Entrepreneurial Solutions to Behavioral Problems

There is a growing trend today that tries to solve behavioral problems, determined by the state and surroundings we are in, through entrepreneurial means. Let me explain it with two examples. First one is related to the perceived attempts from politicians on the street to saints in the jungles to protect planet through afforestation by planting saplings ranging from one to millions. I am not against this efforts or not debilitating its relevance whatsoever.  Instead, my argument is that this kind of efforts to increase the green cover of the planet is sub-optimal as there is alternative optimal and less celebrated method to expand the green cover. That is reducing deforestation. The effect of not meddling with functioning of the nature and thereby allowing expansion of the green cover on its own is far stronger and effective than that of human driven afforestation drive. Restrict the intervention of the human being on the nature followed by sensitization efforts ; nature will take care of itself.  It is here we have to see the difference between behavioral problem and entrepreneurial solution.  Felling of trees and mindless destruction of green cover is essentially a behavioral problem. One who has a mind to love environment and enjoys its beauty cannot destroy it. He/she cannot accept the indiscriminate destruction of green cover.  He/she will be at pain upon seeing such wanton behavior. That is, such a state of mind will treat a tree as one among us with a soul and blood. The destruction of forests today is mainly driven by pecuniary motives of human being which has made the minds of people hard and numb.  Thus, the issue is behavioral. However, the solution that we celebrate is entrepreneurial in the form of politically driven massive planting campaign. One can easily mobilize a group of people and organize a mega plating bandwagon that too in front of camera to achieve intended quick-return whereas taking oneself to the course of allowing nature take care of itself without permitting others in meddling in its natural functioning would be a enduring struggle. Once again, let me reiterate that I do not hold the view that efforts of tree planting are fully sans results. Along with such campaigns, we should have devised a strategy and plan to influence the behavior of the people, sensitize them and thereby develop a mindset which enables them to treat trees like one among us wherein restriction will pave way to restraint. We need restraint to solve this menace.

The second example is Modi government’s swatch bharath initiative. Here one instance of entrepreneurial solution that this government has sought is the construction of toilets. Of course, I do appreciate the compulsions of competitive politics which might have influenced such short term pursuits. Having said that let me submit here that if India still remains to be stingy and filthy, it shows that something is rotten in the system and we are breathing the stinky air generated in it. I mean the real problem is somewhere else.  Indeed, India as a democracy has had achieved many milestones in the past. However, that does not mean that we have lived up to expectations. I mean that until India liberates its true claimants in the form of ordinary people from the clutches of poverty, deprivation and destitution India will remain to be stinky. There are two reasons for this. First, such a destitute would have other more important preoccupations in the form of trying to meet the ends of their life which often makes them unable to remain clean. For instance, a hapless working woman with a toddler will be forced to take her ward with her to the work site and where she will find time to take care of her baby, for example, from flies? Her kid would be toddling in the mud, could be relieving of the basic necessities around and all these would be termed as unhygienic by those whose kids have palatial mansions floored with costly ceramics. The point I am making here is that poor people are in a sense helpless to remain so called hygienic on account of their real life compulsions.  Certainly there must have a debate who pollutes the most? While one can use fuel guzzling luxurious vehicles contributing to country’s pollution according to their whims and fancies, our pre-occupation solely with those who openly defecate should also be debated.  Secondly, the hygiene is a behavioral issue which gets shaped up by the socio-economic environment as outlined above. That is why it was reported even after construction of toilets, people are hesitant to use them as they find it comfortable to relive in the open.  This means that an entrepreneurial solution in the form of construction of toilets will be a failure to solve a behavioral problem. Apart from that, the massive drive to clean India raises the question of who will undertake cleaning. Can we consider cleaning effort in isolation from India’s prevailing social system? Can we expect members of upper caste communities be scavengers in Indian cities? If answer is no, it means that the problem of filth in modern India can only solved with a solution suggested by Mahatma Gandhi who suggested that everybody should be their own scavengers. This great well-thought-out solution has addressed both social and behavioral aspects involved in the maintenance of hygiene. Specifically, regarding social aspect, if everybody cleans their surrounding, then the customary practice of treating those at the bottom of social hierarchy as the potential scavengers could be automatically disappeared. Concerning behavioral aspect, nobody would clean his surroundings without such a bend of mind or a positive attitude to do so.  Thus, to make India’s geographical surface and air clean and tidy, government along with short term measures, must also try to make India’s socio-economic scenarios clean from all evils it has been suffering from over the years.  This would help to change the attitude of the people which is the only effective way to bring about revolutionary changes.

