About time: replace nepotism by luck in recruitment - nothing else can be fairer

 The concept of finding the best candidates for a routine job would be fodder for The Onion were it not so impactful in its hypocrisy. 

If there are over a hundred qualified candidates for a job(or an educational program), we might as well accept and institutionalize the role  of luck in life.

Definitely have a test or a  process to shortlist the candidates meeting the minimum requirements. 

The test does not have to be secure and no-one need bother if someone cheated.

The next step is  to select the required number of candidates randomly.

The selected candidates must reappear for the qualification test in person to  ensure that they had not cheated and had not been impersonated. 

If any fail, replace them randomly from the shortlist of  candidates.

The whole process can be fast, inexpensive and as fair as the luck of  living allows.

Living Wage, Inflation and Guaranteed Minimum Income

Suppose we want less traffic on the roads:

We could reduce the need for private cars if the taxi drivers were paid a guaranteed basic income so people use taxis instead.

The concept can easily  be expanded to shared taxis, mini-buses and any other type of public transport.

It is easier to sell the idea if it is not treated as a subsidy but as a saving on needless infrastructure of roads - which also frees a lot space which could be better used for various public purposes.

We also want a comfortable society.

I am not comfortable when I see people struggling to survive. I cope with it by avoidance. There is nothing I can do as an individual that will help.  Donating or giving to charity makes me feel even worse.

I would love to see a living wage implemented even in India. 

We want to see a brighter future. We need peace and a low inflation.

If the wages of the workers in supermarkets, coffee shops, Udipi's,  child care centers, house hold workers, etc. are to be living wages, then the prices will increase.

Suppose instead each of these persons gets a minimum income. How much do they need to be paid? 

Depending on the nature of the work, we may actually be able to lower the prices. I can imagine a person having to clean toilets having to be paid even more than now while a child care worker may well even volunteer for just the pleasure of being surrounded by little children - esp grandparents whose children live far away :)

I wonder what has happened to minimum income programs for the common good -

"Barack Obama, in a reflective speech in South Africa, mused that basic income would figure prominently in the years ahead, and prominent corporate folk endorsed it again, including Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk."

This was in 2019. I hope the support of Elon Musk still holds. At least it did in 2021 as well.

 

 

 

The need for and benefit of owning a Car - depends on where

For over 5 years, I have not had a car for my visits to Chandigarh and I have rarely missed it. Even after the age of  70, I can easily walk and do most of  my  work. On occasions when  I did need a vehicle, Uber/Ola have been very useful. Usually, I get a taxi in a short period of time. It is the advantage of living in the center of the city and my trips are to places from where taxi driver will have no problem getting a new customer.

I wish I had the option of a taxi on demand in Goa, whenever I needed it. But I don't. So, I continue with owning a car which I will need to replace as it will be reaching retirement age of 20 even though it is not driven much and runs well. In stead of  using a taxi, when my children were also here, it was simpler to rent a car for 2 weeks!

It is obvious that a taxi will not be economical from the perspective of the consumer in Goa for either the short distances that I need or even an evening trip to a nearby beach. There just isn't enough volume of traffic throughout the day for a driver to make enough money.

In Delhi, I used Uber more this time than I usually do. I normally use metro only and walk and this time, an auto driving over my wife's foot had made the option of  walking impossible. 

Stuck in traffic, I would wonder how  much the driver could possibly be making. It couldn't be much. The condition of the taxis in Delhi reflected that. 

Uber is a terrible model. The society needs something better. Uber represents a need; however, the people who profit from it are NOT the ones providing the service.

The difference in the cost of using a car and taxi has the following parts:

• Operational cost. In this case, it makes little difference whether it is  a personal car or a taxi.
• Capital cost. In all likelihood, a taxi is used a lot more than a personal car. So, the effective cost per km should be lower for a taxi.
• Driver's earnings. We don't pay ourselves for driving, so this is indeed the big challenge.

If we want the ownership of personal cars to reduce, the  society must agree to guarantee a minimum income to the drivers - at least until self-driving vehicles replace them. 

Something like MANREGA for the urban areas?

 

Tremendous Expenditure and Progress in Infrastructure and We are even Slower

 I drove for 50 minutes from Mapusa and just reached Bambolim. It would have taken another 20 min to reach the Dabolim airport.

When I had moved to Goa 30 years ago, it would take me 50 minutes to reach the airport.

To be fair, a year ago, I had again reached the airport in 50 minutes with the new bridges over Mandovi and Zuari rivers and the new expressway from Bambolim to Zuari bridge.

I am also pretty certain that once the elevated highway is completed in Porvorim in a year or two, I will again be able to drive to the airport in 50 minutes.

