Thank you dear subscribers, we are overwhelmed with your response.
Your Turn is a unique section from ThePrint featuring points of view from its subscribers. If you are a subscriber, have a point of view, please send it to us. If not, do subscribe here: https://theprint.in/subscribe/
This year, on August 15, 2021; India shall enter into 75th year of its independence from British rule. Even though almost seven-and-half decades have gone by, we as a nation are in the middle-to-bottom rung when it comes to Human Development Index, bottom rung when it comes to Global Hunger Index & is considered a “flawed democracy” according to Democracy Index.
For all our problems, we either blame the government (also called “system”) or God. Most of the people in our country have this “living hand to mouth” existential attitude. We do not plan ahead, we do not work hard today so that we have a comfortable future ahead. We do not do our karma but expect fruits of labour.
We don’t get inspired by entrepreneurs as we feel they are all cheats. Our education system is focussed on churning out “employable workers” & not “wealth creators”.
Why do I say so? Let’s look at people whom most of us consider as icons – cricketers, movie stars & may be one-or-two industrialists. We don’t get inspired by their hard work, rather get inspired by their wealth.
Have you wondered why haven’t we progressed like others? Here’s my hypothesis: We are a deeply feudal and a povertarian society.
Let me explain: We principally believe that it is the duty of our “system” or God to take care of us, Indians. By just being born in this great country, we have fulfilled our duty.
Look at our political system around us. Even though we elect a “local representative”, we are voting for a political leader. We expect this leader to take care of all our needs & wants. We expect the leader to provide us with high paying jobs, give us resources for free, levy no tax at all whilst not asking us to improve our knowledge base or skill sets.
Even the messaging by these political leaders is on same lines – free electricity, free education, free ration, free water etc. Everything is for free. But what they are subtly saying is; “Poverty is your birth right & I shall ensure you remain poor always!”
Every political party (even though they claim to have robust inner party democracy) functions like a dictatorship. We do not mind it & justify it by saying, “we need a strong leader” to make this system work. These political leaders would continue to dole out alms to us & we shall remain utterly grateful to them.
Unless we change our collective mindset & are mindful of our duties towards our nation i.e. improve our knowledge base/ skill sets, pay a fair price for every resource & service we use, pay our taxes dutifully, select our leaders carefully; and most importantly, get out of this feudal and povertarian mindset, we shall continue to remain a nation with “great potential” for another 75 years, if not more.
-Anish Balachandran
—————
Punjab is a conspicuous state that has defied national political trends at least 6 times in the last 2 decades. Punjab elected Congress government in 2002 when NDA was in power at the Center, SAD government in 2007 and 2012 when Congress-led UPA was ruling the nation and Congress government in 2017 state elections when Modi government was in power.
Not only is it an outlier with respect to choosing the government, Punjab also presents a vivid exception in terms of party vote banks. A major section of Hindu votes, including the otherwise loyal BJP vote base of upper middle class, remains allured to the Congress for they see what Indira Gandhi did in 1984 was a decisive action against the extremists in the state.
Punjab has largest proportion (~32%) of Dalits in the country and are a crucial vote bank. However, they do not enjoy as much political power as they do in the states of UP, Bihar and others. Despite BSP getting its first MP from Punjab, Dalits have posed no confidence in the party over recent years and BSP ended up getting only 1.5% votes in 2017 elections. Dalit votes thus remain aligned to either their Hindu identity and vote for BJP/SAD in Doaba region or align with Sikh votes in Malwa and Majha to decide between SAD and INC alternatively every elections.
However, there is one prominent feature that is similar in Punjab politics as to a lot of other states in the nation. Just as in UP, Bihar, MP, Gujarat, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh etc., Punjab also faces a political vacuum in terms of its options. INC won a massive victory in 2017 on the back of a trilateral contest and continues to hold the dominant position in present state electoral math.
The other two options of SAD and AAP remain illusive by lack of leadership, weakening cadre, multiple factions and overall mismanagement. Since 2017 to thus far, none of these parties seems to have learned from their debacle and are only making things worse for them rather than opting for a course correction.
SAD President Sukhbir Badal’s recent announcement of appointing a Dalit deputy CM if they come to power is testimony to the fact that core voter groups in Punjab are dwindling and parties, especially non-incumbent are wanting to reach other sections of voter groups. This also presents an interesting proposition for any party trying to enter the state politics. In a state where anywhere around 30% vote share is willing to swing between parties, there are possibilities for new entrants to woo these voters and form its own politics in the state. It is this very section of population that AAP managed to swing in its favor in 2017 and ended up with ~24% of vote share.