(Views expressed here are in an academic spirit and therefore, need not attach any sort of sympathy and antipathy to it)

Reconciliatory Economics

Conventional Economics is primarily pre-occupied with optimization of the use of limited resources. Optimisation is actually the outcome of both maximization and minimization. For instance, produce as much as possible with available resources is the motto of the conventional economics. To achieve this, producers, on the one hand, maximizes their revenue or profit for which they, on the other hand, minimizes cost of production. However, today it appears that economics as a branch of knowledge must revisit it’s this approach especially in the face of issues like environmental implications of such optimizing approach.  In other words, environmental implications of the hither to followed economics with its obvious inclination to production spree has already started ringing the alarm bell to the world. Simply put, this beautiful planet said to be billions of years old is now being pushed to the brinks of its own extinction due to the erroneous economic approach driven by rapid industrialization since the beginning of industrial revolution about three hundred years ago. International bodies like UNO have already warned the world that if carbon emission goes on unabated, then by 2060 this planet will have encounter debilitating catastrophe.

Given such a background, the obvious question is what should be done? The simple answer is to change the economic approach. In other words, from the traditional optimization approach, economics must embark on reconciliatory approach. Optimization approach is developed at a time when there were no factors or forces which must be taken care of in this process of optimization. When the motto was expand the production, it was not a matter of concern then how this expansionist approach will affect, for instance, ecology simply because we were just beginning to produce and therefore, its detrimental effect were not felt. But today picture is entirely different. We have already enough evidences in front of us indicating that matters are going to be worst.  In other words, our expansionist economics approach has given birth to forces which have already begun to work against the same system responsible for its emergence. Therefore, today’s economics can no longer afford to continue with production spree disregarding such noises. In other words, economics has to assume a balancing approach in its endeavor, what so ever be.

Consider ‘make in India’ initiative. Certainly, if such an initiative is truly pursued and made a true experience will be of great use for the people as it will ensure jobs to them. But there is flip side to this. Where to find the resources such as energy for such a massive expansion of production in India? There are two obvious ways to find energy resources. One is to exploit available resources in the country like coal and minerals. However, this solution is half-baked as it will either displace people from areas where these resources are deposited or the very mining of such resources is not sans with its environmental implications like deforestation. Second, country can import fossil fuel like oil to meet its energy requirements.  But, can we economically afford it and even if it is affordable, can we afford to bear its environmental impact? Thus, authorities must think twice when they come with such policies and initiatives which are essentially driven by the traditional economic approach. That is, this ‘make in India’ approach, for instance, fundamentally belongs to traditional economic approach as it envisages massive production expansion in India disregarding its environmental or social implications.

Having said all these it is imperative to put in perspective what is this ‘reconciliatory economics’ all about? This is all about adopting a reconciliatory economic approach to accommodate conflicting interests which involves primarily two things. First, go back to agriculture by way of giving primary consideration to fostering agriculture. Expansion of agriculture will ensure that people have food security, jobs and after all thriving agriculture will foster environment. This does not mean to side-line industrial sector or service sector.  Instead, shape up and promote agro based industries instead of focusing on such industries dictated by forces of greed in the market. For, it is spreading havoc both for the health of the society and environment. For example, instead of promoting products like junk food, promote value added products produced from agriculture outputs which will guarantee jobs at the same time products will be health friendly.  For this state must play a key and proactive role with a stated mission of promoting industries for the benefit of the society like providing jobs instead of aligning with greedy market players. Second important component of the so called ‘reconciliatory economics’ is to encourage development of environment friendly technology. For this also government must encourage rigorous innovative researches and overhaul the current system of education as a whole and higher education in particular in India. Thus, this new approach calls for a new attitude from all walks of life such as education, government, industrialists etc. Or earth will be a proverbial planet for those who will be in Mars by 2060.

