are not using the banking the system at the moment it's only partly true because when we try to offer the new products something like ATM cards, debit cards so people have to open their accounts with us so in our experience we are gaining a lot of customers for example in our main branch we already have 100,000 customers with us it's a one branch alone so it's a tremendous increase within the past year also so I think that may be partly true with the people becoming aware to bandwidth us the requirements for the new products they are using and then when we team up with the Visa and also with Western Union we are receiving a lot of repentance from abroad somewhere around 70 countries all over the world so in one way those who are recipients also have to open accounts anything that one way of modernizing the economy and even in the far flung area because we have all the branches all over the country it means that they can use our banking services that's why I say whenever we open branches people are flocking to the banks not because they have in mind the banks they are going to use or they need to use so that's one way of I think to counter your assertion because it's only for maybe true partly only for the local in Yango it's not all throughout the country I'll come to you with the next question and it's really around the situation where for many years there was one dominant player here which had 90 plus percent of the market share they've now opened it up with 140 new registrations but the worry is that because it is now open to NGOs and cooperatives and businesses that there will be a rule trying to fit to the lowest common denominator and where is the rule of the regulator and the government in this is it to go one extreme of consumer protection economic model try and I guess that's the question that came from the micro credit there maybe from your experience in Philippines it'll be happy to share it really depends on what the object of the financial inclusion program is because the type of intervention really depends on the clientele that you're trying to address for example if you're dealing with understanding of who the poor are because for example you're dealing with extreme poor or the layer of poor people just above them the near poor I don't think that many of these interventions especially from the bank because of risk aversion the cost of retailing banking services and simply physically the absence of those facilities in their areas makes the banks unable to reach them that's why microfinance groups and alternative financial institutions maybe the key in the Philippines we have one group called CARD they have a clientele of about 600,000 people mostly women and every year they have a turnover of about 8 billion pesos and their rate of repayment is about 99% so they've proven effective in terms of the type of intervention of course in government we want more scale because the president's committed to having cutting poverty in half by the time he exits his office so the question now is to what extent are microfinance groups present especially in the poor rural areas where the high incidence of poverty is found so I think the challenge is really with these types of groups and in the Philippines we rank top ten in terms of creating an environment for microfinance groups to thrive so the potential is there but apart from interventions like microfinance especially in dealing with the slowest rank of what we categorize as poor I think it's also important for government side by side with microfinance programs to provide a sustained social protection program because many of these poor people live in geohazard areas speaking for my country and even if once they've been able to start the business but the place gets flooded then that whole venture crashes so it's important also for government to be able to extend social protection services to the very poor that you want to address Thank you secretary we are also being very well tracked by Google and Twitter as we speak and have been in anticipation of the session so I have picked one question which has come out very prevalently through the Google and Twitter in one way or another and I'll address that to the finance minister for his response because I think it is very relevant and what they have to say in Google is that they think Myanmar is better off without banks worldwide banks have done more harm than good now and the Twitter is that making a shift from a cash to a banking system will require huge investments in transactions in new systems in the learning and relearning and would this cost outweigh the benefit having learned from the worldwide experience so minister why do you even bother to move from a cash to the bank economy I'm very pleased to say because today I got so many experiences so many comments and very good times for me I'd like to say we have plans have been made for the greater outreach of banking services through such measures the one is opening more branches in rural areas in each and every part of the country that is our intention and we would like to promote mobile banking and we will encouraging these savings and we will initiating the electronic banking or mobile banking and we enhancing the payment system payment settlement systems and we would like to allow to install or to a clearing house because the payment and cleaning system is very important for our financial assess and we want to enhance our capabilities of the microfinance institutions this is our idea so I receive your comments from the treatise and I'm very happy with that thank you thank you minister clearly we had many hands up still for questions and that is I think thank you to the panellists for having made such valuable comments and remarks as opening and then to your questions I would like to close the session to maintain my credibility with the World Economic Forum right on time at 6pm which is a minute away and all I have to say in the last minute is that Myanmar has all the advantages of being able to create the rules they are not living under the challenges of a system or of existing legacy rules they can create them they can import the 21st century technology of choice and leapfrog they can license the players of choice of world repute and successful track record they have a lot of learning from the successes and the failures of people closer to them and further away to gain from and they have the power of the ASEAN unification which they honorably chair in 2014 to take them ahead I look forward along with all of you to see how financial inclusion in a sustainable way takes shape in Myanmar over the next few years thank you thank you to the panellists and thank you to the participants