However, given the mismanagement and indulgences with extremist forces, AAP got contained geographically and could only manage to win 20 seats.
It is in this context that a new party such as BJP can emerge as a popular choice in the state politics. In addition to swing vote share among Sikhs and core Hindu base that it can attract, it no longer is under the perils of being a junior partner to SAD in the state. Hindus comprise 38% of state population and together with sections of Dalit Sikhs, Namdharis and Kumhar and Kamboj OBCs can provide significant support to the BJP.
Cadres of BJP in Punjab are trying to display these numerical combination to its leadership but most likely leadership has its own calculations and considerations. If BJP is to use the opportunity presented by the split in alliance with SAD and the electoral energy given the upcoming elections, it will have to reach out to farmers to find middle ground, listen to cadres while providing them sufficient backing to
(*All electoral data as per Election Commission of India)
–Lakshit Mittal
————– ————–
Think of a country starting with letter ‘U’? Chances are that the first name that cropped in your mind is that of Uganda. Famous for its pristine beauty this landlocked African nation is ravaged with chronic political instability and erratic economic management. This struggling Ugandan economy had inspired millions of its resident citizens to go online in an attempt to bypass its ailing telecom infrastructure and be at par with the rest of the world.
For millions of Ugandans social media apps like Facebook & Twitter were the only ways to do business, communicate with each other, call for social support, get the latest news, and even to call for emergency services. With an informal banking infrastructure the people also had to rely on mobile payments to send or receive money.
However, in an attempt to curb ‘gossip’ against his rule, in July 2018 President Musevini imposed a 5% tax on mobile money transfers and a 200 Ugandan Shillings (or Rs 4) per-day levy on social media usage, in effect suspending all websites and blocking all apps unless the user raked up this fee. Officials claimed that this would increase revenue. But within three months of implementation of this levy millions opted out of subscriptions and overall internet usage fell by 25 percent.
Subsequently the value of mobile money fell by billions of dollars. The levy caused a per-connection increase in cost of only 1% for the rich, but added a burden of as much as 10% for the poor. One GB of data wiped out almost 40% of their average monthly household income.
This regulatory tax on social media had disruptive effects on revenue and cascading effects on social communications, employment and some studies estimated that it hit Uganda’s economy by as much as 3% of its GDP. In an attempt to tame ‘idle talk’ online and raise tax revenue, little did President Musevini realise that his senseless regulation would have such devastating unintended consequences on the Ugandan economy.
Such is the crossroads at which the Indian government stands. Whereas the efforts and intention to create a regulatory framework around our social ecosystem are praiseworthy the approach needs to be more nuanced. Formulating social media regulations is like threading a needle with a very fine eye with a very thin thread to begin with and if not carefully crafted may trigger the Law of Unintended Consequences. To define this law scientifically – “The Law of Unintended Consequences occurs when an impulsive or emotional decision is made that unintentionally creates more problems than it solves.”
The social scientists refer to this law in situations where the intended fixes to a problem have only served to cause more severe problems. Usually these quick-fix decisions are highly impulsive and emotional. Whereas policy makers may congregate in closed rooms to discuss possible regulations, the reasons that we suffer from the Law of Unintended Consequences are more psychological in nature, namely –
▪ We are biased towards fixing urgent threats that we see and think will have immediate impact instead of analysing the long-term impacts e.g. we want to fix the unyielding or un-complying attitude of the Big Tech companies instead of focusing on curbing the spread of misinformation on their social media platforms.
▪ We are bad at analysing second-order or third-order implications that could occur based on our decisions. In 2018 when a team of daring Romanian journalists published a story with incriminating evidence exposing a Romanian official, the authorities grabbed these journalists, charged them with violation of data protection laws and imposed a 20-million-euro fine.
What impacts will the privacy policies have on public’s right to know? What effect will they have on an individual’s privacy? how will our approach to free speech affect data protection
Today our policy makers have reached a fork in the road where they need to take a decision that will enable free speech or intensify hate, nurture genuineness or proliferate misinformation, foster innovation or monopolization, enhance social inclusion or deepen polarization, without undermining the massive benefits of social media platforms.
