The Dilemma of Choice

                                                                   

I distinctively remember when I was studying then telephone used to be a luxury and you had to book in advance to get a connection. At that time the instrument provided to you by the only provider the Department of telecom now named BSNL and could be used only to talk whether incoming or out going. If you wanted to talk outside the circle then you had to book a trunk call with the telephone exchange and then wait for quite sometimes even at times for a couple of days for it to mature so that you could talk to your loved and dear ones. Words like STD and ISD were never heard of and for listening to the news one had to turn to the only available radio station of All India Radio. There was no choice either you listen to AIR or you do not listen to radio at all, of course more powerful receivers could tune in to BBC or radio Ceylon for hearing to the legendary Amin Sayani giving out the famous Binaca Geetmala.  The choices were the famous Aristotle’s logic of yes or no. Either you have the telephone from DOT or you did not, or either you listen to AIR for news or did not. Life was so simple and so less complicated.

Now the life has become a nightmare with a large number of choices in every product, be it a food item, telephone, TV, TV channels, scooters, cars, etc. The choices are so many that it is not possible for a simple mind to grasp all, analyze them and arrive at a choice keeping your budget in mind. The other day I went to buy a laptop as the faithful old one was troubling me. The salesman asked me what processor I wanted, screen size, memory size RAM and ROM, whether with DVD drive or without, Graphic card or without and with what memory, 3rd or 5^th or seventh  generation and lastly he came to the most important question of price range and by the time I was so thoroughly confused that I decided to keep using my faithful old simple laptop rather than get into the maze of the specifications of new generation computers from where I was sure I could never come out with a sane mind.

If this was not enough then I had a much worst experience when I went to buy a mobile phone a modern day necessity but a troublesome piece of equipment in my opinion. It rings when you least want it to ring, that is while in bathroom while sitting on the pot or taking a shower or sleeping or when you are driving in the thick of traffic.  And the worst part is to listen to a voice in this madness who is trying to sell you a property, a credit card or worst telling you that you have been selected for a loan or for a free vacation in a place which you have never heard of, only if you become a member. I wonder whether these persons are a die hard fan and followers of the Murphy law. I wanted a simple phone from which I could make a call, receive one, receive and send messages and keep a record of my contacts. The experience was nothing short of a cultural shock and to me it appeared that I have come out of stone ages in to an alien word. The charming, pretty salesgirl looked me up and down as to trying to fathom as to how much money I am willing to spare and to mentally calculate her share of commission. On being told my requirement she looked me up and down twice as to make sure that I am really of this world only and then to start off with her sales pitch of the attributes of a mobile phone which to me appeared to be of belonging to science fiction movie. Screen size, quad core or octa core, android or windows, 4 GB or 32 GB in steps of doubling it, gorilla glass or normal, battery size, selfie megapixels and the main camera and then went on and on and by this time I was so thoroughly confused with the choices that I forgot as to what I had to come to buy. I do not know whether she was trying to impress me with her knowledge of modern day gadgets or she was trying to make me feel inferior due to my lack of knowledge or it was just that she was repeating her sales pitch for the younger generation and did not know how to deal with an old antique piece like me.

 I thought gorillas were in Africa or in the zoo only and I wondered as to what it was doing in the mobile phone but kept quite as not make a public spectacle of my old knowledge. Later on my son told me that dad did she tell you whether it is 3G or 4G with or without wi- fi and whether it has an audio and video player or not. I mentally thanked my stars and decided to stick to my son and daughter to present me one on my birthday rather than go through the ordeal of buying one. Of course I forgot to mention the large number of companies making these mobile phones. The choices are overwhelming and bordering suffocation as the mind just simply cannot grasp or analyze the various choices of companies, model and characteristics to reach a conclusion without going insane. In my young days it was as simple as there were only one or two companies and only two to three models to choose from. This choice of plenty is probably the cause of so many emotional, personal and most importantly health problems in younger generation. They start suffering from a very young age of acidity, heart problem, anxiety and tension.

This dilemma of choice is not only limited to me but it is faced by everyone in their day to day life. Take the highway or short cut, move or stay in the same place, go by bus or metro and so on and so forth. It starts at a very young age with what school what sort of career, and with each passing day the number of choices are increasing and it is becoming more and more difficult for a person to accumulate, assimilate, analyze and come out with a reasonable good choice. To compound this misery is the advertisement blitz created by the companies and newer and newer models being introduced with some new features every day. I am sure that for a normal person it is not possible to even know what all functions the instrument is capable of what to talk about having used all these features either on a regular basis or at some time during the life cycle of that instrument. Probably in future we will need an instrument just to tell or inform us as to what all the other instruments are capable of doing. It will be just that as who is going to mind the minders and where it will take us or where it will all end. Of course I have not mentioned about the tension or problems being created in the environment when we use these precious resources so blatantly without a thought to the future and not paying any heed to the waste which we are generating.

