Change their Mindset – What Bullshit?
Few months back I had couple of my US trips and got a chance to see the culture, people, development and lots of good and bad things there. One of the things that really impressed me was the dedication these people have for observing rules. May it be a traffic rules, littering, no smoking in public places, etc.
For many days I was wondering why these people don’t have the general tendency of breaking laws? Why so many people prefer to keep their cars dirty than throwing the garbage on the roads?
When I came back to India, I discussed this with couple of my close friends and raised the point that why can’t similar things happen in India? Both of them were insisting on –
- It cannot happen in India,
- We can’t just enforce laws anywhere,
- We have to change people’s mindset,
- Blah, blah, blah.
Somehow I thought there is something missing in this. I didn’t really believe if this idea of changing mindset would really be effective. It’s just ridiculous to say that we can change the mindset of more than 1 billion population with so many of them illiterate. If at all it’s possible then it would take several decades before we see people taking active participation in this. Incidentally the basic problem that high population countries face is very few people have the ability to think. Majority of the population here today can’t think beyond their bread and butter activities. The idea of these people changing their mindset itself sounds sarcastic.
Few months back an incident occurred to me. I went to a public tea stall in Aundh and was sitting on a table when this guy comes and sits on the table next to mine and starts smoking. As I am allergic to smoke I requested him not to smoke but the poor guy fails to understand that he’s causing trouble to others said – “I am sitting on a different table, why you should have any problem? If you don’t like it then go and sit somewhere else”. Neither I understood how to react nor I had enough patience to argue. I was thinking of calling my dearest friends to change his mindset but frankly I didn’t believe if anyone could have changed his mindset. Probably his wife, but question arises who would change her mindset?
We see these two states one what’s happening in the developed countries and one in the developing countries. One might argue that by the time we change from developing country to developed country things would change. But my dear friend don’t you think this is not an atomic and automatic change. It has some transition period involved in it and there are some responsibilities and actionable for few of us to make this change happen. Aren’t we going through this transition period and isn’t this time to think about how to change the situation?
A key point that should not go unnoticed is all these countries have very heavy fines for breaking laws/rules. Some approximate numbers to give an idea of fines charged in California– $250-$350 for not obeying traffic signals, $1000 for littering, etc.
There is no reason why can’t we apply the same logic here. Charge fines in the range of say Rs10000 for not following traffic signals, Rs15000 for smoking in the public places. Somebody might question like we have so many poor percentage of population in India how the hell are we going to take out 10K-15K from them. The solution is simple ‘put them in jail’ for few months. If you are poor then you better not break the rules. Read between the lines and you would understand that no one would dare to break the laws if it’s so costly. No need to implement it at each and every place. Just some random checks and punish these random lawbreakers.
I am one of the best examples of people who afford to break laws just because it’s cheap. For several months I have been driving in Pune traffic without carrying my driving license and no PUC. Not that I don’t have license issued but just forget to take it with me. May be because I know my laziness won’t cost me more than few hundred bucks that too once in 2-3 months. This same lazy guy goes to US and every time before getting into car makes sure that he has his driving license with him.
Okay now let me change my angle of thinking here. Some people might say we have corruption spread at the ground levels. But if the actual fine amount is so high, bribe amount would also increase considerably making people think ten times before lawbreaking.
If, in case, laws are changed the way they are proposed here then there would be our dearest politicians to oppose this heavy punishment scheme and get some public sympathy for their bloody selfish voting business. Just in the similar way they came to help us at the time of helmet crisis in Pune.
Who cares? I am not here to change the mindset of these inhuman politicians; I am here to write my random thoughts.
posted by Rushikesh @ 4:17 AM
10 Comments:
The solution given by u seems to be less reviewd by youself.First of all do you know how the punishment for breaking some law is calculated does it depend upon avrage ncome? does it depend upon cost of processing?the complexity can be seen at www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_Chapter_20/PThy_Chapter_20.html
The problem in your soltution lies in the behave itself
Look u can give 100 rs fine so u have good salary so it makes u illigible to break that law and but u can't give a fine of 10000 so you are not illigible to break that law there are people in india who earn laks rs a day they can break any traffic law?is this u suggest that voilation of law will be directly proportional to your salary?????
The solution given by u seems to be less reviewd by youself.First of all do you know how the punishment for breaking some law is calculated does it depend upon avrage ncome? does it depend upon cost of processing?the complexity can be seen at www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_Chapter_20/PThy_Chapter_20.html
The problem in your soltution lies in the behave itself
Look u can give 100 rs fine so u have good salary so it makes u illigible to break that law and but u can't give a fine of 10000 so you are not illigible to break that law there are people in india who earn laks rs a day they can break any traffic law?is this u suggest that voilation of law will be directly proportional to your salary?????