I will start by saying that the current juncture of what we are talking about both as emergency and the kind of violence that we are seeing in public space is something that we need to contextualize that what does it really mean? Is it some goons wreaking havoc in our public space? Is it that a certain kind of behavior has come in the forefront because of social media? It's always easy to blame technology for what is happening because it's new, something which is new must therefore also be related to what is new in technology. Or is it something deeper we are experiencing in our society? And I would start by saying that if we don't understand the nature of public violence today then we would not understand also what the objective of this violence is. That it is not, that it is just political forces which have always believed in strong arm methods getting stronger temporarily and so on. But there is a design which is larger that we need to understand and the design is not just a simple political design but it is really a design at the level of societal reconfiguration. Now why this is so? For doing that I am going to take you a little afar. I am going to take you to the United States where lynching as public spectacle became quite known. It may not be known to us but certainly as a public spectacle it was quite well known. And recently, last 10-15 years, a lot of material has come out which has documented the nature of this violence and how it was actually transmitted, shown and how people participate. And both these elements are important because at that time as well there were technological innovations of a certain kind in society which is the camera. So you have photographs of lynching which were taken, sold and what is even more horrifying transmitted as postcards. Actually they were printed as postcards and circulated all around.  Things like this, along with how are you, do write back to me and things like that. So very much in the genre of what is social media today, we have the postcards and the camera performing the role of cell phones and Facebook. So this is what also made me think about that it is not the social media which is driving what's happening today. The mode of transmission or the mode of communication is not what is the central message of what is happening but it is something else and we need to really think about that if we want to resist it, combat it and defeat it. So we'll start with things which perhaps we would not have seen so easily which is essentially bodies hanging from trees. Another black back time called degros being hung as a part of lynching. So you have this very powerful poem which was sung by a number of artists. Southern trees bear strange fruit, blood on the leaves and blood at the root. Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, strange fruit hanging from the popular trees. Now this is evocative because this was the image which at that time was replicated across postcards. This is what I really want to bring out as you can see somebody has taken a photograph and has written on that something which indicates what he or she thinks is important for being present here. This is the postcards of a similar kind. This on the left is a postcard of a lynching in Dallas. Dallas had at that time a population of 92,000 people. 5,000 people participated in this lynching. 5,000 of a population of 92,000. It's mass participation and that is the significant point that you have to think about. Why did it have this mass participation? What were the people participating in? And again there is a postcard and the postcard is again saying oh you haven't written to me for some time please do write to me and so on. The other photograph that you can see on the right and this was a photograph which again is documented available now in various books. This is if you see closely you will see the people have come well-rested. They have ties, coats, normal. They're talking to each other, pointing at each other and taking photographs. This is normalcy for them and this is again mass participation of a different kind. This is your not mob. This is middle-class gentry coming out to mark their presence in an event which people have been lynched. Now this is the other part of it that they were lynching places in Dallas. That's where lynching would take place. People would not only take photographs, they would also take souvenirs. Something from the body, strand of hair. So this was part of the course and in the record of families these are found routinely. That there is this memorabilia that the family collected and photographs and strands of hair, something else. It's difficult to go through all of these accounts without really feeling sick about how human nature can be perverted. Except for the fact that we are seeing it almost every day around us. So we cannot in that sense feel a sense of distance. Oh that happened there, really bad. We are not like that. When lynchings took place it was a public event. Schools, businesses closed, trains, buses ran, newspapers announced it. So it was always a public spectacle. The lynching was not only well organized, it wasn't quite often spontaneous. It was planned under the full connivance of everybody including obviously the police and the local authorities that the lynching was conducted. Now what is, I would like to move from the background of all this and this is not something which is easy to understand. Why was this being done? Was it just random violence?  