This wide choice of various goods and services leads one to discontentment and we start worrying whether we have made the right choice or not. When there are 50 or odd choices then it is natural for one to worry whether the choice is right or not for him and to add misery there are others, friends and well-wishers who further confuse you with their choices and trying to look that you have not made a right choice for yourself and this starts a fresh cycle of further thinking and self-pity and depression. So what is the way out of all this? Think before you buy and sit down and write what you require and what all attributes the gadget should have which are useful to you. Do studies before you go to the market and internet and the information brochures are the best bet in trying to find out about the gadget and its characteristics and the reviews. Refrain from taking the advice from your close friends and relatives who have a particular model only except for that model only. Once you have narrowed down the choice to just a couple of brands and models then further narrow them down by the budget constraint and do not get carried away by the advertisement blitz  about a particular model but always ask the question do I really need this model with this feature and at this price band or not? Finally, once you have made a decision to buy a product or a model then do not regret it irrespective of what other may or might say. Remember nobody makes a bad choice deliberately and that you always make the best choice based on the available information available to you at that time and it is best decision or choice. There is no perfect decision or choice in this world but are always relative to your requirements and constraints.

Honesty and Integrity

                                                                               

1. I was watching Dr. Subhash Chandra show on Z-TV, in which he was taking to IIM, Lucknow students and the topic as I gathered was related to honesty. He gave an example of a business owner who got a contract from the government and in executing the contract made a huge profit for the company. The means to obtain the contract was not a straight forward tender but by dubious means. The question was whether the person was honest or not. It was not the question but the answer given by a girl student which amazed me when she said that the person was honest as he made a huge profit for the company and the stake holders and the means to get the contract was not important. This gave me an insight into the new definition of honesty in the present young generation. Honesty in her opinion was related to only the narrow world of making profit. Another example quoted was that the owner of a company called for some persons for an interview in relation to a job in his company but after taking the interview he choose to select a person who was recommended to him by a public servant. In this case the answer was more relevant as the boy said that he should not have called the persons to interview and he has a right to choose the person of his choice. Here he said the end result was honest but the means to achieve the end were dishonest. These two examples brought forward a variety of conceptions and differences in opinion about honesty. It is the same trick being employed by the persons accused in 2G and coal gate scams where they said that they did their job honestly and in public interest and have made no money for themselves but still the government ended up losing huge amount of  money and Supreme Court calling it a scam.

2. This whole show put me thinking whether the present generation understands the difference between honesty and integrity or they are so wholly concerned about honesty that they do not know what integrity is. The whole show took me to the classes which I used to take on business ethics while teaching MBA students, where the first lecture used to be to explain the difference between honesty and integrity. It is not easy to explain the difference between honesty and integrity to young MBA students as they come from a society where a lot of things are accepted as honesty and it is very common to do them. It is very common to break a queue, or to break a traffic rule, or to drive on wrong side, to pay bribe to get a berth on a train or get a seat in a professional college, or to pay for getting a medical certificate or a driving license, hide the income from Income tax department by accepting in cash, or to buy a thing without a receipt so as to avoid tax and so on. The list is endless and majority of us do these things without batting an eyelid.

3. I use to start my lecture either by a story or give a situation and then derive the main subject from the lessons learnt in these. This normally initiated an interest and the students did remember the story/situation and hence the morale. In this case I used my favorite situation of you standing outside your house and a person comes running with torn clothes and blood on the clothes and asks you to help him as some persons are going to hurt him badly. You can either help him by asking him to hide in the basement or not and asking him to go away and that is not important because in either case the end result is the same. Within a minute or two some persons come running carrying a pole and knives and ask you whether you have seen the man and where he has gone. Here I ask my students as to what are they going to do. You can either tell them the truth that the person is hiding in the basement or show them the way he has run or you can deceive them by sending them in the wrong direction. In the first scenario you are honest but you have no integrity and in the second scenario you have integrity but you are not honest just because you have no right to judge whether the person is guilty or not and of what crime and does the crime justify the mob attacking or even killing him.

