For a better India...

“PM Modi wins the reader poll for the TIME Person of the Year” declared the message with a barrage of punctuation marks and smileys in the WhatsApp group. Within minutes came the reply “Damn! Still he ain’t THE Person of the Year” driving home the point like a cold dagger through the heart. This has been playing out for quite a while now given that the 2014 General Election was one of the most followed and fought election on the Information Superhighway in the history of India.

However, the point cannot be missed. This doesn’t happen when a Kailash Satyarthi wins the Nobel Peace Prize or an A R Rahman wins an Oscar. Even their staunchest critics and rival nominees applaud. But when the Minister, a leader of the masses, is winning a poll, trivial or not, they aren't receiving similar support from their own citizens.

I wondered what could be the reason and arrived at two ridiculous conclusions.

A few of Indian rivers are perennial so are elections in India. Being the democratic, federal structure we live in, some part of India is always facing elections or approaching elections and given the broad ideologies of the parties, left, right or centre, the federal government either align or are opposed to the Government of India. Given the situation and the campaigning involved someone with an opposing view of governance always sees the ministers more as a party ideologist and less as an approachable minister fighting for the common man’s well being. So the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues must refrain from poll campaigning and exhibiting party affinity publicly. When the President, Governor or a Civil Servant can display neutrality while at work, the cabinet can definitely do it too.

When a stock broker buys a high conviction stock, he or she tends to follows news that reiterates his or her conviction. The same happens in an interview to an interviewer, once the candidate impresses him or her, he or she continues to question the candidate to reiterate his or her decision. This is called a confirmation bias in the psychological circles. Now when a person decides to become a member of a political party, he or she does so after a good amount of research. Now if the political party is making a mistake the confirmation bias kicks in and hinders the rational analysis of the situation. Rather, the mind looks for news that reiterates his or her belief that the party is somehow right which is exactly what the party propaganda machine would feed. So party memberships should be abolished and issue based support and volunteering by common people should be encouraged.

Brickbat or Compliment welcome at comments below.

'Amma' Economics

A few days back as I was scavenging my way through the thrash piled up on the information super highway I came across a beautiful story; a story of hope and brotherly love witnessed by the writer in one of the newly opened amma canteens in the city. The writer dwelled on how two boys, orphaned at a very young age, were able to fend for themselves, treating themselves to hot sambar rice from the meagre change they had on them. The story was heart rendering and eye opening to the fact that there are downtrodden people who would require a helping hand for their very survival. No wonder this scheme is being studied by many countries around the globe for replication.

 

On the same day I heard from another friend on how one of the stalls set up to distribute amma drinking water bottles gets a consignment of just 30 bottles a day. This would roughly translate to 300 bucks as revenue from sales per day and 9000 bucks in a month. The astute businessman’s son he was wondered aloud, how this will be sustainable by the government when it had to pay the employee in the stall somewhere around 12000 bucks as salary. While the math may not do justice given the fact that there are other stalls that might be eking out a profit, it is also a fact that all these services are subsidized by the state government.

 

Now should the government be doing this has been the question of many debates by eminent economists and Nobel laureates, the relatively recent one between Jagdish Bhagwati and Amartya Sen prior to the elections, what could be the alternative is the one in which our country’s best minds should be spending their time in.

 

One alternative is to spend the money on setting up regulators who could regulate prices of the food, water, medicines, salt, etc for those in the weaker section. Rather than adopting a collision course with the entrepreneurial class in the state, the government can take them along by giving them tax breaks and foregoing its revenues by offering other perks for every woman they employ, every self help group they embrace by buying their products and every common man they serve. This would open the gates to many new entrepreneurs as well. By competing with the entrepreneurs the government is only alienating them further, discouraging them from paying taxes and adding unnecessary weight to the government machinery.