Is India the dirtiest country in the world?

I live in the UK, but love visiting India even as one of the ubiquitous NRIs. The warmth of family and friends cannot be replicated anywhere else. The beauty of the familiar landscape and the sunny climate cannot be replicated. Nor, unfortunately can the squalor in which we live.

I have travelled in many countries and have heard about others through friends. I must say that India beats every other country in terms of its dirt levels. This includes African countries that are poorer than we are, it includes China that has a larger population than we have. Perhaps the only other country that may qualify is Bangladesh, but I consider that as part of the Indian sub continent so it does not count.
A friend suggested maybe Vietnam is dirtier and that China might be dirtier inside the house…

And I started to wonder why. Why are we so dirty? Plausible reasons that spring to mind are the poverty, the density of population, the culture. I could understand the first two: obviously given the hordes of urban poor living in slums, with no sanitation and no public service garbage collection.

I can’t understand the culture: is there really a dirt norm in India? Apparently in Hinduism there is an important element of segregation: inside the house it should be clean but outside is the “other”, that’s by definition unclean…just like in the construction of temples there is always a segregation between the space where God is and where others are.
I believe it is more that there is a “free riding” culture. In other words Indians believe strongly in the idea of a free lunch. If you can save on the time involved in finding a garbage bin (I must admit they are rarely around) to throw your garbage, we just throw it on the streets. We eat paan and spit it out on the walls of our office buildings. No one would spit on the wall of their own home, and no one would throw garbage on their own floors… but the boundaries are very clear. Just outside the house can be littered, but just inside is sacrosanct. I have noticed even in the upper middle class gated community where I live: they are DDA flats and the common areas are filthy, even though the flats are in most cases lovingly maintained. People will clean up until the point where they illegally cordon off part of the common area but beyond that is the responsibility of the community’s cleaners and gardeners. Notice that these are paid through local taxation: for my flat I pay Rs 400 a month for the “security” and the “cleaning and horticulture” services. This is a typical public goods problem: even though everyone pays for it, we still end up in a situation where someone rents the common area for a wedding or other event and leaves a huge mess on the garden. I saw piles of food just emptied on the lawn: can you imagine anyone doing it on their own lawns? Its totally amazing! That’s the country in a microcosm. How to build a culture of cleanliness and cooperation? Is it possible at all? Is punishment the only way out? Surely not: in Gandhi’s country surely there could be “leadership by example”?

Is there any area in the country that qualifies as clean? Maybe Chandigarh is a case study. Why is Chandigarh clean? It does have a high per capita income relative to the country, and it was a modern design by Le Corbusier? Could the design of the city make such a difference? But see: airports are cleaner (privatized now) than train stations (public): they are more organized relative to train stations…similarly privately owned buildings are usually cleaner. So maybe there is something to the “tragedy of the commons” (this years Nobel winner, Ostrom ‘s work was based on this)…if no one “owns” the commons then they are overused. So, building on that idea, one solution for DDA flats common area to be kept clean is to make individual owners shareholders of the land. When they sell the flat they also sell the rights to the common area, But then co-ops do exactly that and I haven’t noticed co-op society flat buildings being particularly clean either. I think you have to do even more than that: you have to divide up the common area into bits that each flat owner knows belongs to him – so e.g the flats on one floor “own” that floor. The price of the flat then depends on the floor area as well even though they cannot build on it…there can be restrictions on the use of the common floor area but just knowing that they own it can make a difference.


But we cannot do this in the larger sphere can we? It would involve the government leasing out public roads to the communities that live there….

One interesting comparison is with China: there people are afraid of being punished so they don’t have the “freedom” to litter. As in Singapore. Well, our government too has tried: delhi with its radio advertisements of “Susukumars” and “Thuthu Kumars” is an example. I don’t have much hope honestly…

How to win votes on the cheap: Lessons from Indian Elections

In a recent conversation with an Indian politician, I asked how they chose to spend their tax money between different groups of voters. He replied that it was prioritized: there would be the largest emphasis on “swing” voters, then on loyal (partisan) voters who vote for the party regardless and finally on voters who were partisan for other parties! In my research we reach a surprisingly similar result based on data on grants from the central government to 14 state governments in India during the period 1975 to 1997. The most important instrument in the control of incumbent parties is the allocation of the budget. When the central government allocates grants to state governments, we find that the alignment of the incumbent party at the state with the incumbent party at the center together with how “swing” a state is predicted to be in a particular state election affects how much is allocated: a state that is aligned and swing receives 16% higher transfers than a state which is unaligned and not swing.