So it's very clear lynching was directed largely at the black population. It wasn't directed at just anybody. It was directed at the black population. And it was directed largely at the men. Of course the Hispanics were killed, some whites were killed and also black women were also lynched. Let's not think that it was just the black men. They came to get the husband or the son, didn't find them. Pledge the wife or the mother. So that was there but the directed really direction was at the black men. What was the backdrop of this? This is the period which happens, this is the period of 1877 to 1850. People have said, some have said 1967 to 1960, 1867 to 1960 if you leave the rough dates out, it doesn't really matter. The broad message is it came post the civil war. Why was this important post civil war? Because slavery had been abolished. So this lynching that we talk about did not happen automatically as a part of normal social events as it were. Something which is aberration with society sometimes did. It was systematic attempt to reconfigure the racial society particularly of the South which had under force been abolished slavery. It was what the civil war was about. Slavery was abolished. The South did not agree to slavery being abolished. That's why the secession and the civil war. So the response of the South was the response of lynching to re-establish the racial configuration that existed before that which was slavery. So this is again a postcard printed by a pharmaceutical company, a drug company. And this was quite a well-known poem apparently which I wasn't aware of. So this is the only branch of the Dogwood tree, an emblem of white supremacy. Lessons once taught in the pioneer school that the land of white man's rule, the red man once in an early day was told by the whites to mend his way. The Negro now by eternal grace must learn to stay in the Negro's place. In the sunny south, the land of the free, let the white supreme forever be. Let this awarding to all Negroes be or they will suffer the fate of the Dogwood tree. So clear message that it is a message to the Negroes, don't get beyond your slave state. You might have been freed legally but you have no rights. And this is what is being reconfigured post the civil war through lynching. And that is why the lynching and the public spectacle go hand in hand. It's the participation of the white majority in trying to get back the Negroes to their place and also telling the Negroes African Americans today that you have no rights. You might have been freed. We have been forced by the North, the federal government to declare that you are not slaves. But nevertheless, you have no rights. There is no law for you. Whenever we want, we can do whatever we want to you. This is the message that this represents. Now the question is, this is what did it really do? If you see the forced civil war, we slowly see the pushing back of slavery, different rights being established. Okay, but what do we see? We see segregation. So white violence, lynching and mass violence that we were talking about. The public spectacle was to establish the new boundary of segregation, which because of earlier slavery might have been de facto there, but there was no legal segregation. So you get segregated schools, you get segregated spaces. All of this is to reconfigure the racial divide. Now, not through slavery, but through segregation. And this is what you see in the US, that segregation becomes a norm. Even when it is a North, where the segregation is not there in education schools or in public places, there is segregation in the way you live. Blacks lived in different spaces, whites lived in different spaces. And the common argument would be if a black comes into a white community, property prices drop and therefore you don't really want mixed localities. But racism, the reconfiguration of racism in the South, in the American South does not stay the South. It also comes to the North, but in more insidious ways, not in such blatant ways to legal segregation, which is what the US Supreme Court's judgment was. What is it? Equal but separate. That was a segregation basis. Equal but separate. And if you remember South Africa, it was also the same argument apartheid had in the slogan. Equal but separate. Apart from the fact we have 90% of the land and 90% of the money, but that apart. Now, if you see today, the civil rights movement in the United States actually came out of the anti-lynching violence. It came out of segregation. All that combined to create what we now know about is the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, etc. Now post desegregation, which of course was bitterly resisted in the South as you know, the US South. What has happened today? And it's interesting to see how race has reconfigured itself anew after desegregation or after civil rights movement established certain basic rights. That today more blacks have died in police violence in the United States in the year 2015, for example, than did through lynching in the entire period of 1877 to 1951 year.  