Tag: pune

NAAC Visits and the G20

There is much angst in Pune, about how little time it took for Senapati Bapat Road to look really, really nice.

The G20 summit in Pune concluded recently, and the transformation of the surroundings near where the summit was held was a sight to behold. Neat red markings for a bicycle lane on either side of the road, immaculately painted dividers, spruced up lamp-poles, jazzed up signals, pretty little lights dangling from the many trees that line this road, lovely flowers planted along the median, and a thorough Potemkin-ization of anything deemed even remotely non-presentable – everything was achieved with a speed and efficiency that is scarcely believable.

Although as a true-blue Puneri, it gladdens my heart ever so much to realize that some things will never, ever change:

But this unbelievable improvement in efficency, I’d argue, is very familiar to students who have been in college/University when the NAAC committee has come a-visitin’. It’s the same kind of transformation, and it is equally unbelievable. Flower-pots will appear near entrances, walls will be given a fresh coat of paint, friendly signages will pop up all over campus, washrooms will positively gleam with cleanliness, and the entire campus will look brand new.

Incentives matter.

What happens if you as a citizen complain about, say, a lack of footpaths? You are issued a token, not a footpath. What happens if you as a citizen ask the PMC to repair some broken down traffic signals? You know the answer by now. What happens if those broken down signals are on a road that will be noticed by the G20 dignitaries?

It’s not so much the priority that is missing, which is the only thing I’d correct in Amit’s tweet. What’s missing is the incentive to do the best job possible – when it is the citizens that are doing the belly-aching. When it is the people holding the purse-strings, or the people who call the shots that send along gentle reminders – well, the incentive is clearly present, no?

And that’s why campuses will look their resplendent best during NAAC visits, and that’s why Senapati Bapat Road looks as pretty as it does right now.

Because, alas, incentives matter.

Old timers who have been staying in Sus village for years will regale you with stories of how roads become as smooth as silk literally overnight come the month of December, year after year. It’s the same ol’ story, with the same ol’ underlying reason: incentives matter.

Which begs the question: how can we get the incentives of the PMC to be aligned with our interests? Answering the question is easy. Implementing it? Ah, that is beyond the scope of this blog, for now.

Also, note that this has nothing to do with the BJP, or the Congress, or AAP, or indeed with any Indian political party. We aren’t unique as a nation in this regard, and no political party in our country is uniquely good (or bad) in this regard. All political parties in all nations are staffed with members of the same species that you and I belong to, and we all respond in much the same way to incentives. So please, don’t attack or defend whichever political party you have in mind.

One good thing about the principles of economics is that they work the same way on everybody, everywhere. The sooner we realize this, the better it will be for all of us.

A Walk Down Abhimanashri Lane

Or Abhimanashree, whichever version you prefer.

But however you choose to spell it, join me, won’t you, as I saunter down this leafy little lane on a wintry Sunday morning?

Abhimanashri Lane is today a bit of a misnomer. But as a true-blue Puneri, I remember a time when it really and truly was a lane, and a very quiet one. Today, it forms the base of a very useful triangle, connecting Baner Road and Pashan Road, with the apex of the triangle being Pune University signal. Why this is a very useful triangle is a long story that will bring much angst to every Punekar reading this, so we will move on for the moment.

Accompanying us on this jaunt is my nine-year old daughter, whose ability to ask endless questions is matched only by her ability to ask questions about what we’re going to eat next. As a gourmand who pretends to teach economics for a living, I thoroughly approve of both of these qualities.

And so down Abhimanashri Lane we go, appreciating the quietness of the Sunday morning, pausing every now and then to meet a new canine friend, and breathing in the soft yet crisp wintry air that Pune still affords us in the absence of traffic.

Until we reach a nice little bakery on the left hand side, with a cute sitting-out area, and what looks from without to be a promising array of baked treats lying in wait inside. The daughter deploys the most beseeching look she can muster, but she needn’t have. I am chomping at the bit myself, so in we go to take a look. There’s croissants, there’s breads, there’s pastries and there’s coffee. Heaven, to be precise. Having suitably nourished ourselves, we resume our walk.

But then the economist in me starts to wonder.

We had gone there at around nine in the morning, and we were the only cutomers in the cafe. There was one delivery order that was picked up, but that apart, there was no one else who walked in. The food was very good without being truly outstanding, but that is not (at all) a knock against the place. In fact, if anything, I would have expected more customers.

So why, the economist in me wondered, was it empty?