Grants are used by state governments to finance public goods – e.g. road building, electrification of villages, telephone connectivity, water or sanitation facilities in poor neighbourhoods, employment guarantee schemes etc. These projects build goodwill for the party that’s credited with providing the grants. If a state government is aligned with the central incumbent then both levels of government benefit: voters will reward the party at the state level election or the central election. But if the state incumbent party is not aligned, then the credit is shared between two different parties: it is this that causes central governments to limit the grants to unaligned states. Swing states are those where the voters are undecided between parties. A small increase in goodwill can lead to large gains in votes. Of course the benefit only goes to the incumbent party at the center if the state is an aligned one. It turns out that parties allocate expenditures to maximize their chances of getting re-elected and this effect holds both for central as well as state level elections.

In our data, the Congress Party dominated central elections for most of the period under study. The Indian states which turn out to be electorally very important at the state level elections are Bihar, Kerala and Uttar Pradesh. Both Bihar and Uttar Pradesh had multi party contests during the period 1975 to 1997, where a small swing in favour of one party lead to a large change in election results. In Kerala, there were two main alliances: one led by the Congress party and one led by the Communist Party of India. Our measure of alignment is Bihar is high (0.7, where the maximum is 1) relative to other states, hence Bihar ends up being a favoured state.

To illustrate our results even better: compare the two states of West Bengal and Rajasthan: West Bengal has a low alignment with the central government during the period of study (it was dominated by the Communist party during this period) and was not a swing state during this period, Rajasthan on the other hand was aligned and swing. Rajasthan got an average per capita grant of Rs 115 (the highest) in 1980-81 prices while West Bengal got Rs 39 on average. Rajasthan also happens to be marginally higher ranked than West Bengal on per capita income. This shows the problems with letting politics decide the allocation of grants: governments look less at how deserving or needy a particular state is and more at how important the state is for re-election.

So, what can be done? It is generally agreed that grants decided by the Finance Commission are less manipulable for political gains, as they are governed by formulae based on the needs of state governments. A simple policy prescription from our study is to reduce the discretionary elements in grants and base them on economic considerations based on formulae.

India has a parliamentary democracy with a first past the post voting system. Parties are interested in winning the largest number of state elections, as winning in state elections is closely linked to winning in central elections. Our conclusions hold for such countries, but similar studies have been carried out in European countries and Latin American countries (e.g. Sole-Olle and Sorribas for the case of Spanish municipalities, Armesto for Argentina, Leigh for Australia etc) suggesting that while the precise way in which politics affects this decision may vary, the idea that politicians choose budgets not so much to benefit citizens but to increase their own chances of re-election is a robust one.

Roman Interlude

The most apalling thing happened....it rained the whole weekend. I was dreaming of my trip to fabulous Rome since two months, dreaming of the beautiful Bernini statues in the sun, and guess what! The statues were still beautiful but no sun...
We reached Termini station and I hauled my heavy laptop and luggage out of the train to find that there was a deluge, and I had to walk through the deluge to our little hotel (Santa Chiara) behind the Pantheon. The hotel made up for it...we could sit and chat in the night on the steps of the Pantheon. Built as a Basilica to the , it ultimately became a tomb to the most famous Roman artists like Raphael, Carracci and Corelli.

I could only collect the images of Rome: cobbled streets much wider than you would expect...the statues at every corner, the bookshops and the restaurants advertising American breakfasts. We made our way to the churches to find the paintings of Caravaggio and Michelangelo culminating in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel. Oh and the cars: so tiny they fit everywhere. The Fiat Cinquecento (?) was ubiquitous.

On the way, when it rained we dashed into a bookshop: here we had coffee with Dante Alghieri looking down very sternly...

And the Vatican? We waited in the line for the museum and to my surprise it took only half an hour to get inside...no wonder because we were packed like sardines in the museum. A very nazi-ish looking guard yelled "Silenzio"!

boredom

In his 1995 essay “In Praise of Boredom,” Nobel Prize–winning poet Joseph Brodsky wrote: “When hit by boredom, go for it. Let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom. In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is, the sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface.” Adds Vodanovich: “If you don’t succumb to its negative effects, boredom is a great motivational force.”
Thats taken from a Scientific American article on boredom.

So easy to say. I dont think its true. Boredom is a debilitating condition. It arises from a disconnect between what you want and what you are doing/getting, a fundamental disconnect between values and actuals. But this is not consistent with the fact that there are some people who are NEVER bored and some who are ALWAYS bored. So if its a temporary disconnect then this should not be the case...unless it has to do with self awareness. people who are self aware know what makes them bored and they avoid it? They live life according to their values?