4. Another example I give is that I leave my purse on the table and tell the students that pretend I have gone home and then ask them as to what they are going to do. Invariably the answer is that the purse will be picked up and the person will come after me to give my purse back to me. Of course this is the ideal situation and probably in most case I will end up losing the purse or its contents. But that is another story. The main point then I explain is that by picking up my purse you act is dishonest as the purse does not belong to you but you have integrity as your intention was to return my purse and that my dear students is the difference between honesty and integrity. Honesty is a value but integrity is the principles. A value may change over a period of time or may change given different circumstances or environment but principles do not change. It is either you have them or you do not have them at all. Values are like a map of the city in which you live but the principle is the precise address of your house. It is when you do not understand the subtle differences between the two that confusion and contradictory answers arise and you are accused of changing values. If the honesty flows from integrity then the end result is right but not possible to derive integrity from honesty The answers given on the show brought out this fact very clearly that the public at large do not know the difference between the two and hence their off springs or students also grow up with the same confusion and end up thinking that it is only honesty and integrity and honesty are the same things.

5. Of course I can give the dictionary meaning and the difference between the two but the examples given above bring out the thin line dividing them more clearly. Honesty has been just defined as the quality of being honest and honest is being truthful, sincere, fairly earned, etc. It is defined in terms of the end results and not in terms of the process. Integrity on the other hand is defined as the quality of being honest and morally upright. The difference is hardly anything but the emphasis on being morally upright in integrity is the core thing. Honesty as it is understood nowadays is mainly concerned with the end result being truthful and fairly earned but in the integrity the emphasis is on the process of being morally upright. If the process is morally upright then the end result will always be right but if the process is not morally upright then even though the end result is fair or justified but you cannot call the person as having integrity even though other persons may label them as being honest. In the coal gate scam this is the main differences. All the accused may shout from the rooftops that they were and are honest and upright public servants but since the process employed was not morally right hence they have no integrity and the Supreme Court has rightly labeled as a scam.

The Pedestrian Dilemma

                                                                                  

We are developing, expressways, flyovers and making everything possible so that the traffic moves smoothly and at a fast pace on the Indian roads.  We have all sorts of mixed traffic on our roads starting from bullock carts, cycles, rickshaws, motorcycles in plenty, some scooters, cars and big cars and finally the buses and trucks, which daily fight for their space on the Indian roads. Honking, lane cutting, jumping red light is the norm these days and the motorcycles and cars think it is their right to change lanes or take a turn without giving any turn indicator or signal. Probably they think it is below their dignity to do so. The result is a large number of accidents on the road. On any crossing you can easily see vehicles standing on or even beyond the zebra crossings. But in all this does the public or government think for a minute about the plight off the pedestrian. We are increasing pollution and increasing our import bill on the petroleum products due to increase use of vehicles even for short distance which can be easily covered by foot or on a cycle but it is considered unsafe and dangerous. The reason is the unruly traffic and a very poor planning for the pedestrian or cycles. On television we are shown a smart city like Berlin where people prefer to walk or cycle down to their offices from worker to the high official but in India people think it is below their dignity to walk or to use cycle.

The government is definitely thinking. They have constructed path for cycles in cities but unfortunately you can find everything on these except the cycles. Parked cars, hawkers, showrooms and even eating stalls dominate the place as if they own them but you cannot probably see a single cyclist on these paths. Similarly, the walking paths are also dominated with the same people and the pedestrian is forced to walk on road and fight for his space on these already crowded roads resulting in more death for the pedestrians. Pedestrian has a right of way in crossing the road but here the might is the right and the poor pedestrian is the last priority. Crossing the road is a nightmare even when the light has turned red for road traffic and green for the pedestrians where it is available and in most of the places it is not even present signifying that the pedestrian has no right to even cross the road and should cross on his own risk and responsibility. On expressways there is hardly any place for a pedestrian to cross over as the foot over bridges is too far apart or not even present and if present it becomes difficult for older people to climb them. The end result is that the poor pedestrian is faced with a dilemma as to whether walk or cycle the distance or to use his own vehicle and in the end the decision is always use the vehicle as there is no proper space to either cycle down or walk without risking your life. Crossing the road is like scaling mount Everest in India, so the end result is that be what others are and be reasonably safe inside a car or on a motorcycle where you can bulldoze your way past the other vehicles except the trucks and buses and where the try to compete with the trucks or buses the result is that they lose but no lesson is learnt as there is no life left, but who cares except the grieving family members.