  1. Abhimanashri is a truly lovely place to walk around in, but it is a low density neighborhood. Most people might wonder if I could have phrased that sentence better – wouldn’t it be the case that it is a lovely place to walk around in precisely because it is a low density neighborhood? Well, yes, but also no. Read on.
  2. It is not just a low density neighborhood, but it is also almost entirely residential. There’s a misal join towards the end of the lane, and a couple of shops and offices, and one upmarket salon. But it is safe to say that it is overwhemingly residential in terms of character.
  3. It is also a no-parking zone, for reasons that we refused to go into earlier, but now we must. Read this article to get a sense of why it is a no parking zone.
  4. So, low density neighborhood, not enough offices, plus a no parking zone along its entire length. Not enough folks in the vicinity, whether residents or otherwise, and the inability to park along its entire length. Nor, if memory serves me right, is there a bus-stop along the entire length of the lane.
  5. So walk-in customers are unlikely. Plus, the inconvenience of having to park a ways away and then walking down might disincentivize other customers.
  6. I’d much rather sit at home and order from there using Zomato or Swiggy or some such, rather than actually try and reach the place.
  7. And so while I thoroughly enjoyed my visit there and wouldn’t mind going there again, the inconvenience of it all makes it rather unlikely that I will.
  8. Which is why you should read up about mixed-use neighborhoods, and urban planning more generally. I have a couple of videos on the subject, or you might want to read more about it by searching on Google, or you might want to read this lovely thread on Twitter.
  9. But the next time you take a walk down one of your favorites streets in your favorite city, you might want to ask what makes that street your favorite, and what were the opportunity costs of that street being the way it is. Ask yourself in what ways that street could become better, and how your city might go about planning for it to be so. Get into the habit of doing this all the time, because why wouldn’t you want to think about how your city could be better.
  10. And then, suitably incentivized, learn more about urban planning, because it is a fascinating subject that every budding economist should know more about.
  11. Past EFE posts on urbanization, if you’re interested, are here.

Democracy, Public Policy and Technology

The basic idea is that the best form of government is one by popular consent, and since it is impractical to get everyone’s opinion on every issue, people elect a few hundred representatives who act on their behalf.

https://www.livemint.com/opinion/columns/the-operating-system-of-liberal-democracy-needs-a-big-upgrade-11658083571279.html

That’s from a recent column by Nitin Pai in Livemint. As he goes on to point out in the column, saying this about democracy is all well and good, and you can dig deeper and build better definitions of democracy, but it is fair to say the way representative democracy works in practice is rather different from the ivory tower definition of the term.

The citizenry isn’t as engaged as one would want them to be, politicians (in power, in the opposition or currently unelected) don’t always apply their mind to complex policy issues to the extent that they should, and engagement between the political class and society isn’t as regular, extensive and deep as one would like it to be.

But the idea, as Nitin puts it, isn’t to seek out a new system, but to try and make the current one better than it is right now. Quick reminder: when evaluating a proposal, don’t ask if it is perfect. Ask if the proposal stands a decent chance of making the status quo better. Remember the magic question when evaluating a proposal: relative to what? That is, is any proposal good or bad relative to the status quo – not relative to utopian perfection.

One way to improve democracy as we currently know it, Nitin says, is by “combining the methodology of open source software development with platforms like wikis”, and then deploying this combination to “harness voice and expertise from the whole of society”. I found myself wishing for a specific example or two about how this might be done, and that leads me to two separate (but related) points.

First, a recent blogpost from the Public Financial Management Blog, run by researchers in the IMF:

Good leadership requires good information to support smart, timely decisions. More fundamentally, modern democracy itself relies on information that can be understood and trusted by its citizens and interpreted by all stakeholders. Nowhere is this more important than in the management of our public resources.
A comprehensive public financial management system enables leaders to make better informed decisions and allows their actions to be measured and judged by the broader public – politicians, the media, NGOs, and individual citizens. This means looking beyond easy-to-measure near term flows (e.g., public spending, tax revenues, net borrowing, or for that matter, GDP) that governments tend to focus on, and to look at more fundamental measures, including the use of public assets, the incurrence of liabilities, and the creation or destruction of public net worth from one period to the next, or from one generation to the next.

https://blog-pfm.imf.org/pfmblog/2022/07/-public-financial-management-and-google-maps-.html

I’ll use Pune as an example to provide context to this excerpt. Do you know what the Pune Municipal Corporation’s annual budget looks like, and how it has changed over the previous decade? Do you know how much land the PMC owns, what it is valued at, how it is being used, and how this has changed over time? How much has it borrowed, from whom, under what conditions and for what purposes?

Now, I’m an economist, and even I’ll happily admit that this isn’t the most entertaining of material to go through. But that’s the point! What Nitin is saying is that making this kind of information available for all to look at in an easy to understand way would be A Very Good Thing.

The PFM blog draws upon the analogy of digital maps, and says that public accounting can be thought of in terms of a digital map. A map, they say, has at least two layers – one, the layout of a city, and second, how that layout looks like right now in terms of traffic density.

And they make the point that if one were to think of a government’s finances in terms of a map, both of these layers are currently problematic. First, the underlying map – the balance sheet – is itself problematic because of outdated information. Such as property asset valuation that isn’t exactly up to date, for example. And second, public accounting is nowhere near as dynamic as the authors of the blog would like it to be, and is also a tad too myopic for their liking. They suggest a move to high quality accrual accounting (which is a whole other topic in and of itself) to help solve this particular problem.