And 2.3 million people are in US prisons who are black. That's a significant part of the African American men. That's a significant part is directed much more at the men because men they believe can resist and therefore they are violent and therefore the need to discipline them. And if they put up any resistance should took it. So this is the position that we have in the United States. I mean, giving this is a background to show that whether it is lynching as a public spectacle or it is police violence today, it's really the reconfiguration of racial boundaries that at each time have been challenged. In the civil war slave slavery being abolished challenged segregation being abolished and each time it has reconfigured itself to a different kind of violence, but it has reconfigured itself. And that's the lesson that I want you to think about that public violence is not just simply violence, which is of a mob, which is of riots. Public violence, which is a spectacle of this kind with mass participation is actually an attempt to reconfigure society in a particular way. And it is generally a response to certain rights that have been one that have to be quote unquote one back or put back by the dominant community. So it's not simply a story that it was struggle you get oppressed that we understand struggle fight that's clear. But this is actually when you win the fight, you get a new danger. And the new danger then is manifest itself in different ways. And this is what I am taking the southern example, the southern United States to be that there is an objective behind a mass violence. Public spectacles, which have this kind of participation that we are seeing today has an objective, which is not just mindless violence. When it is celebrated through videos transmitted in WhatsApp and on Facebook in different ways, there is an objective that is there. And that's what we need to really look at. Now, I'm getting because it's not a munch. Therefore, I'm getting a little cultured. So I'm reading poetry today, which I normally don't do. So there is the killing the Shambukas. This is drawing its reference really from the strange fruit that poem that we talked about. This is when Rohit Vimula was killed. Then Chandra Mohan wrote a poem. Sealing fans bear a strange fruit, blood on the books, blood on papers, a black body swinging in mute silence, strange fruit hanging from trident. Now, this is the connection that I would like to make that when today you have lynching and a spectacle. And of course, we see lynching is not only a spectacle, lynching is being videoed.  You have the complicity of the crowd who then claim nothing. They saw nothing. They heard nothing. That it really didn't happen this way. It was actually a small incident. It's just unfortunate somebody died. When all this manufacture, shall we say, evidence is created. And quite often the victims are the ones against whom cases are lodged. This is also the other part of the story that the cases are against the victims' families. They are the ones who are supposed to have been instigating the violence. Or they were cattle thieves. On the other hand, those who are convicted are being garlanded by ministers. There is this public acceptance that this is great deed you have done. You are fighting for something great. So, all this that you see is trying to also give a message. What is the message? And I would argue that what you are seeing is actually what the national movement established in the country. A secular state which had obligation that it would not only protect minorities but also provide affibative action, which is what we call reservation. Now, these two elements that the state has responsibility for a secular country. That the people have to protect the secularism of the country. And that we who have oppressed Dalits for thousands of years, we have the moral and the physical responsibility of providing a safe space and a space which can provide them with education, health and other benefits which a middle class takes for granted. The affibative action that the state had promised in different ways. This is the gain of the national movement. What is the national movement all about? It was the British outsiders. We want an independent economic space. The promise of independence movement was that all the people would benefit. That the peasantry, the main part of the movement, the working people, all of them would benefit. It will be a place which will have in that sense no discrimination against any section. Of course, discrimination was there in society and we know it. Discrimination against caste, discrimination against women, they are all embedded in society. But the constitution we did that at that time that was finally accepted. Also accepted that this discrimination would be removed, would not exist. And the state has a responsibility for it. And my argument is that it is against the constitutional provisions which came out of the national struggle that the right wing at the moment is creating the lynch mob and the lynch mentality as a way of disenfranchising a section of the people. So it is in that sense like in the United States, the pushback came that if you make the slaves free, we'll push back to lynching. After 60 years of the national movement, memory having faded. After dismissing whatever we gained out of the national movement as something which is quote-unquote Nehruvian and not apparently Petalian. We now are entering a phase that we, the certain sections, not we but certain sections would like to roll back history. And rolling back history for them is first disenfranchising the Muslims and then the second which is taking away reservation. Now reservation, taking away may take a little more time. It's not that simple today because if you don't disenfranchise the Muslims first if the Muslims, Dalits and others get together then you have a problem. So what do you do? Turn the gun, turn violence towards the Muslims and try to rally the rest. This was the Gujarat progress, the Gujarat what is called riots. Now riots to me would seem to indicate that both sides participated. These were not riots. There was complicity of the state in terms of mass violence against the