Well, as you mention this is a "process". It does not happen all of a sudden. And once the rules settle in, it is remains no longer as a rule, but a way of life. As you mention, most of the US citizens have grown up in an environment where everyone follows traffic rules. It happens to an extent that you don't think of them as "rules". For you, that is how you do things.
Secondly, high fines, implies greater bribes, atleast in a country like ours. Imagine that the fine for not carrying a license is 80/100Rs. A person is always inclined to pay the complete fine rather than giving 50 bucks to the traffic police. You will be caught once, twice, but then you'll make sure you keep the license with you.
@Anonymous
Thanks for sharing this interesting information. I don't think I am challenging any of the economics
calculation presented in the book.
But you seem to have misinterpreted the blog. I am not suggesting anything like "violation of the law should be directly proportional to anyone’s salary."
Firstly 10K-15K are just random numbers I have used to show how effective they are in refraining people from doing crimes. What I am trying to show here is that there is something wrong in the current punishment calculation schema that we have adapted.
Okay will try to explain it in a different way. Checkout the Figure 20-3 from Price theory. If you look at it carefully you will see horizontal axis represents probability & punishment. Vertical axis represents EC(enforcement cost) and PC (punishment cost). EC + PC together decide total punishment amount. EC and PC curves show proper values of each of them for a particular value of probability. Graph shows that best value of punishment cost is achieved when probability of caching a crime is 0.5. There is one more factor that the book doesn’t explicitly talk about but definitely has a great impact on the graph- Population.
With such a huge population that we have it should be quite easy to understand and accept that probability of catching a crime (NOTE: I am specifically talking here about crimes affecting public property like traffic rule breaking, smoking in public place, etc & not something affecting an individual like stealing, murder, etc.) is very low.
Ex: Lets calculate the probability of- I am getting caught without my driving license. I go out and drive in traffic, at least, 3 times a day and lets assume I am caught after every 3 months (this may sometimes go to 6 months).
Probability = 1 / (3 * 3 * 90) = 0.0037.
Similar value of probability can be calculated for any other rule breaking e.g. Everyday when I wait on red lights I see thousands of people don’t bother to wait for green.
Now looking at the graph for this value of probability EC is very low, which is acceptable, as we know very well how effective our traffic police mechanism is.
But at the same point we expect PC to be very very very high but in fact its not. If EC and PC values do not follow the graph, means punishment cost is not reasonable and so crime rate would go high. And exactly the same thing is happening. Punishment cost should be such that it should discourage people from breaking laws, in general, but they have the right to break it if committing the crime is more profitable to them even after paying punishment amount. But what we see is almost everyone is breaking the rules which is not expected in an efficient economic model.
@kedar
Yes you are right that it doesn’t happen all of a sudden. I am also not saying it. I also mentioned that it's not an atomic and automatic process. it has transition period and some people have to initiate this process in order to make it happen.
But at the same time I must comment here that it’s not completely way of life that makes it happen in US. Every year several people come in US from different backgrounds. Otherwise they don’t need to put a $350 fine board on every traffic signal. They don’t need to have cameras on every signal. They don’t need to have $1000 fine for littering boards from places to places.
@bribing.
It’s a completely separate discussion. Not many people would think like you or me. Several people would have the tendency to say that if it works with 50 why should I pay 100 even if 100 is not a big amount :).
One of the most important things one can do about this is to invest in our young people who if groomed right would become better citizens going forward and will hopefully follow rules right from the young age.
I came across an interesting fact few days ago. Fines for breaking traffic rules that we pay today are based on motor vehicle act 1988(http://tcmp.nic.in/MOTORYAN.pdf.
e.g. 100 Rs is the fine for breaking signals (section 119, 177).
Considering the rate of inflation does it really make sense to charge amount that is based on 18 years old rules? Surprisingly these rules are not being refined periodically.
Mr. Rushikesh, Rs. 100 is not a small amount to be paid for breaking signal.You might be earning in billions, but ordinary people like us do pay Rs. 100 for breaking signals and also feel bad after paying them. The old rules are still working because still a common indivudual is not earning too much, after 18 years and the most importantly not every person is like you, working in IT industry. And if the governement refines the rules and make this cost lets say
Rs. 1000 then it will tend to increased corruption, as common people won't pay fine legally in that case.
Rushi, at all times, do you stop at a red light when others are passing by? Do you show the indicator sign when changing the lane while driving? Or do you follow lanes? If the answer is yes, then I am happy as I am not alone. :)
I agree with Kedar when he says that rules become part of the life and thus are followed. Its a human tendancy that when you try to force someone to do something, he wont do that.
Talking about immegrants coming into US, they follow rules for a combination of two reasons:
1. Fine for law breaking is too high.
2. If you see no one else breaking rules, you try to rise to that level as well.
Throwing litter at public places is a right example. You can throw used paper on public places in first world countries and wont get caught but still we dont do that because we see no one else doing that.
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