I have felt on many occasions that I am unable to express
my thoughts related to policy because of my poor writing skills. I tried using
others to write for me but that also didn't work. Writing is one work, which
cannot be delegated easily. You have to do it yourself. This was the
primary reason for my opting for policy writing course in Harvard.
In that course, although we are asked to write about only
2 topics, I used that opportunity to pin myself down to write on all those
areas where I felt strongly but couldn't write so far. This list is given
below.
I will try to write on each of these topics in detail in
next few months.
1. Smaller states in India: We have 29 states and their populations vary from 0.6 million
to 210 million. That's ridiculous. In my view, it is administratively next to
impossible to govern any administrative entity of more than 50 million
population. The problem gets compounded when there is no decentralization and
everything reaches to top level. Unlike many developed countries, Police and
many regulatory services are still controlled from state level rather than from
county, city or district level. Most of our districts are more in population
than many countries in the world.
2. Ridiculously low fees/fines for Government Services: You can get a driver's license for $3 in India. Court may fine
you $20 for an offence even if you are a billionaire. Many of the fees/fines in
India and the states are given in Acts and it requires the amendment of the Act
to change them. I want to make a case for a one time exercise to bring all
these fees/fines away from acts and make them part of rules/schedules which can
be changed by the governments easily.
3. More power to politicians: India is probably only democracy where the hands of Politicians
are tied by red tape. There is very strong permanent bureaucracy and a
complicated set of rules which make any politician's life miserable.
Politicians on the top do have the power to transfer these bureaucrats but no
direct powers to do many things. Thus Politicians have the power (hidden) and
the bureaucrats have the responsibility (open). There is this big mismatch
between power and responsibility which leads to failure of administration on
many occasions. This needs to be corrected by giving more open powers to
elected people and then making them responsible for their actions rather than
allowing them to rule from backstage. MLA/MPs present job chart is so much different from what they actually do.
4. Demonetizing Rs.1000/500 notes to control black money: There are many ways it will reduce black money in the country
without doing any inconvenience for 90% of the poor and middle class
citizens in any way. Even the rich people with white income won't be affected.
The only inconvenience would be to rich with black incomes.
4A. m-Currency/m-Wallet: Using talk time/talk value in your mobile phone as cash. It
means 2 changes from the existing setup. One, facility to transfer talk
time to other user on any network. Two, to be able to get cash by surrendering
talk time.
5. Paying politicians and government servants well: so that they stay away from greed and can concentrate on their
work.
5A. Seven types of Corrupt Officers: 7 shades of grey and the related lessons/strategies.
6. Importance of measuring soft emotions: like happiness, anger, jealousy, sadness, pain etc. If BP,
urine sugar, pulse, brain activity which were immeasurable 50 years back can be
measured now, why can't these things be measured if we work on it seriously and
commit more research funds for these than for nuclear power or for space
exploration. The measurement of these emotions will benefit mankind much more
than going to Mars.
7. Keeping general compartment in the middle of the trains
rather than at two ends: India is a
socialist country but still in Indian trains, the lowest class (cheapest
ticket) compartments are at two extreme ends of the train rather than in the
middle. There are coolies in India at railway stations to carry the luggage for
higher-class people but poor people need to carry their own luggage. They first
run to the front of the train. In case, those compartments are full, they
travel the whole platform to go to the back end. If not in the middle, at least
general coaches can be all placed together instead of keeping them at two ends.
8. Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and missed opportunities: There is so much we could achieve out of this like employment
generation and clean streets by placing garbage bins properly.
9. Committing our selves to charity: I belong to the 2 best networks in India, IIT and IAS. They are
the most fortunate and influential people in India. But many times, I find that
they talk more and do less. Especially my IIT batch mates settled abroad never
get tired of talking about giving back and doing something for the country. But
they never put their money where their mouth is. If you calculate the money donated
or invested by them for any good cause as a percentage of their annual income,
in most of the cases, it would not even be 0.5%. For this, their excuse is that
they are not sure whether their money would be well used or not. But then, if
they are serious, there are many ways today to find out good organizations
doing serious work. Can they commit to themselves that every year they will put
aside a certain % (it can be anything from 0.1% to 20%) of their annual income
for others?
10. Role of failures in my life: I remember my failures very fondly and thank god for each one
of them. Success is short-term happiness and failure is long-term happiness.
Success only validates your learning, failure improves it. Today, I got this
quote from Winston Churchill in my whatsapp group- "Success is the ability
to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." As a
personal essay, I want to write for myself all my failures and the strong role
they have played in my life. Somebody suggested that I should use the
commencement speech of J.K.Rowling at Harvard.
11. International Social Security: Once I was discussing with a US friend of mine about the
homeless people in USA. His simple response was that it was a matter of choice
rather than a matter of compulsion for them. And his second remark, which
struck me most, was that many of these are much richer than even some lower
middle class in Africa and Asia. Why should a human being be deprived of basic
necessities of life because of the accident of birth? If all human beings are
equal, why should some be more equal than others (George Orwell: Animal Farm)?
Now with world becoming a global village, shouldn’t there be a concept of
International Social Security? There should be minimum subsistence level income
(for food, shelter, clothing), education and health guaranteed to every citizen
in the world so that they can realize their full potential irrespective of
their nation of birth. UN now is a very weak institution and hence this idea seems
very impractical now. But there is no other way to protect humanity from
terrorism and crime.
12. Achievement/Happiness: Lets say you are climbing a staircase to reach the top floor
(say its 105th floor or something) of a building to get a good view
of the city. You realize on the way that you don’t have the strength to reach
the top floor. If you apply all your strength, you might be able to reach up to
70th floor, but you will be dead tired to enjoy the view. But if you
just go in a relaxed way, you would reach 40th floor. What will you
choose?
Globally, in the field of business, the top floor is Bill
Gates, in power politics, the top floor is Obama, in social work the top floor
is Mother Teresa, in celebrated authors the top floor is JK Rowling. But then
there are local top floors in every country, state, city and village. So a big
man in one context or geography is a small man in another geography. A business
tycoon from Kanpur is a lower middle class man in Mumbai. A business tycoon in
Mumbai is a middle class in London or LA.
No matter, which field we work in, the chances of our
reaching global top are very less. If we know that we cannot reach the top,
doesn’t it make sense to enjoy the journey and reach the highest possible floor
while enjoying the view at each floor? This is motivated by the story “How much
land does a man need?”
We nostalgically look at the happiness in the past and
wait for achievements in future to be happy and satisfied. Can’t we switch
this? Lets nostalgically look at our achievements in past and to the happiness
in future as an independent entity in itself delinked from achievements,
successful relationships, possessions etc. Why should our happiness be
dependent upon other factors? The book “The power of now” motivates this thinking
of mine.
13. The five priorities of a
state: I have often wondered about this
question. As of now my answer for my state Uttar Pradesh (UP) would be justice,
land reforms, police, family planning and social security. Note that there is
no education, health, roads, electricity, food, poverty alleviation, and rural
development there.
14. Casteism and corruption account for 70% of India's problems.
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