To those who are out to wipe out menace of rat solely with trap!!

The issue of plagiarism in Ph.D theses is a new entrant to the list of news items as such instances are reported from various parts of the country. Given such a background, it is timely and necessary to reflect on this issue especially by academicians who are obliquely put in dock. Certain things are worth mentioning here. First, why this kind of incidents are so rampant in academics or in any intellectual endeavors? Of course, compromising the quality of intellectual pursuits through plagiarism or else cannot be tolerated especially in this era of knowledge as it push back the country in the ladder of excellence. Therefore, we, the citizens of this country especially academicians must open their eyes and ponder over this kind of developments which obliquely erodes their own stature. However, the funny side of this stealing issue in the doctoral theses is that it is being simply reduced to a political problem often to make political mileage out of it by cornering political opponents over this kind of issues. In other words, matters have come thus far that if your political opponent in the highly politicized educational system is a Ph.D holder, then you have cheap and easy way of finishing your opponent by way of digging into his PH.D thesis and identifying certain percentages of plagiarism and supply this to hawkish media. That is all.

However, this issue is systemic to our academics and requires much deeper analysis to unearth the real cause and find out original culprits. Here, I would like to answer the question raised just above. No menaces cannot be addressed effectively either by way of creating political   storm or simply penalizing individuals indulging in it (trapping rat), let alone plagiarism in researches. For, plagiarism in researches symbolizes the acute decay of our academics. Our academics in general with few exceptions are a festival ground of nasty chauvinistic self serving politics by politicians and their bootlicking academicians. And that is why our academic scenario especially at higher level today is in a pathetic state of affair. Excessive political interference at all levels especially in the appoints in the form of air-dropping of bootlicking academicians at the top posts along with self-indulgence in the running of academic business by academicians have spoiled out educational sector. What we see today in the form of plagiarism is just a tip of such a degenerated ice berg in Indian academics. For, education in general and research in particular is an intensive rigorous process to train the concerned. An intensive rigorous training requires features like patience, guest, commitment etc on the part of trainee and qualities like expertise, commitment, etc on the part of trainer. But, in our educational system especially in universities and colleges, you will find very few people with these straits. How can we expect patience, commitment or guest from a person who is out there for a degree to make him/her in effect qualified for a post in the offing to be offered by his/her political masters? The decay at the level of trainer is more serious and having far-reaching consequences than the filth at the level of trainee because trainer can willfully change the system as they are the provider. As we look at the ongoing degeneration in our higher education, in my view, it is the so called academicians who are solely responsible for the dismal state of our education today. Political pimps once appointed as faculty members of the higher learning centers would not have the requisite expertise to train or guide the researcher enrolled with him/her. In some other instances, due to erratic designing of academic system, academicians are sometimes forced to deal with areas in which they do not have expertise. Also, students are sometimes forced to chop their foot down to suite the size of foot-wear. However, I think, academician cannot pull their head out of such system excusing its false design as they are fully empowered today to change the system in a manner beneficial to the real stakeholders. But, fact of the matter is that they are not bothered to take up such issues.

It is through the prism just outlined above; we have to look at the on-going controversy over stolen theses. It manifests how tired we are all with this worn out, self-indulgent, air-dropping system. Incidentally, when the 2014 Global Innovation Index  published by Cornel university, INSEAD and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) which ranks countries on the basis of quality education and thereby capacity to innovate new ideas through researches was published, India dropped 10 points compared to the last year. How come this would not happen in a country where universities are infested with anti-social elements and political bootlickers? This kind of issues also reminds us that our ethics is driven by technology today because in the absence modern software (trap) technologies to detect plagiarism, we would not have heard this hues and cries. Therefore, nobody should dream of wiping out rats solely with traps. Instead, develop a system conducive for proper training of cats and thereby get trained cats that are capable of training their wards to find out living properly without stealing others means of living. 