minorities, against the Muslims. That's what Gujarat was seeing. Gujarat had seen creeping communal riots and I'm using these riots again wrongly. Creeping communal violence in Ahmedabad, in Gujarat, across other towns of Gujarat as well. This creeping violence, what it created was ghettoization of the Muslims over a period. I used to see this in Ahmedabad in Baroda. I used to go to Baroda at that time because as an engineer I was working in some project with the Gujarat State Lixity Board and when it's to go, every time I would find a curfew in some part of Ahmedabad and in some part of Baroda. These are not big communal conflagrations. These were limited violence but it was only. So this limited, continuous violence was configuring the towns into what is today called in Hindustan and Pakistan, India and Pakistan in Ahmedabad and Baroda. In fact, you can't take an auto from a Hindu area to a Muslim area and vice versa because you have to change autos at the border. That's the way Ahmedabad has been reconfigured. That's the way Baroda has been reconfigured. Now this was a continuous process but it culminates in the rights, the Gujarat rights, Gujarat, communal carnage, whatever you want to call it, that this makes clear to the Muslim minorities that you no longer have rights in Gujarat. You cannot vote in Gujarat. If you vote against us, we'll punish you again. So we see the message what the lynching as a public spectacle was doing in the United States, in the South, is the same logic that is operating here. And we did do see that Gujarat Muslims have been disenfranchised in a very fundamental way. Even the main opposition party in Gujarat, the Congress, will not put up Muslim candidates, will not seek directly the vote of the Muslims, will not put Muslim leaders to speak on its platform. You can see therefore the disenfranchising of the Muslims taking place in different ways. And the worst of all, well-meaning liberal Muslim friends who take to platform saying, Muslims at this point must not speak for themselves. They must not put up candidates. They must actually rally behind secular parties. Secular parties is not the issue but they should not voice their opinions. They should stay silent. Now that's the ultimate, where the community decides to keep its voice, lose its voice and disenfranchise itself. And that is the message of the kind of public violence you're seeing today. So I would argue that there are two objectives to what we are seeing in terms of lynching and violence. It's also not that it is only affected to Muslims. When you talk about, for instance, the death row people, largely Dalits and Muslims, almost 75 to 80% of Dalits and Muslims, probably the figures are even higher. This is Una, this is Gujarat riots, we all are familiar with the images. Now what does it actually mean? Let's look at what some of us have tried to set up. It's called hate crime watch. So we are trying right now to get some figures in terms of what is available in the English papers and we try to put something together. What is called hate crime in 2009 and 2018? The numbers are smaller mainly because we have not tapped into the regional press. It's really what quote-in-quote what's called the national press is printing. But the figure is very clear that large part of it is directed against Muslims and then against the Christians. The figures are very, very clear and the perpetrators are again very clear who they are and what are the causes are also very clear. It's either eating cow or across religious boundaries, marriage or what is called conversion. All of these leads to such kind of violence. So very clear hate crime violence that we have at the moment we can document. Now my purpose of all this is not to say that you know this is what's happening and give a scientific quote-in-quote scientific explanation of what's going on. The real issue is how do you resist it? So the first sign of resistance is for us to understand which I think most of us do that if we don't stand up today for others we'll obviously not be able to stand up when they come for me, when they come for you. So that I think message most of us have. But I think the real message that we have to have is not what happens when there is violence. I do agree that there is violence which is directed against a certain community, community, against certain people. It's very difficult to be there at the spot. We can't because it's happening in a very, very distributed way and the enemy has the ability to mobilize shall we say, attacks at any point. So you cannot therefore have a boundary which you can defend. The boundary is everywhere. So that's not going to happen. But what is it that we can do? And I would argue that we need to provide defense of what of the victims. We need to rally to the defense of the victims both in terms of support and in terms of legal defense. I think what we don't seem to understand is that not only are the victims today have to suffer the consequence of the violence. They are the ones who are being taken to courts.  