Charting the technological future is highly complex and nuanced, so we need technical experts to lead the way. The regulations need to act as guardrails to address the issues of data portability and interoperability, privacy and data protection, free speech and election integrity. The scale of the problem is too huge for merely few policy makers to address alone.
Policy makers, social media platforms and data scientists will have to come together in order to build a healthier ecosystem. Merely adopting a one-sided Big Daddy approach may seem the right thing to do as of now but it can backfire in future resulting in unintended outcomes that we were trying to avoid in the first place.
-Mayur Mathur
———- ——————–
Work from home revolution
At the turn of the century, there was talk of several ‘revolutions’, which were going to change the world. They were the new emerging technologies like biotechnology, nanotechnology, 3-D printing etc. However, after two decades, these technologies have disappointed their early optimistic observers.
Not that they have failed to deliver completely, the world was able to develop Covid-19 vaccines in a short time because of the mRNA technology, which itself is a result of the biotechnology revolution.
But the initial promise of these technologies was far greater. Biotechnology was supposed to extend human lifespans, nanotechnology was supposed to deliver personalized medicine with nanobots and 3-D printing was supposed to make manufacturing a household activity. Compared to that, these revolutions have underperformed.
These days there is a new revolution in town–the Work from Home revolution. It is impacting millions in the corporate world and those indirectly dependent on the corporate world. According to many surveys, corporates around the world are considering this as a long-term arrangement.
Some have highlighted the fallout of such a disruption, especially on a developing economy like India[https://www.livemint.com/opinion/columns/we-can-t-overlook-the-economic-fallout-of-working-from-home-11617551532027.html]
It is rightly observed that this arrangement has hit many low skilled jobs hard, like office maintenance staff, office canteens and road side food vendors near office complexes.
However, if one only looks at this side of the picture, one will remain blind to the immense productivity gains this restructuring is producing and the future that can result from that.
What is happening is something like this: let’s assume an IT startup with a small workforce of engineers. Until the pandemic, the CEO of the startup had to hire a team of maintenance staff, pay electricity bills and rent for the office and spend on movement of employees for official meetings. These are low value services towards which a part of the startup’s resources had to be spent to keep it running. But no more. Suddenly all these resources have been freed up and can be spent on higher value services. The CEO can instead decide to hire more engineers for the company for example.
Obviously, a lot of jobs have been lost, and most of them by people who are not well off. On the other hand, more engineers will get jobs, although the jobs gained would be much less than those lost. Further, since the CEO has invested in higher value services, he will get a higher return. The company can work on more projects with the increased skilled workforce and get more profits.
This scenario shows that essentially this revolution is pushing resources up the value chain i.e. resources are being diverted from less skilled workers to more skilled ones, higher up on the value chain.
If one concludes the observation at this point, it seems like an arrangement in which the poor are getting a raw deal. Indeed, Marx came to a similar conclusion 150 years ago, when he wrote in Das Capital that increased usage of fixed capital (technology) by the capitalist in the production process, would eventually concentrate all wealth among the bourgeoise and impoverish the proletariat.
He was wrong! This is what happens when one only observes the seen effects but not the unseen ones. Coming back to our example, when the CEO of the startup used his newly freed resources towards higher value services, he increased the efficiency of his firm. Newly hired engineers produced more returns on the investment and created more wealth for the company and the CEO. This increased wealth would also be spent hereafter by the CEO in consuming various kinds of consumer products. This will enhance demand and eventually jobs at the back-end of the production of those products.
So we see two contradictory trends in employment. Some jobs are being lost, while others are being gained. Which of the trends dominate, is an empirical question. And the answer is clear from the 250 years history of capitalism. As better technology brings more efficiency to the production process, not only more jobs are created that are being lost, but much better paid ones are created. This enhances the living standards of all. All boats rise, albeit unequally, and at different times.
Business and jobs are flow concepts, the less efficient are continuously replaced by the more efficient ones. It enhances productivity and wealth of the entire economy over time.
Robert Gordon wrote in The Rise and fall of American Growth that, the digital revolution had a real but a relatively minor impact on the Total Factor Productivity of the economy, and this impact was mostly over by 2004. When I read this, I reflexively disagreed. The ‘Work from Home revolution’ shows that I may be right and that the digital revolution still has miles to go before it sleeps.
-Yuvraj Hooda
Also read: Finance ministry seeks details on Indians’ funds in Swiss banks from Switzerland authorities