Deregulation of Petroleum Products in India: Half-Baked Economics

Following exactly the same economic philosophy of UPA government at the centre that inspired it to deregulate the price of petrol, NDA government very recently left the determination of diesel prices to the mercy of market. Notwithstanding certain explicit gains visible at a glance in the immediate term, this move will become catastrophic in the long term on account of two reasons. First and foremost, this policy is based on the traditional economic philosophy that unfettered competitive market is the best mechanism to achieve efficiency in the distribution of resources. Therefore, government must not intervene in the functioning of the market through subsidy or taxation so that both producers and consumers will be free to enter and exit such a market. This kind of freewheeling system will supposedly determine efficiency and therefore, government can get rid of the head-ache caused by subsidy and consequent macroeconomic implications.

However, the champions of this philosophy knowingly or unknowingly neglect several important factors that reign the market for petroleum products. Among them, the most crucial thing is either negligence or ignorance of the fact that market is like a scissor with two blades equal to each other in all respects. The true purpose of a scissor can only achieved if it is designed keeping in view the compatibility of two blades to each other. Therefore, even if we accept the view that market alone can guarantee efficiency, for the sake of argument (because truth is that market alone cannot work efficiently as has been proved time and again, for e.g. US economic crisis in 2008 and also considering our metaphor of scissor, it will not cut on its own if somebody does not make use of it), a close look at the existing market for petroleum products shows that it is like a broken scissor. That is, two sides of the market namely demand and supply is suffering from fatal shortcomings.  Let us consider the demand side first. With this new policy government of India wanted to make market for petroleum product like petrol and diesel competitive as well as unfettered. Of course, that is the way government must have gone to achieve the goal of making a market competitive to the extent possible. However, the designer of the scissor should pay attention to the design of one blade while designing the other one so as to avoid incongruity. Here what we have seen is complete neglect on the part of government to look into other side of the market, supply side, while designing Indian demand side of the market for petrol and diesel.  

What I mean is that the supply side of petroleum products is completely out of the control of Indian policy makers and it is fully controlled by international oligarchs which are best examples of the imperfect markets. Thus, our government is preparing ground here to make it perfectly competitive on the demand side while the supply side is imperfectly competitive in toto. In other words, government of India is striving to design only one blade (demand) of the scissor under its control in a perfect manner to enable it to deal with a broken and often self-indulgent other blade (supply) of the scissor like oil producing and exporting countries (OPEC). The ultimate result can be easily presumed that perfect blade will be blunted in the process of dealing with the broken blade and finally the system will collapse and people of India will only be true losers.    

Of course, as I pointed out at the outset, there would be certain fringe benefits in the short term in connection with this deregulation. As reported widely in news papers, given the opportune timing of the introduction of this policy at a time when international oil price was falling, this move has immediately resulted in the decline in the price petrol. However, we have to wait and watch to bear the true brunt of this policy.  It is here, the second important factor namely geopolitics in the Middle East comes to picture. Nobody believes that dust in the Middle East air will settle soon especially in the face of an ongoing violence and if Middle East politics is on fire, so will be the economics of crude oil. Thus, the deregulation policy of union government will be put into test in the days to come and if ongoing volatility in the Middle East explodes further, government will have to review its current policy decisions at some point of time in future. After having said all these methodological and philosophical lacunae, I acknowledge that nobody can justify wastage of public resources disbursed in the form of subsidy to undeserving segment of the society. Therefore, looking in that way, this policy is a welcome step provided that government ensures that subsidy reaches the needy as market would not take care of the issue of equity. Also government must pay attention to reduce India’s reliance on imported energy products for which plenty of available domestic sources with an emphasis on renewable energy sources must be tapped.  

Modi’s 3 Ds

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his chat during his recent visit to USA had referred to three Ds: Democracy, Demographic Dividend and Demand as India’s mascot in the future. A careful scanning of this abbreviation seems to suggest that it is a carefully crafted long term vision taking a realistic picture of present India’s opportunities and challenges into consideration and thereby it makes immense sense from the point of view of overall development of the country. These three Ds signifies three different formidable issues in the contemporary India which are symbiotic in nature and each bolstering the other as described below.

