Broken windows

There is a message in my in-box today from the Transform India with Modi campaign team. I am not quite sure whether it is an initiative by the Government of India, or by the BJP or just another social networking site trying to add members rapidly. Whatever the case, the message is intriguing. It invites people like you and me to suggest ideas that would help make India a better, cleaner, business friendly place.

Such initiatives are incredibly hard to implement. Getting traction around the idea, both in the minds of the public and the bureaucracy. Then there needs to be alignment on priorities in the minds of the public, the bureaucracy and the enforcement mechanism.

Granting however, that change needs to start with us, the citizenry, I would like to refer your attention to the Broken Window Theory in criminology. Those of you who have read Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell will be familiar with this theory. In short, the theory suggests that curbing small crimes, like vandalism and ticket-less travel on the trains, can curb criminal intentions and solve larger problems later. Petty criminals who learn to get away with small crimes are emboldened to try bigger ones.

What are your ideas on the small crimes that need to be nipped in the bud? My first inclination is to go after traffic violations. In a country where spray-paint cans are expensive and vandalism of the scarred walls kind is fortunately not an epidemic, it is the youth on motorcycles who brag about getting to college without heed to traffic lights that need to be educated. Traffic violations are my first choice for another reason. We do not need to put in place a new mechanism to trap this culprits. We only need to make the punishment unaffordable. Rather than increasing the monetary penalty, it might be far more effective to impose the fine in terms of time. If the cop who stops a traffic offender is given instructions to simply hold the culprit there for a few hours before letting him go or charging him with a crime, the deterrent would be far higher.

Side effects of a middle-class upbringing 1

In the post on keeping needs small, I mentioned the aversion to waste that our parents inculcate in us. A few days ago, I noticed a strange impetus that caused me to eat beyond the point where I was actually quite full. You see, there was a quantity of food left on my plate and, blame it on my now hard wired habits; I could not bring myself to leave that food uneaten. Somewhere in my subconscious, memories of my mother insisting that I finish everything on my plate were firing some neurons that caused my hands to move involuntarily to shovel the remaining food into my mouth.

It is obviously virtuous to take only as much on one's plate as one can finish. The habit once formed not only builds discipline, it builds a disdain for waste.

But this leads to quite a paradox. Food left on the plate would be a waste. But by pushing it through your alimentary canal, are we really not wasting it too? Not to mention the ill-effects on our health and well-being.

The discipline drilled into us makes us unable to make rational decisions in such situations. Even when we realize that we have made an error of judgment, we feel compelled to carry through with what is evidently a bad decision.

We might need to think about how we can teach our children the values of frugality and discipline and yet show them how and when to re-evaluate their decisions as events unfold. I suspect this is not going to be easy.