Book Review: Palace of Illusion

The book by Chitra Benerjee Divakaruni is a fictional read. It is a re-interpretation of Mahabharat from the perspective of Draupadi. The book is well written. Language is coherent and the sequence of events is also beautifully arranged to keep the readers glued despite knowing the story beforehand.

The book is a journey of various emotions and commotions through which Draupadi goes through in the battle of Mahabharata. While some of it looks very convincing, there are places where it gives the impression of the victim-like hapless attitude of Draupadi which may not be really true. In fact,  one often wonders what could have been fate of Mahabharata if Draupadi could have played a more positive role. But it was destiny. No one could change it. 

Her insecurities, jealousy, infatuation towards Karna, ego, anger towards Duryodhana, and mysterious relationship with Krishna are described well. But it leaves the reader with a confused state of mind as to who should be blamed for Mahabharata. Should it be Kaurava for not sharing the kingdom or Pandava for putting even kingdom and Draupadi at stake in the game or Kunti and Draupadi for fuelling and igniting hate and waves of anger in the Pandavas?

It would make an interesting  read for someone looking for an alternate view of Mahabharata or someone who has not read/seen Mahabharata to date. 

Book Review: What the Economy needs now

The book is co-Editecby Abhijit Benerjee,  Gita Gopinath, Raghuram Rajan and  Mihir Sharma. Essentially it is a collection of short essays on the problems and solutions of major sectors of the economy like health, education, taxes etc. 

I started the book with great expectations however it kind of disappointed me. The ideas given in the book are common knowledge and academic in nature. The chapters are short and hence they discuss only four key problems and corresponding solutions of the sector. But it the pursuit, it ends up being incomplete and unoriginal. Some of it felt like armchair theorizing.   It could have been a lot better with figures, facts, case studies, and out of box ideas. A NITI Ayog document or Budget-Economic survey can be much more fulfilling and enriching than this. 

Anyway, it is advisable read for someone who is new to the economy or policy issues or who is looking for an overview of the sectors in limited content. People looking for denser content could opt for NITI Ayog or government reports.

To Sir With Love

Note: This is one of the articles which i wrote for Income Tax Magazine i-Tech.

If there is one word in which life of a bureaucrat could be summarized, it would undoubtedly be SIR. Such is the beauty of the word that in bureaucratic dictionary it is a shortcut for all other words, facial and verbal expressions. If you agree with your boss, you tend to say Sir sir sir, mind you it has to be exactly three times. Frequency matters here. And if you don’t wish to comment on the boss’s idea and just wish to nod your head as a neutral expression (oops indifferent, neutrality and bureaucracy are like arch enemies) then it should be like “sir sir” with a quick succession without letting the air slip between the words.

If you are in a state of shock over being asked to do certain impossible task like coming to office on time, you utter sir only once but this time the emphasis has to be on S as in SSirr. And if by any stretch of imagination on a bad day of yours or in a fit of bad mood (after receiving rebuke at home) dare to think of saying no to your senior then you ought to say the holy word in some unholy fashion like S being pulled back like a slingshot and r is pushed forward so it sounds like “sarrr”. At this stage your eyes should be fixated at the corner of the room and mouth should be half-open with air intermittently slipping out like air comes out from a pricked balloon.

Alas, Just in case the conversation goes too long then you don’t need to say the full word. Rather as a smart bureaucrat (which every bureaucrat is by virtue of cracking UPSC), you should save your energy and just say “sa”. Sources reveal that most of the bureaucratic training and officer like qualities revolves around this central concept of “variety and usage of word sir”. Oxford dictionary has also regarded this word “Sir” as the source of all bureaucratic energies. In fact, just after the invention of Sir, Britishers decided to pursue sea voyages and developed the confidence of ruling the world.