And the self help guys say: if you are bored then stop being a boring person...if you cant be interested in the little things around then something is wrong with you. I agree but Im too bored to find out what is wrong!

Neuro enhancing drugs

This subject is fascinating to me. We can visualize a world where these drugs exist and competition between people will be dirtied by the drugs. Someone gets an AER and you say" Oh well, its the drugs, look at the size of her head (brain)! Thats not normal.." We will be like olympics athletes and before you can get an article published you would need to get a drug test?? Hows it ever gonna work?? Or are they going to announce the drugs they took and that can be published along with the article...why not? Nothing wrong if they increase your creativity! Problem is so far they only seem to increase concentration rather than creativity. Theres the ADHD drug Ritanil: you can, BTW, buy it without a prescription at:
http://www.freedom-pharmacys.com/rxdrugs/ritanil.html.

But so far apparently there is nothing that actually INCREASES creativity!

It doesn't matter though...my colleagues are working on lab experiments that show that a small happiness boost leads to an increase in "productivity". This I believe! So, heres a new advertisement for prozac: "Free yourself to be the best: happy people are successful people" or something like that!
Actually, what would I not give to be in the shoes of one of my super satisfied colleagues (SSC to keep it anonymous).. those that seem infinitely satisfied with themselves, those who interpret everything that happens to them as uniquely challenging and those who know they can overcome any challenge. It would simply be heaven. Thats all I can say....

Regret, disappointment, and learning

Been reading a lot (as usual) about this...apparently there is a huge difference in psychology between feeling regret and dissapointment. You could feel regret for various reasons, maybe you missed out on a large prize because you didn't pay attention to what you were supposed to do or because you didn't put in enough effort or you could feel it if you gave too much and you could have gotten away with "less money on the table"...Whatever. On the other hand if you simply lost something due to bad luck you just feel "disappointed" but you do not feel regret since there was nothing you could have done.
Why do we even care?? If all of these motivations led to the same behaviour then one should not care -- however it seems that thats not the case. You can learn from mistakes only if there is regret. Thats why its important to know when you have regret and when not.

Im trying to think of the last time I faced regret. Thing is it never happens like that since everything in life is a complicated combination of luck and effort...I never really know if it was my (lack) of effort or whether it would have happened anyway...most likely I think its always the latter. So the point is that two different observers (myself and an antagonist) would have different perceptions of who made the lesser effort and whether luck played a role: so its so subjective that there IS no pattern...

Finally what about the winners curse? Is it disappointment or regret? It could be regret that you overpaid given the new information revealed. But you would not have known that before anyway. So no regrets, only dissapointment?

And how can you test the difference?

Relativity and happiness

I learnt some interesting things this weekend...some of the latest research in Neuroeconomics and relativity. What do people care about? It seems they care very much if someone beats them in a game of skill but not so much when its a game of luck (Aldo Rustichini, a professor at Minnesota did this experiment using fMRI machines and Minnesota students). So, lets say someone wins a lottery, research shows that they are not very happy in the first few years as perhaps they attribute it to luck rather than skill (and it would be difficult to argue with that, unless choosing random numbers requires skill). But after some years they convince themselves that they do deserve it after all, and become happy. What are the implications of this? If you want to increase happiness, this means the state should equalize skills rather than money... i.e. what outcomes SIGNAL about skills matters more than itself. Together with the recent book by Richard Nisbett “Intelligence and How to Get It," ( see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/opinion/07kristof.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=iq&st=cse) this suggests that equalizing educational opportunities is the key to equalizing "skills"... intrinsic talent is really not that important as was always thought...

Another interesting piece of research by Claudia Senik in Paris suggests that the inequality in levels of happiness reported by couples is a very good predictor of whether the relationship lasts or not: so the longest lived marriages are those where either both partners are equally happy or equally unhappy! You know the old saying "misery loves company"...well misery loves company but only if its equally miserable, you dont want to be with someone who is excrutiatingly happy while you are dying...
(see e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/opinion/07kristof.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=iq&st=cse)....

Finally, I never thought there was anything good about the sex ratio imbalance in China or India (in 2006, there were 120 boys born for every 100 girls, in India 930 women to 1000 men) but a new theory and some supportive evidence claims that it is indeed the imbalance that is responsible for the high Chinese savings rate...this is how the logic works: the competition for young women to get married to, is getting harsher given the imbalance. Hence parents of boys start saving early so that they can compete in the bride price and showing high status for the boy when he gets married...at the same time, since in China the boy and his wife look after parents in old age (no social security), while girls go away, this also increases the incentives of the girls family to save more for their old age! Hence savings goes up as a whole assuming that people have children at the same rate as before: save during the first 20 years then splurge...