This is the legal system. And if we do not provide a structure of support to them, what we are going to do is to of course raise the counter-communal forces and that counter-communal forces is to play completely into the hands of the right. The BJP's biggest victory is if they can drive the Muslims all to the Jamaat camp in which case they have won. So this is the threat that we have today that the secular forces, those who believe they are secular, if we are not able to come in the support of the victims, if we are not able to build structures which can provide not only support but legal defense of the victims, if we are not able to follow up of the cases of those who have been participants who have been the perpetrators of the violence, if we are not able to do this, then it will be very difficult to save our secular space only by rallying behind certain political parties or casting our vote against them. It's not enough to speak. It's not enough to go and vote. I think the time has come that we have to express our solidarity physically in terms of checking up. Have their fires been fired? Going and asking the police, why have their fires not been fired? Creating a kind of support group which will legally defend those who are being hounded after the violence so that they drop the cases. Must also understand why these counter cases are lodged. So police will say, People just make up both sides. You just get together. This is also what we saw in Gujarat. You want to come back to the village? Drop your cases. Don't give witness. Surrender. Then you can come back. So this is the basic message and I again go back to what was the message of the lynch law. That is the message that was there. That surrender you stay but you stay at our suffrage. This is the message which we have to contest and we can contest this today only if you are able to stand beside the victims and fight with them both legally, socially and politically. I know it's a hard task. It's a hard task because we have never thought we'd come to this part. This is not what we had organized ourselves for. We had organized ourselves for struggle of the workers, struggle of the peasantry, struggle of the rights of different sections, struggle of the rights of the Dalits, communal harmony. This was supposed to be our slogans. We were fighting for a different future. We were not fighting in defense. We were really fighting for what we thought was the future but unless we could defend the present we will not be able to advance and I would therefore ask all of us including me that if whatever platform we are in, whatever institution we are in today how can we do small things which help in creating legal defense, social defense as well as political defense for the communities that may attack. If this task we do not do we will not be able to deal with the larger political task of combating the right and then the task for the right will be made easier because it will splinter each of us, each of the groups, each of the identities and identity politics if once it takes root if we fight on the basis of our identities then the majoritarian discourse really wins and that is also the part of the right being offensive to consider ourselves as only as identities. So we consider ourselves as Hindus, Muslims, this caste, that caste and so on we do not think in terms of climate we do not think who is benefiting out of this current dispensation who with all the things that happen Mr. Modi's victory, all the globetrotting he did ultimately Sadhanis, Ambani's so that world hasn't changed, Choksi's that world hasn't changed. It's not a demand that some of our friends make in terms of identity politics that it's alright if there are capitalist if there are poor, if there are landless labour as long it is equitable among caste so what you are saying is if I also get representation in the bourgeoisie I'm okay but that's not our battle so that is the basic problem that we have that once we splinter in terms of identities and ask for essentially representation the politics of representation and the politics of emancipation are going to be completely different so I would also submit that response to this kind of majoritarian violence cannot also be in terms of identities it has to be in terms of getting everybody together and isolate those who want to configure society differently by using public value


While there's a lot of progress been made, the march on Washington was for jobs and freedom. I think in the area of what we characterize as freedom, a number of the barriers in terms of voting, in terms of public accommodation, in terms of housing, a number of those things have gone away. But when it comes to the economic issues of jobs and being able to gather wealth and be able to really function in the economic sense in this country, there are a number of questions about that.


ICT is becoming a common asset for everyone because of this communication capabilities. Also use of this how we are effectively use of information is for influence for everyone, not only for ICT communities. So we have many verticals to request of the use of ICTs, like vehicle communities or health communities, agriculture communities. So we at ICT is trying to develop our communication capabilities in more efficient, effective ways, even definitely software of this broadband capabilities like 5G. But also this ITU is we are dealing with this technical standard to help of these innovations. So becoming of this ICT as an innovation platform is done by this lead by this ITU, especially ITU standard worlds. One of our budget world today is AI machine learning, but as we already recognized AI machine learning without this clean data is quite dangerous. So we are keen of this how this data is the issue of this all aspect. Also the need of this interoperability between different verticals, different industries, getting of this format of this data. So ITU is organized how we can facilitate data processing and management through our focus groups, through our study groups, we are keen to develop some of the standard to help of this data is more useful and valuable asset for everyone. Many of our new relations we did now with health and transport, many areas. Like this today is a shift is collaboration with consumer electronics and the vehicle communities. So you get together this. So this is one of the examples of how we want to collaborate to support of these verticals. So this ITU is open platforms, member-driven but open platforms to support of this ICT, to support of these each verticals. So that is our role. So we believe through these collaborations we can manage all this digital transformation is working very well.