First D of democracy signifies the relevance of true democracy with people in the driver’s seat and thereby providing country a long-term roadmap to solve its basic issues. Basically, the biggest challenge India faces today is the absence of charismatic leadership with a long term mission and vision to take the country forward through troubled waters. It is as clear as day light that even simple homogenous system cannot be expected to reach its logical conclusion without proper planning, let alone India’s wholly complex system. It is here we have to subject the way Indian democracy and politics is moving ahead to a careful scrutiny. Indian democracy even after sixty years of independence is still highly fluid in the sense that i) drivers of Indian politics are yet to come to terms with the necessity of designing a long-term vision taking India’s potential as well as challenges into consideration, ii) also yet to comprehend the necessity of ensuring continuity in the governance of, at least, fundamental issues. No system can thrive until it operates within a framework designed with emphasis on the ‘long-term planning and continuity of planning’. Unfortunately, given the short temporal dimension of electoral democracy coupled with all socio-economic evils of a third world country, Indian democracy is in a sense constrained to plan only for five years and thereby we failed miserably in the past on focusing ‘planning with continuity’.

Therefore, India requires a democracy giving emphasis to ‘continuous planning’ combined with a political culture of bringing such an emphasis into practice through ‘shared democracy’ rather than ‘personal democracy’ as seen today. In other words, there must have an implicit unanimity across political spectrum on the priorities to be carried forward or achieved irrespective of who is in power or out of power. That is, planning, execution and governance must be independent of electoral politics so that continuity can be assured. If so, successive governments can ensure that concerned stakeholders involved in the promotion of the cause of the country like private investors are not betrayed with change in guard which is essential in the efficient utilization of resources. Instead, in an individual(s) centric political environment, country will miss above  factors in the pursuit of development as those individuals who wield power today need not be in power tomorrow and so their policies as well. For, given differing perspectives of different individuals, policy decisions will be varying according to preference of individuals in power and thereby lacking a clear direction in the governance. Therefore, true democracy lies in decentralization of power at different levels and governing the country by taking all on board.

True democracy with long term planning is imperative to make use of the second D- demographic dividend- to the maximum possible extent by providing quality education and thereby enhancing skill and employability of the youth. Nowadays we can see everybody boasting of a young India as more than 60 percent of Indians is below the age of 25 years. Of course, it is a matter to be celebrated in this knowledge era. However, the real issue is how we are going to deal with this sort of historic human treasure or do we have required arms and ammunitions in our armory to make use of this historical opportunity. For, if we did not strike at the opportune time now, we will miss it and let us not forget the long term implications of missing this kind of historic opportunity. It is not simply a matter of missing the opportunity before us. Rather, it is more about how we will deal with this young population in the future when they grow old without getting adequate life saving training. That is, a young India not truly trained and educated will be a socio-economic burden to the society in the future. Therefore, today’s young India should be directed to surge ahead along a path which is so identified to equip them to meet elevated expectations that country has bestowed upon them in the process of making India strong.   This can only be achieved if we ensure that our educational system is reformed and refined to provide quality education to the young India.

In this knowledge era the full potential of young India can only be achieved if we train them through education. Nobody would contest the view that present educational system as a whole is devoid of a proper direction other than simply reducing them to certificate and degree producing centers. This has to be transformed into a system where students are trained through education in the respective fields of their choice and thereby make them skilled employable folks. Several initiatives must be undertaken to refine current educational system in India. First and foremost, we must shun our belittling attitude to basic school education in the form of, for instance, meager compensation to school teachers especially at the primary or secondary level, less financial support to build infrastructure etc. It is worth reminding us here that developed countries like Japan or South Korea gives utmost importance through all means to the school education. How can we develop strong higher education on a feeble basement laid at the school level? Therefore, we must give due consideration to develop a quality school education system by way of attracting best talented experts with highest qualification  to equip our kids and thereby help them to lay down a strong foundation in the basic education. Once so trained children moves up in the ladder of education, their performance will be highly efficient, concrete and result-oriented. Thus, fine-tuning of basic school education will automatically pave way to the greater refinement of higher education provided that other required physical facilities are also guaranteed. This kind of a holistic change in the education system today depend upon the determination of Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) to lead the country in this revolutionary movement.   