The result is an increase in pollution, respiratory diseases even in children and an increase in death on roads and less people either walking on the road or cycling down to work or leisure. Is this the future we want to give it to our children? Definitely not but then what are the alternatives. The alternatives are the difficult and hard choices but we can definitely do a few small things and take a small step in that direction. Increase in public transport and motivating their use, car polling, ensuring that offices are near to residences, restricting the ownership of vehicles per person or family, no parking on the roads, cycle paths or pathways, ensure more use of electric cars by reducing duty and encouraging their use, sufficient charging points/solar charging points for them, metro rails in cities, taking big offices out of the cities and developing residences near then with other facilities, reducing flow of population to big cities by developing facilities in small cities,

Even in small country like Malaysia or Singapore, what to talk about advanced countries, it is the pedestrian who has the right of way and the cars stop well before the zebra crossing to allow a pedestrian to cross the street. At some places they even have pelican crossings where you can press a button on the road and the light will turn red allowing you to cross the street and on the other side you can push the button again to make it green for traffic to resume. Most of the busy crossings have intelligent traffic management system using fuzzy logic to manage the traffic better without creating long queues in one direction and empty road on other side. People take pride in walking to their destination or use public transport like metro, buses, etc, to go to work. FOB’s are there in plenty but with lifts or escalators for use on highways.  Public conveniences are there and they are clean and in good working conditions and food stalls which sell eatables are kept covered and workers wear plastic gloves, hats and use tongs to serve food on clean disposable plates with enough bins to drop the biodegradable and recycles things separately. They encourage people to use public transportation and curb the use of private vehicles and make sure that these are available in excellent conditions and in enough quantity. They make sure that the citizens take pride if they walk, or cycle or use public transport and ensure their safety and priorit y over other vehicular traffic.

Reservation Syndrome

The recent agitation by the Patel community in Gujarat and the Jat agitation in Rajasthan have brought the issue of reservation to the forefront. Today it is these two but tomorrow will bring more castes to agitate and demand reservation and hold the public and nation to ransom. This type of agitation will not only inconveniences the general public but also leads to loss of money for the nation in terms of loss of production but also loss of property of government but also of public at large. Does in the name of agitation some group of persons permitted to hold the public at large to ransom and loss of property? The time is right for the government to think whether the right to agitation and hold nation to ransom is a right at all or needs to be taken away and replaced by a public right to live peacefully devoid of such disruptive right. What about my right to peaceful enjoyment of the public services or my right to peaceful existence in the society?

The reservation was brought by the framers of constitution for the upliftment of marginalized section off society to occupy their useful place in the society and was initially expected to be only for a few years. Successive government instead of finishing this after 10 years not only kept on extending it but also added more and more people not on the basis of economic criteria but on the basis of caste. The basket or reservation kept on increasing and now as per Supreme Court it is restricted to 50%. But people are not happy with it and more and more castes are demanding the reservation and this basket is set to grow larger and larger. The dilemma is that the benefit of reservation is going to a few people who are already well off or had become well off after taking benefit of reservation but not to other persons in the caste. It is being cornered by some persons in that caste and a majority of persons are denied this benefit.  Why could not the government come out with a policy that once the benefit of reservation has been given to a person then his son and daughters will not get any benefit and it should go only to those families who have not so far availed it? But the politics demands that such a move will not get them votes and hence vote bank policy forces them not to bring out such a bold move.

Is the reservation answer to all our ills of the past? People think so, that is past mistakes can be corrected by making more mistakes. It is the famous Sunk Cost dilemma and we are very good at it. Whatever mistakes we have committed in the past cannot be corrected by making more mistakes of the same kind or sinking more costs in the same mistake. More reservation is definitely not the answer.  Either, you take away the reservation for caste by replacing it with economic criteria only and that too for one generation only or the other option is to say that all tribes and castes will come under the reservation and it will be 100% for all citizens of India. The third option is to remove the reservation at all so that there is no reservation for any person in India and all are equal. This will remove the problem of inefficient persons from occupying high positions and will bring in efficiency, expertise and boldness in the government machinery. Of course there will be still the issue of persons belonging to marginalized section of society. There issue can be addressed by giving them the right to food, shelter and education so that they or their sons and daughters can become responsible persons the society and can contribute with their intelligence and expertise.

Either way it will have to be a bold decision and this will shape the destiny of the country in years to come and for this all political parties will have to come together and rise above their vote bank politics and shed their personal agenda in favor of a national agenda for making a better, more educated, skilled and prosperous India..