Category: Book Review & Summary

Changing Policies Through Nudging

This book was difficult for me because I never read this kind of book before. The title of the book conveys the main idea of the book. Nudge can create a sustained push for not only changing the human behavior towards everything but also help in various policy matters.

Richard Thaler, the writer has provided various examples to prove his theory. In fact, after reading these ideas, we can also realize those things after a keen observation in our personal life.

The most recent and important example can be remembered in the context of India is the issue of prohibition. Supreme Court of India has banned the shops from serving liquor if they are located within a 500m distance of national highway. Various state governments have also banned liquor in their state. Bihar is the recent example. Here, the question is: Will banning any substance solve the real issue? Will it really solve the issue of drunken driving?  It was always found that banning/ restrictions have failed miserably to solve any problem. Here we need an innovative form of pushes in the form of nudges as described in the book. Why not the government should start an innovative campaign of information dissemination regarding prohibition. For instance, popularize the information that spending on alcohol can be used for other productive purposes like buying a house or a vehicle. There is need to create a feedback mechanism to make the people realize about their choices.   For example, banning junk food will not solve the problem of obesity but providing the fresh fruits, vegetables at a reasonable rate to the public will create a powerful nudge. Make eating fresh fruits as a fashion statement. It is really happening nowadays for organic foods.

This book has provided various concepts:  Libertarian Paternalism, Choice Architect, Default options etc. These concepts decide the choices we make in our life. Our parents, governments act as a choice architecture which provides us various options to choose in our life. Why not provide good choices to the people so that there is no need to ban anything.

In fact, I found something very interesting in this book regarding how we think and why we choose bad options despite knowing that they are not good for our well being:

  • Because we use our automatic system to think which is effortless and uncontrolled.
  • We generally do not use our reflective system which is rational and controlled.
  • The most prominent example is of Voters who seem to rely primarily on the automatic system. They just go by the pictures or possibilities that who is going to win.
  • We follow guesses, rules of thumb, behave in overconfidence, work in the spirit of unrealistic optimism and more worried about losses than gains. Not only this, the status quo bias also hurts our choices.
  • We are not able to resist temptation and sometimes act mindlessly. For example, eating is one of the most mindless activities we do in our life despite knowing that it affects our health, well being and overall life. But we don’t care whatever garbage comes in front of our eyes, we just grab on that because of lack of self-control.
  • Sometimes, we also behave in that manner due to social influences.

So, the issue is how to solve these issues: There is need to NUDGE people towards good choices. And the writer has provided six principles:

  1. Incentives
  2. Understand Mappings
  3. Defaults
  4. Give Feedback
  5. Expect Error
  6. Structure Complex Choices

The policymakers, as well as people at the helm, should provide incentives to the people to follow rules. The recent example, I can remember about providing various prizes under DIGI DHAN MELA programme of Government of India to make India digital.

The default options are very powerful and ubiquitous. People generally do not change the default options. So why not make good choices as default so that number of people can follow it. The writer discusses this option so many times. For instance, if we want to save money, why not deduct the amount from the salary automatically. In fact, the saving and insurance ideas of today are mostly based on this concept. In fact, he has highlighted the concept of SAVE MORE TOMORROW.

Providing feedback is also a good option. If we provide feedback to the people in comparison to others, they tend to improve their situation. This also works in cases of comparison.

The writer has written this book analyzing the policies prevailing in the USA. However, the basic idea of nudge can be used in India’s various public policies. In fact, the campaign of Texas-DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS was very successful in reducing littering in the city. It can be adopted in India in various manners. For instance- DON’T MESS WITH DELHI.

The writer also discusses various objections to the idea of LIBERTARIAN PATERNALISM.

In fact, the book is a good read for future as well as present policymakers who really want to provide good choices to the people to make their life better.

Just now, I found a very interesting implementation of this idea by the UK government. The UK government has a “NUDGE UNIT” in the name of BEHAVIORAL INSIGHTS TEAM.  This organization was set up to popularize “nudge theory”, which is a combination of behavioral economics and psychology. It is helping the government to improve policy options and bring about change in the behavior of the people.

Review of An era of Darkness

After finishing this book, I can say that it is true that the British era was really an Era of Darkness for India and its people. The British government did not do anything good for us. Whatever looked promising and progressive at that time, there has been hidden agenda behind that. Their only aim  was to extract as much as they can from India. It was really not a “British” but “Brutish” empire of India.

They have looted India, pushed it towards deindustrialization, impoverishment, famine and poverty. They have drained our resources to the extent that India is still not able to come out from the dreaded poverty.

They practiced the policy of ” Divide and Rule” to divide the diverse and fuzzy society of India. It ultimately led to partition of the country. Not only this, they have communalised our history. They divided us by identifying Indians through census, giving various identities to people when in India, people have multiple and complex identies. They helped in reinforcing the divisive identities among the people.

Though they were fair in skin,but they were never fair in their approach. They not only practiced extreme racism but also extreme brutality. For instance, The Jallianwalla Bagh Massacre is a grim reminder of this fact.