Having said all these, we should not misconceive that demographic dividend can be reaped simply with education and training. Instead, policy makers must ensure that so trained and educated young is not left in the lurch without employment opportunities. It is here the third D enters the scene signifying not only the demand for goods and services but also demand for trained young talents. Hence to accomplish third D, government should spur the quantum of investment in areas such as basic physical infrastructure, modernization and expansion of primary, secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy. This kind of a focused systemic approach to increase investment will, on the one hand, expand production and distribution of goods and services in the economy and on the other hand, guarantee direct and indirect job opportunities for its citizens including trained educated young Indians. Going by British Economist John Maynard Keynes’ economic rationale, Increase in employment opportunities and subsequent increase in the purchasing power of the people will help spur the aggregate demand and push economy forward. And expansion of production of goods and services will help arrest sky-rocketing of prices as the impact of rising demand for goods and services on price level can be nullified with corresponding increase in the supply of such goods and services enabling government to check shooting up price level in the economy and therefore, the real value of the income earned will be higher which will indirectly help to boost demand.  Here Modi brand of ‘make in India’ and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) initiatives will be of immense use to increase job opportunities and thereby tackle the menace of unemployment in general and among educated in particular, provided that such initiatives did not remain to be paper-tigers. Thus, it is obvious to figure out an explicit link between second D (Demographic Dividend) and third D (Demand) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. That is, to make use of full potential of today’s young India and thereby avoid a heavy burden of  old India in the future, they should be trained and educated to help them to improve their skills, talents and employability in this knowledge era so that they can contribute their bit in the process of nation building on the one hand and on the other hand, government must also prepare the ground creating new large number of job opportunities so that unemployed people can be absorbed swiftly in the economy. The reinforcement between quality education and subsequent increase in the purchasing power of people will undoubtedly increase quantum of demand for goods and services including the demand for educated folks.

To sum up, Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s brainchild of 3Ds is certainly coined at the right time now keeping in view both opportunities and challenges faced by modern India. Undoubtedly, since there exists a symbiotic relationship between these three Ds as outlined above,  if necessary policy prescriptions are put into practice as outlined above in a coordinated manner along with political determination and tenacity, a great deal of India’s burning issues can be effectively tackled and therefore, I do personally believe that union government must roll out a comprehensive agenda soon to deliver on these three pillars of present India and swiftly plunge into business on a war footing.    

Monopolistic Competition in the market for Political Religion

In the standard economics, monopolistic completion is one of the prominent structures of the market in which product sold is differentiated in the sense that the product brought into market by a particular producer is differentiated from the product of others in the same market by of changing, say, its appearance without any substantive change in the quality or ingredients of the product. Firms, therefore, incur enormous amount in the form of advertising expenditure to promote their product and thereby enlarge their customer base. Examples are soaps, soft drinks, tooth paste etc.

A close look at the enterprise of political religions in vogue today reveals that an analogy can be drawn between this enterprise and monopolistic competition. At the very outset let me make it clear that by the term political religion I mean those folks or groups who are out there in the street to mobilize innocent common man  under the banner of religions often misconstrued in a manner to serve their either political or economic or personal agenda. In other words, the term political religion has nothing to do with those people who have inculcated the true spiritual and moral spirit of religions as a means of enlightenment, salvation, brotherhood, self-purification and thereby cracking the mystery behind the universe etc whom we will not see in the streets and on the dais.  

Before justifying the analogy I have drawn here, it is interesting to reflect that ‘political religion’ is a normal good. Economists define normal good as a good for which the demand increases with increase in the income or purchasing power of the people. Thus, political religion or the products they try to sell in the religious market can be said to be a normal good implying that with the increase in the standard of living or general material prosperity of the people today, the demand for their product has been witnessing increased demand. For instance, the number and frequency of religious sermons or electronic and digital varieties of religious programmes has witnessed an unprecedented increase in the recent years. Nobody will contest the view that the number and frequency of religious maneuvering like gathering staged mostly on the streets and bazaar or products like CDs in the past was not as much and frequent as it is today. That is, with increase in the well-being today, people can financially afford to enjoy such religious products or services in complete contrast to the past when people were even struggling to find food, let alone CDs. Also it is much more interesting to observe the fact that how modern economic and commercial principles and strategies have deeply influenced the forces behind this political religiosity. For example, the external cover of products like CDs marketed by such forces reads like this: ‘coming soon to the market’ signaling to their customer base that a new product is in the offing and hence be prepared to purchase it. This sort of marketing strategies are extensively found in our day-to-day life in the form of display of canvass or flex board which reads ‘opening shortly’ in front of commercial shops looking forward to commence their operation soon.