I suppose that is progress. Here is an example of a regular experience for me and this is 2 and half years AFTER the report and - “We have written to the NHAI about the issues at the junction and steps to be taken to rectify the problem”. 

Probably the designers did not include or talk to anyone who stayed in Mapusa or was familiar with it.

Suppose instead, we spent a part of the money spent on improving highway and bridges on public transport, could it have been any worse?

First objection that comes to mind is from the categorization of the expenditure:

• Building roads and bridges is spent on infrastructure - A GOOD thing as it is an investment for the  future
• Spending money on public transport is a subsidy - Obviously a BAD thing. 
• Why can't we categorize it as a SAVING of money we do not need to spend on infrastructure to have an even better quality of life in the future?

 

An ideal example for a negative vote when facing a good, a bad and an ugly option

 As I was reflecting on the dilemma facing the uncommitted movement, the current US election seems to be a perfect example for the need for an option to vote against a candidate as well. 

If we are faced with the choice of a good, a bad and an ugly, we can vote for the good candidate, fully expecting him or her to lose. Our negative vote can be against the ugly in case, as we expect, the good candidate is the last one.

 If we do not  have the option for a good candidate, we can ignore our positive vote and still vote only against the ugly. We should not have to choose a lesser evil even if the result of the election would not be any different.

Would the victor of such a system celebrate and brag about his success, when the voting data would clearly  show that it is the ugly candidate who lost?

Goa is a small state. I wish the  election commission would experiment here.

A year on and my brain is perpetually stressed

I have no connection with Palestine or even any Arab. The last Indian news channel I watched was NDTV till it was taken over. I have relied mostly on European news channels, DW, France 24 and, to a lesser extent, BBC, and youtube selectively for Indian news, trying to escape emotional onslaughts on my brain.

It all changed a year ago. My brain just could not reconcile the contrast between the news of from Ukraine with the news from Gaza. I had to switch channels and reached Al Jazeera. I still watch it primarily though I have to turn off the tv as I can't cope with the developments  still going on after a year. It pains me as I liked to believe that we were long past the colonial era and were far more enlightened.

Today the words of the Western leaders in particular may sound nice and comforting while the images stare in bleak contrast. My brain can't cope.

I find solace in Scandinavian crime fiction where even though the criminals may be awful, there is a sense of closure and what is the most significant part, the hero does NOT use violence - from the characters created by   Sjöwall and Wahlöö to Jørn Lier Horst ! 

I focus a lot on the videos of  Robert Sapolsky even though I have never appreciated or understood chemistry or biology and hope that these will help. 

How does one run away or escape from any thing unpleasant?

Who knows, I may even try ChatGPT or Google's version, except that I worry these may make matters even worse.

What Depresses me even more about the state of Indian Education since I left it

 It was bad enough to have a centralised examination system at the University or State level. The logic or even the reasonableness of a person having greater merit just because he or she got a mark extra in an exam is beyond my comprehension. 

Applying that rule to a central entrance exam for jobs or admissions just breaks my heart. Blaming the students and their parents for desperately trying to find an alternate option is even more heart breaking.

The absurdity of the system would not matter if there were enough opportunities, which obviously are just not there in India. 

What is merit any way or its importance? I can't think of any better way than listening to Dr. Michael Sandel explain it. A critical issue is the recognition of luck in our life.

If we accept luck as a critical component of our life, and if we accept that there aren't enough opportunities for all, what would be an appropriate way to select candidates for admission? It is easy to imagine that the current system of admission will cause stress -more likely, severe stress. Here is  very short introduction to what it can do to the human body. If we further accept, as Dr. Sapolsky argues, humans have no free will,  we need to worry as a society about the impact of failing the admission tests by a massive number of candidates.

The fact that the number of seats is limited cannot be avoided. Nor can we avoid selecting a small number of candidates to fill the seats. We need to accept that there is no fair or equitable or perfect way to select the winners. So, why not follow what happens anyway. Use luck.

1. By all means use a test but only to determine competency for the course/job.
2. Optionally, use information which seems appropriate to assign a weighting score to each candidate.
3. Let a system select the candidates randomly using  weighting score as a bias.

Will it be a perfect selection? Obviously not but neither is any other system at present.

Implications:

1. Will  the winner be proud of his meritorious achievement. No. He will realise and accept that he has been lucky. (I for one won't miss the ads by coaching shops advertising the candidates who cleared the exam from 'their' center.)
   
2. Will the loser conclude that he was not good enough or a failure or had been cheated. No. He will accept that he was unlucky and had no control over what happened.
   

I can expect a large number of people who lose the lottery will have well connected parents or relations. Wishful thinking - they may well be motivated into creating additional opportunities for young people within the society instead of what we are convinced happens today.