They have also contributed a lot in the colonization of Indian minds. They were like our ” intimate enemy” as said by various postcolonial authors. We have imbibed their ideas so much that when we oppose them, it seems that we are opposing to ourselves. We are overwhelmingly hegemonized by their ideas and beliefs that we are not able to see the dividing line. In fact, even after Independence, we have number of colonial legacies in the form of laws, attitude of bureaucracy, functioning of government etc.

However, In the last seven decades of Independence, Indians are turning their colonial legacies for their own advantages and taking the country towards prosperity and recognition. In the present time, manyIndians are established their mark and Indian has become the fastest growing economy of the world. Not only this we have become the first country to send Mars Mission in our maiden attempt. It is really astonishing that when India and its people becoming prosperous, UK is exiting European Union which is popularly known as “Brexit“. In fact, we could have progressed in different as well as better manner if British would have not colonized us for such a long time for their rapacious motives.

However, as author of the book also agrees that they were not the only who are responsible for our domination but our kings, nobles and other high class people did not stop them in effective manner to colonize us till the Indian National Movement was launched in the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. However, here we should not forget the role played by common masses in India’s struggle for Independence.

Land of the Seven Rivers by Sanjeev Sanyal

Started reading this book. I will post the review of the book after finishing the book.

Now  read almost half of the book. When I started reading this book, I didn’t know that this book is about history. I pre-judged this book by the title of the book. That is why it is said that don’t judge any book by its cover. Don’t judge any person by his outward manifestation. By the way, this book is about history from geographical point of view. He has thrown some interesting insights:

  • About the mythical sarawati. According to him, the saraswati and ghaggar were same rivers. And saraswati was one of the most revered rivers of the time.
  • Something more astonishing was that he argues that Harrapan and Vedic people were same on the basis of various factors.
  • According to him, the Harrapan civilisation declined because of the drying of River Ghaggar and other natural changes in the environment and climate including the tectonic shifts.
  • As agreed by various historians as well as archeologists, many traits of Harrapan culture have survived till today.
  • One interesting thing he also highlighted that migration in the continent was not only one sided but it was multi directional and for multi purposes.
  • And most insightful view was about lion and tiger. I never saw the history from the perspective of lions and tigers. We really studied about the Harrapan seals on which various animals were inscribed and also about Ashokan pillars full of lions. But seeing Lion as a symbol of royal power and bravery was new for me. In fact, they were important in the stories of mythical kings but if we closely observe they are still playing an important role in symbolising the civilisation values of our country through our national emblems.
  • He also says through this book that how geographical factors are important in shaping the history and culture of the people in the Indian subcontinent.
  • The mapping of India also play an important role in creating conditions for spreading the information about its prosperity.
  • He concludes his book talking about the issue of urbanisation and the most insightful for me was that his view about slums. According to him, slums are evolving ecosystem s and play an important role as routers in the urbanisation process. Slums are very much part of the dynamics of any burstling city since Harrapan civilisation. He gives example of Chandigarh and Gurgaon to explain the rigid planning excluding the poor people and the chaotic and dynamic city creating jobs respectively. Here Chandigarh is a well planned city but it has no space for poor migrants and the areas of slum. Another the city of Gurgaon,which is a dynamic city providing jobs and opportunities to the poor migrants and also create space for evolving slum areas.
  • After this he discussed about the Indian diaspora and shared civilisation identity of the people separated from long distances and time.

In fact, he has written a nice book summarising the whole history of India in few pages with personal touch.

Review of The Great Derangement: Climate Change and unthinkable by Amitav Ghosh

I decided to read this book when I was studying for mains examination. I read about the concept of radical ecology in the sections related to climate justice and problems related to the environment. In this concept, authors questioned the idea of capitalism itself and argued that contemporary capitalism is the cause of today’s climate change. In fact,  Noami Klien who calls capitalism as ” disaster capitalism ” argues strongly against the greed based capitalism of western countries which is responsible for the current crisis. In the same line, Amitav Ghosh also questions the basis of an idea which is a dominant narrative in the present world. He not only pinpoints the role of capitalism but also the role of imperialism and empire building in third world countries which spread the dominant narrative to other parts of the world. I really found one interesting thing that it is the thinking like we must have cars, sea-facing bungalow etc to become modern. It is changing the thinking of the Asian people who were earlier believed in living with harmony of nature.

In fact, he also indicates that the great derangement we have built in our life. The North-South divide is a reflection as well as the cause of this problem. He also points out the role played by the artists and writers in highlighting the concerns related to climate change. The issue of climate change rarely emerges in the dominant narrative of literature or movies.

Most importantly,  he has something radical to say about the recent much celebrated Paris Climate Agreement. According to him, “Paris goal as an impossible goal that merely facilitates neo-liberal world order to enrich itself via business opportunities in renewables”. He also says beautifully that these are chains of casualty whose ends we can not see.