When our team talked to one of colonial era ghost roaming around India Gate, we were told that Sir has polymorphic characteristics like Java’s + operator. It brings a sweet combination of subservience, obedience, duty, responsibility, accountability without any powers, benefits and recognition. Such is the killer instinct and sharp edge of it that any creativity, freedom and sense of self-belief is nipped in the bud.  We were told that beauty of sir is not restricted to bureaucracy and planet earth. Even gods have borrowed it to their kingdom for breeding unquestionable faith and inculcating a sense of hierarchy. The recent researches in the field of astro-linguistic and sound amplification science shows that NASA has captured a distinct sound emanating from all the planets of the solar system. Any guesses what it could be. Sir sir sir sir saaa

Calibrated exit: Lock down conundrum

India is facing an existential crisis against COVID-19. Had the debate been simply between livelihood and lives, protection of lives would have been a certain choice.  But in India, a large part of the economy survive on hand to mouth situation. Nearly 22% of people are below the poverty line and an additional 15% is just above the poverty line. Hence choice is between immediate loss of lives vs future loss of lives. Therefore, a key question is how to unlock the lockdown and how to resolve this conundrum. 

The unlocking of the lockdown is going to as difficult an administrative and economically puzzling task as was the enforcement of lockdown. Considering the cluster spread of COID-19, a decision on withdrawal of Lockdown has to be well thought out decision. 

1. Considering the state government's inclination to extend the lockdown and increase in the COVID-19 cases in the past few days, it is better to extend the complete lockdown till 24th April.

2. After 24th April, there should be three phased uplift on the lockdown. Each phase should span for two to three weeks. 

3. In the first phase, only essential services, food, and pharmaceutical, supply chain offices, hospitals should be opened. All the malls, shopping complex, dine-restaurant should remain closed.  All the private offices (into non-essential services), temples,  clubs, social places should remain closed.  It will be an approximate complete lockdown. City limits should remain restricted. This phase should last until 4th May. 

4. In the second phase, Offices with 40% staff capacity should be opened. Businesses will slowly get back to life. Metro and public transport will operate at 60% capacity. People are encouraged to use private vehicles. All public places like parks, malls, and restaurants, etc. and social gatherings should be banned. This should last till 20th May i.e. another 2 weeks. Intercity travel should remain restricted except for the movement of essential goods and services and in emergency situations. Home delivery of food may be allowed.

5. In the third phase, offices with 60% staff capacity should be opened.  Movement within the city should be allowed. Businesses like malls, shopping complexes, etc could be opened but with strict crowd management and sanitization rules. This could last till 31st May.

6. After this, if things are under control and go well, we can open the economy fully with the permission of intercity travel. The decision on the containment zones and hotspot could be taken as per the situation.

In the meantime, the government should unleash its stored food stock of 80 MT lying in FCI godowns. The small teams of young migrant workers resting in government schools should be utilized for driving mobile vans which could deliver food and vegetable at the public's doorstep.  And the government should switch to Universal basic Income mode and transfer some cash amount in each account on the basis of the existing balance in the account. Moreover, RBI's and PSU's dividend income contribution to government budgetary support should be increased in order to create some fiscal space in the economy.

These are challenging times and if we are able to overcome these times, we will definitely become a force to reckon with.

Migrant labor issue

Migrant laborers are always the first ones to face the first brunt of economic instability, political upheaval, and social discord. Be it Marathi Manush issue or Assam exodus from Bangalore or the recent Corona Virus crisis. There is no social security provided to them. There is no political support because mostly they are not able to exercise their voting rights. Mostly work in the unorganized sector and survive on hand to mouth situation. Except for the white-collar IT workers, most of them are unskilled or semi-skilled working as household help, maids or factory/farm laborers in big cities and rich states of the country. Hence, any issue of labor reform would be incomplete without addressing their plights and without doing justice to their needs and rights.

In this context, the following are actionable suggestions worth pondering upon.

1. We should open a migrant worker's office in each district. It is like an embassy of outside laborers at the district level.

2. All migrants must compulsorily register in the migrant labor's office. Following database could be prepared for each migrant:

2.1. What areas do a person migrates and in which season?
2.2. How much do they earn and save during migration?
2.3. What kind of work do they perform?
2.4. What are the skills/semi-skills do they possess?
2.5. What is the duration of migration?
2.6. What is the home state, city, town, address?
2.7. What is age?
2.8. Do they possess a bank account? If Yes, what is their bank account?
2.9. What is their UID number?
2.10. Are they citizens of our country?