Only full integration will enable better informed decision-making that reflects all resources and flows. And only then can governments – and citizens – enjoy the benefits of a financial management system that has the potential to promote optimal use of public resources. Given the political will, such changes could be accommodated relatively easily within existing accrual accounting systems.

https://blog-pfm.imf.org/pfmblog/2022/07/-public-financial-management-and-google-maps-.html

To me, this is one example of what Nitin is getting at, although I’m sure there are many more such examples.

And that gets me to my second point:

Nitin and I will be in conversation next Friday at the Fat Labrador Cafe in Bavdhan, Pune. As the poster says, we’ll be talking about coffee (he takes this stuff seriously, just as one should), spiritual matters (ditto) and also public policy (knock yourself out).

If you’re in Pune, and are interested in any of these topics (or even better, all three) do drop by, and join us for a conversation that promises to be a whole lot of fun!

Pune: Clear Communication During Crises

You are unlikely to have heard of the names Schlieffen, or Moltke (the elder or the younger). Unlikely, that is, unless you are as big a fan of learning more about the First World War as I have become. By the way, if you want to learn more about it, allow me to recommend a book and a podcast:

The War That Ended Peace, by Margaret Macmillan

Blueprint for Armagedon – 1, by Dan Carlin

There are others, it goes without saying – in fact, I don’t think there’s even a finite number, but these are fine places to start.

Now, back to Schlieffen and Moltke. Long story short, they prepared between them a plan of almost bewildering complexity about the invasion of France. It was drawn up in mind-boggling detail, and would have put any modern manager to shame.

Except, it fell to pieces, and for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which was communications (emphasis in the excerpt is mine):

The failure of the plan was explained in Der Weltkrieg by showing that command in the German armies was often conducted with vague knowledge of the circumstances of the French, the intentions of other commanders and the locations of other German units. Communication was botched from the start and orders could take hours or days to reach units or never arrive. Auftragstaktik, the decentralised system of command that allowed local commanders discretion within the commander’s intent, operated at the expense of co-ordination.

If we are at war with the coronavirus (and yes, we are), we need clearer communication. It really and truly matters.

Here’s a manual from the CDC about communicating during a crisis. What is shown below is a screenshot of a part of it:

So, if you are a citizen in Pune, and are looking for the first source of information, where should you look?

 

Pune’s district collector, Naval Kishor Ram has a Twitter ID, and you should be following it. Getting a blue tick would be a welcome addition, especially during these times!

The Divisional Information Office of Pune also has a Twitter ID.

The Pune City Police are there was well, as is the Police Commissioner.

These, best as I can tell, ought to be our  first source of information. Please feel free to reply in the comments, or email me at ashish at econforeverybody dot com if you would like me add additional first sources.

It should go without saying, but it obviously does not:

Please do not take messages you receive on Whatsapp/Facebook/social media as the gospel truth. Avoid forwarding them, as far as possible.

Use the sources mentioned above, and share them far and wide.

If I may make a suggestion: the Twitter page for the Pune Collector’s handle links to pune.nic.in

The website has never once been up since I have been testing it. The link should either be removed, or the page should be updated.

I wrote this piece – what is above – yesterday afternoon (19th afternoon), but am writing this update after listening to Prime Minister Modi’s speech.

That CDC PDF that I linked to above? It also contains this:

The cynic in me might be slightly embarrassed about it, but I’ll be out on my terrace, clapping, come 5 pm on Sunday.

There’s also this:

Test, test, test!

 

 

India: Links for 2nd September, 2019

  1. Heard of Kangiten?
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  2. Or of Vinayaki?
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  3. “A prominent name for Ganesha in the Tamil language is Pillai (Tamil: பிள்ளை) or Pillaiyar (பிள்ளையார்) A.K. Narain differentiates these terms by saying that pillai means a “child” while pillaiyar means a “noble child”. He adds that the words pallu, pella, and pell in the Dravidian family of languages signify “tooth or tusk”, also “elephant tooth or tusk”. Anita Raina Thapan notes that the root word pille in the name Pillaiyar might have originally meant “the young of the elephant”, because the Pali word pillaka means “a young elephant”.In the Burmese language, Ganesha is known as Maha Peinne (မဟာပိန္နဲ, pronounced [məhà pèiɴné]), derived from Pali Mahā Wināyaka (မဟာဝိနာယက). The widespread name of Ganesha in Thailand is Phra Phikanet.[34] The earliest images and mention of Ganesha names as a major deity in present-day Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam date from the 7th- and 8th-centuries, and these mirror Indian examples of the 5th century or earlier. In Sri Lankan Singhala Buddhist areas, he is known as Gana deviyo, and revered along with Buddha, Vishnu, Skanda and others.”
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    A rose by any other name…
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  4. The endless source of delight that is Marginal Revolution.
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  5. A how to for Ganesh Chaturthi in Pune/Mumbai

 

I am, readers should note, cheerfully atheist. But as a Puneri, the charms of this festival are hard to ignore. Now, if only we could figure out a way to remove the loudspeakers…