Acche Din - Competition and Choice
By: Amit Bhushan Date: 22nd Nov. 2015
There seems again a push for Acche Din rhetoric. We have a plethora of statistics and policy declarations around besides the usual sound bites. One key issue is that politicians really do not have any definition and commercial news media hardly has any 'incentives' to lay out any acceptable definition. This is because it wants freedom to argue from whatever position about Acche Din it deems fit and what suits their own interest on different occasions.
The data/stat will be picked up suitably and argument prepared to argue for a course of action that suits powers that be. This then will be either accepted or rejected by government or to allow decision making to be postponed depending upon how political interests are aligned.However, from a Common man point of view the Aache Din remain rather well defined and well-articulated, though not in commercial news media. It remains to do with improved choices for him i.e. choices that are affordable to him and allow him real options that can be exercised. This could about jobs/business venture that he may want to take or needs that he may want to satisfy as consumer or about his education/training needs etc. This should support selection of the options best suited by him at most of the points in his life. Creation of such choices also encourages 'Competition'. Competition is the lubricant that ensures that various options or entities providing those option keep on evolving these further with the result that the range of choices improve further.
All this is not new, however seldom is the analysis made in commercial news media about 'sectors' which seem to be performing for the common man under a specific regime and sectors do not seem to be performing with throwing clear policy lacunas, regulations and political reasons that may be responsible for the situation. Performing sectors means increased choices and competition while non-performing sectors mean whittling down of players and choices and sectors here is broadly defined i.e. Transportation sector will include transport by all modes such as Air, water, road and rail rather than just an increase in airlines.
Too many choices almost always ensure that opportunity for corruption is curtailed as oligarchs remain vary that their schemes may not have desired impact (on profits) due to possible shift of consumers. The jobs also follow the consumers choices exercised. While policy debates in India is moving towards this realism however it is still quite a distance to be travelled as such clear articulation of argument is still missing.The reaction of the political leadership in this regards almost always ambivalent. This is because politicians love to play God for the underprivileged. This is usually done by expanding government services via the subsidized route to 'ensure' it reaches the 'poor' which builds incentive for leakages.
They tax the rich for this 'service to society' which adds on to the negative incentives for 'not paying taxes' while making best use of governance. Then we have government deciding on behalf of people on 'what needs to be bought' where the bureaucrats know that they cannot satisfy everyone which may include challenges for satisfying even all the guiding principles for buying such wares. Neither is a synchronized delivery of all services possible in a large bureaucracy and so there is a considerable drag on motivation leading to tolerance and encouragement of corrupt bureaucrats. The situation propels them towards excuses and motivates their self-promotion spirits either in form of nepotism or corruption.In theory, democracy should ensure a balance of interests which if not adhered to should lead to 'change' and this change should then propel forces to 'rebalance'.
However political leaderships or governments are seldom about just economic rebalancing which generally has strong incentives in opposition. It tend to focus almost as much about socio-cultural rebalancing besides a lot of noise about economic, political adjustments wherein they need to ensure "a balance in favour of supporters" rather than maximizing Competition and Choice for people. Often instead of balancing sectors, it tends to leverage the very sectors where there might be maximum scope for nepotism, to their own benefit, to ensure balance of cronyism for the sake of balancing. This happens because the change is seldom about voters being in "centre of change" but it is about leadership who has "propelled and led people for change". And so it is leadership who gets to define what the change should be.
This is often a change to favour another set of cronies, which may be out of favour of the previous regime.It is important for political leaders to understand whether a change was "leader led" or "people led" and then ensure the respective deliverables. Failing on this aspect ensures almost "continuous change". We are already witness to almost tumultuous changes in governments in various states and now it seems likely at the centre as well. It has almost always been analysed as the competition between different political regimes, which keep tossing each other out of power. This competition according to the commercial news media seem to be hitting the national level and emergence of new political avatars being an aberration, which can either be contained or which will take the form of one of the existing political formations.
This almost kills any discussions about alternatives and encourages "siloed" thinking within existing laid down boundaries, rather than "change" or out-of-box thinking. The limitation of success and limited impact of new political formations, which might be due to 'lack of capabilities' to bring about "real change" is attributed as "lack of alternatives", which kills the debate. It of course helps that political leaders and parties are not used to abstract thinking and eulogizing the same to public because of - either not being able to reach masses or fear of being interpreted wrongly, further adding to confusion.While seem to have hit change at the national level and have visible signs that the change seem to be round the corner once again.
Yet the thinking in commercial news media seem to be siloed within old paradigms even though it recognizes the change as somewhat more significant that has ever taken place ever. Do we need fresh perspectives and paradigms.. at least the commercial news media doesn't think so, yet.