3.  All the businesses should also submit the name and aadhar of all the migrant workers employed in six monthly declarations. This will allow us in accounting informal economy in GDP estimation. 

This database can be prepared using the partial database available with the government and police stations. Rest data can be collected by launching a district-wise helpline number. Labor ministry can also play a constructive role in the pursuit.

This will help in the following 5 ways:
1. We can perform targeted campaigns in the future.
2. With the use of such a database, the government can provide money directly in the bank account.
3. It will help in the overall management of COVID and similar kind of future crisis.
4. It will bring some organization in the world's largest unorganized workforce.

5. Such offices can act as voting centers for migrant workers in the future so that they can become part of the political narrative.

It is blasphemous that we have not done this to date.  Now is the time to work on these fronts and help in delivering justice, rights, and quality of life to migrant workers.

Corona - 4: Credible ways to deal with crisis

Much has been written and said about ways to deal with Corona Virus. Social distancing seems to be the most viable proactive step to curb the spread of the disease. The whole of India has already been put under the lockdown and various unprecedented administrative steps have already been taken. I am listing some miscellaneous suggestions which could help in dealing with the problem. These suggestions should be viewed in the context of the post-covid situation and in the medium-term when the country is trying to flatten its Covid death curve.

1. Focus on developing a cheap surface scanner that can tell whether a surface is infected with Corona Virus or not. Considering the advances in image processing, biochemical sensors, and high-resolution imaging, this should not be very difficult. Why can't we develop a simple chip embedded on a handheld device which can tell us about the presence of a virus?

2. Impose the crowd restrictions at all public places. If a public place has more than a threshold density of people then people should be turned away. For example, if a restaurant is full then people wait outside. The same concept should apply to malls, tourist spots, hill stations, and temples. Each public civil infrastructure should use non-invasive technology like AI-based face recognition and impose these regulations. This will make more sense when we will uplift the Covid-19 curfew.

3. Everything should be government-managed. If we leave it for the common public to deliver essential goods, the concept of total lockdown will not work. All the young government officers below the age of 35 years could be called for service in case the country needs more hands.  The mobile street vendor vans should be deployed during the times of Covid-19 so that door to door supplies could be ensured, at least in big cities. Post-Covid, such a model should become more prominent and routine.

4. A person tracking software and RFID based tag machine should be used to track the movement of all the infected people. It is not for surveillance but for ease of communication and monitoring.

5. Ladies at home could be provided material for preparing masks and home-based sanitizer.  This way we can overcome the shortage in a very short time. If each person can prepare a mask for themselves and family members, why do we need one from the market.

6. A complete lockdown with a salary cut of 30% everywhere could help people sustain for 2 months' time. All the temples and social organizations should be taxed and their property should be used for the purpose of fighting Covid.

7. IITs and other research teams should invest in building a low-cost ventilator for fighting with the virus. Apart from this, other tracking software, machines, and related challenges should be handed to IIT research teams. Huge immediate investment should be made in virology and related sciences.

8. Schools, Universities should work through an online system. The capacity of Youtube channels and online video-recorded lectures should be utilized for starting with a routine schedule. Later when things normalize, people can be asked to work extra hours to ensure that enough recovery of lost time is made.

9. Social media has already helped us immensely in spreading the message. However fake news is doing some damage. We need to check free press and journalism in order to bring some sanity and reduce the negativity during these tough times. Irresponsible reporting can result in panic buying and crying.

10. Hoarders should be dealt with strongly. All the violators and hoarders should be put in makeshift detention facilities. Schools or college building could be turned into a makeshift detention facility. Some big private hospitals could also be turned into Covid hospitals.

11. For a sustainable short-medium term, we should think about developing a nightlife economy and shift based economy and essential goods distribution system.

12. China should be held responsible to pay to the world for this immeasurable loss. There should be an extra duty imposed on all the china based import items to count for losses.

13. As a nation, we should completely ban seafood and wildlife food except for some stable diet items like fishes. There should be some sanity in what we eat and whatnot. If we can ban beef then why not seafood and wildlife food.

14. Collect blood from each household. Blood bank teams can go from place to place and ensure enough supplies in the hospitals. We can also make a common list of all the blood banks and person wise blood types which could be useful for later times as well.

The government has already taken various very strong and prudent administrative measures so most of what I am writing is redundant. I have written about specific economic and other measures in my other blogs. Let us pray that things normalize sooner than later and the world is saved from the mayhem.

Urban space design

Consider the horror when the fire ambulance is not able to reach the burning site or When a medical ambulance is stuck in traffic and fails to make it to the hospital on time or children are not left with any park and open spaces to play and practice. Indian urban space has become a rotten ship. Given the congestion, overcrowding and resource crunch, Indian cities have become unsustainable and unmanageable. Part of the reason lies in poor designing, lack of vision and forethinking in building our urban space. Time has come to rethink and redesign Indian urban landscape design and overall life ecosystem.  This blog identifies five such actionable doable low hanging fruits.

1. The first step could be to redevelop all the parks and roads to create underground parking. For example, the Cannaught place circle was redeveloped to host a railway transit point and metro junction. The same could be done to all the parks in all the colonies of Delhi and major cities. It will help in solving the problem of parking and decongest our cities immensely. The park redevelopment could happen as a public-private-people partnership project. The private player can work on a boot operate transfer model and earn a good amount of definite revenue from the park and the parking. Some underground space could also be used as an indoor sports club to help the whole project become sustainable.  

2. Every 5 kilometers there should be a street food karkhana. It could be a multi-story building with fast lifts where all the rediwalah, sabjiwalah, and every other street-side shop could be rented space. The model of street food and roadside vendors should be ended and instead, a home delivery based street food model should take its place. The government can engage in PPPP (Public-private people partnership) to build such karkhanas and rent out fixed-size "thela" space.  Space inside would only be used for food preparation. One section would be sitting space to eat like food courts. But the real salesman would be the delivery guys. Call based or app-based booking of order could be provided by the government. And private delivery service guys can deliver things to the home of the individual or in the food court sitting area. The regulation of the building lies with the government. Various wings like quality assurance officer, food safety officer could be permanently hosted in the space. The permanent fixtures on the roadside selling food items, grocery and fruits would not be allowed anymore in such setup. Rather a close-knit network of government regulatory agencies, karkhana committee (private agency and people of the area), street food maker,  delivery service providers, application provider, and end customer would ensure easy, quality assured access to cheap food. It would decongest our roads, ensure better quality and help in maintaining hygiene and cleanliness. Some rediwalah can operate from home as well and just take the help of ecosystem services of the karkhana. This will make the entire value chain more organized and streamlined. In the context of Delhi, one section of low-income housing buildings can be remodified and used for providing such services within a 5-7 km radius.

3. All the school parks should be compulsorily open to common public for playing outdoor sports. This will provide huge playing space in the community. Delhi has already implemented this scheme with great success.

4. A bidding system should be opened where whoever wishes to sell the land, the government must have the first right to buy. Only if a competing bidder offers more than 15% than the government offer then the other person should be allowed to buy the land piece else government should buy the land. This way the government can create a huge repository of land. This land space would be scattered and fragmented. However, this would be very useful in the event of a large scale mega projects where the government wishes to rehabilitate and resettle people. The government can exchange land and relocate people using this. It would be extremely useful given the fact it is nearly impossible to find a contiguous landscape for development. 

5. All the major markets should be vehicle-free zone except two-wheelers and regulated battery rickshaws (managed by market committee). Three-wheelers and above should be allowed to play only after the closure of market and only for a specific duration. Parking space as mentioned in the first point should be developed beneath the road or beneath the nearby park in order to decongest the market and ease the mobility for the public.

A lot more could be done and there are numerous small actions with high returns but all hinges on the local leadership, public participation and governments focus. Covid-19 has given us an opportunity to think about our public spaces and the problem of crowding. Let us take it seriously and make the best of this opportunity.