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By: Amit Bhushan Date: 22nd Nov. 2015
There seems again a push for Acche Din rhetoric. We have a plethora of statistics and policy declarations around besides the usual sound bites. One key issue is that politicians really do not have any definition and commercial news media hardly has any 'incentives' to lay out any acceptable definition. This is because it wants freedom to argue from whatever position about Acche Din it deems fit and what suits their own interest on different occasions.
The data/stat will be picked up suitably and argument prepared to argue for a course of action that suits powers that be. This then will be either accepted or rejected by government or to allow decision making to be postponed depending upon how political interests are aligned.However, from a Common man point of view the Aache Din remain rather well defined and well-articulated, though not in commercial news media. It remains to do with improved choices for him i.e. choices that are affordable to him and allow him real options that can be exercised. This could about jobs/business venture that he may want to take or needs that he may want to satisfy as consumer or about his education/training needs etc. This should support selection of the options best suited by him at most of the points in his life. Creation of such choices also encourages 'Competition'. Competition is the lubricant that ensures that various options or entities providing those option keep on evolving these further with the result that the range of choices improve further.
All this is not new, however seldom is the analysis made in commercial news media about 'sectors' which seem to be performing for the common man under a specific regime and sectors do not seem to be performing with throwing clear policy lacunas, regulations and political reasons that may be responsible for the situation. Performing sectors means increased choices and competition while non-performing sectors mean whittling down of players and choices and sectors here is broadly defined i.e. Transportation sector will include transport by all modes such as Air, water, road and rail rather than just an increase in airlines.
Too many choices almost always ensure that opportunity for corruption is curtailed as oligarchs remain vary that their schemes may not have desired impact (on profits) due to possible shift of consumers. The jobs also follow the consumers choices exercised. While policy debates in India is moving towards this realism however it is still quite a distance to be travelled as such clear articulation of argument is still missing.The reaction of the political leadership in this regards almost always ambivalent. This is because politicians love to play God for the underprivileged. This is usually done by expanding government services via the subsidized route to 'ensure' it reaches the 'poor' which builds incentive for leakages.
They tax the rich for this 'service to society' which adds on to the negative incentives for 'not paying taxes' while making best use of governance. Then we have government deciding on behalf of people on 'what needs to be bought' where the bureaucrats know that they cannot satisfy everyone which may include challenges for satisfying even all the guiding principles for buying such wares. Neither is a synchronized delivery of all services possible in a large bureaucracy and so there is a considerable drag on motivation leading to tolerance and encouragement of corrupt bureaucrats. The situation propels them towards excuses and motivates their self-promotion spirits either in form of nepotism or corruption.In theory, democracy should ensure a balance of interests which if not adhered to should lead to 'change' and this change should then propel forces to 'rebalance'.
However political leaderships or governments are seldom about just economic rebalancing which generally has strong incentives in opposition. It tend to focus almost as much about socio-cultural rebalancing besides a lot of noise about economic, political adjustments wherein they need to ensure "a balance in favour of supporters" rather than maximizing Competition and Choice for people. Often instead of balancing sectors, it tends to leverage the very sectors where there might be maximum scope for nepotism, to their own benefit, to ensure balance of cronyism for the sake of balancing. This happens because the change is seldom about voters being in "centre of change" but it is about leadership who has "propelled and led people for change". And so it is leadership who gets to define what the change should be.
This is often a change to favour another set of cronies, which may be out of favour of the previous regime.It is important for political leaders to understand whether a change was "leader led" or "people led" and then ensure the respective deliverables. Failing on this aspect ensures almost "continuous change". We are already witness to almost tumultuous changes in governments in various states and now it seems likely at the centre as well. It has almost always been analysed as the competition between different political regimes, which keep tossing each other out of power. This competition according to the commercial news media seem to be hitting the national level and emergence of new political avatars being an aberration, which can either be contained or which will take the form of one of the existing political formations.
This almost kills any discussions about alternatives and encourages "siloed" thinking within existing laid down boundaries, rather than "change" or out-of-box thinking. The limitation of success and limited impact of new political formations, which might be due to 'lack of capabilities' to bring about "real change" is attributed as "lack of alternatives", which kills the debate. It of course helps that political leaders and parties are not used to abstract thinking and eulogizing the same to public because of - either not being able to reach masses or fear of being interpreted wrongly, further adding to confusion.While seem to have hit change at the national level and have visible signs that the change seem to be round the corner once again.
Yet the thinking in commercial news media seem to be siloed within old paradigms even though it recognizes the change as somewhat more significant that has ever taken place ever. Do we need fresh perspectives and paradigms.. at least the commercial news media doesn't think so, yet.
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