Now coming to the task of justifying my analogy, let us first consider the concept of product differentiation which is the hall mark of monopolistic competition and illustrate it with the previous example of electronic product like CDs. A close observation of such products reveals that they are all concerning various topics under the broad umbrella of a particular religion sold by either one individual or a group of individuals like firms in a monopolistic competition. Thus, the act of producing such products concerning various topics under a particular religion is the example of the product differentiation in the market for political religiosity. Along with this, we must take the fact into consideration that each  religion   is highly divided between various inter and intra groups and sects indicating that there exists tremendous competition among themselves to both maintain their prevailing customer base and expanding their customer base to others, if possible. Essentially it is this high competition prevailing among various individuals and groups and the resultant fear of being ousted from the scene or market or leadership in the face of existing or fresh competition, inspire them to keep on producing new products and services like CDs concerning various topics (product differentiation) and selling it in the market with enough advertisement either through local news papers, visual media, announcement at religious centers, organizing formal display of such products at related gathering etc. To strengthen my argument I would like to draw the attention to the fact that the same market would certainly have dealt with such products concerning the same topic by someone in the past. If these champions of political religiosity are sincerely interested in the propagation of the religion as called upon by their supreme leaders, they, instead of bringing their own version and product from time to time , must have alerted the common man of the existence of such products and services already in the same market and avail its service. Instead they find it as an opportunity for a fresh niche market to sell their differentiated version of the same debate.  Apart from this, the product differentiation also sometimes takes the form of pinching the old dogmas with latest wisdom and knowledge. For instance we can see a tendency on the part of these political religions to relate their ideas with the scientific revelations of the modern scientists in an effort to increase the scientific acceptability and validity of their dogmas.

Thus, let me conclude that political religion today is a monopolistic competitive market in which political theologians (firms) sells ‘differentiated normal goods’ namely political religiosity in the form of CDs, Sermons etc.

(I have written these personal views in an academic spirit and  in no way I have meant to hurt the religious sentiments of anybody)

Economics has to be redefined

Let us start with the general definition of modern economics. It is defined as a study of how efficiently scarce resources can be utilized in the process of production, consumption and distribution and market is projected as the effective mechanism to achieve this goal of efficiency. Here two concepts - scarcity and efficiency- are at the root of study of the economics and thereby market. Scarcity implies that supply of resources is limited in terms of their wants or use. Therefore, resources are to be used efficiently implying that as much as possible should be produced with available limited resources. Thus it is clear that the emphasis of the modern economics is on the quantity as more and more quantities are produced with limited resources at your disposal, efficiency is said to have achieved and such an outcome is said to be optimum or welfare maximizing.

However, in the backdrop of two developments the prevailing approach and thereby the prevailing general definition of economics is under threat. One such development is the admission of the proponents of the same economics that market is bound to fail in its pursuit of efficient allocation of resources.  A major source of market failure is information asymmetry and consequent issues like adverse selection and moral hazard extensively found in the market like credit markets. If we dig further into these issues, we can realize that the ultimate problem is trust-deficit wherein, say, lender cannot trust the borrower in the absence of perfect information about the credit worthiness, background and commitment to use borrowed money of the borrower. Hence such market is said to be imperfect and therefore bound to suffer from market failure as mistrust will deter the lender having enough fund to be lent from lending even to most deserving (productive) borrower causing inefficiency in the allocation of resources. And if we look at the business of economics through such a perspective today, we can see that ‘trust’ is at the centre of it. For instance, if trust or mistrust is not involved, what is the relevance of laws such a ‘labor laws’ passed in the modern welfare societies specifying rights of the employee from employer or land acquisition bill recently passed by Indian government which stipulates the dos and don’ts in the context of the acquisition of private land by the government. This kind of laws is passed under the presumption that interests of the stakeholders will be hurt which is literally violation of the trust or contract entered into either implicitly or explicitly between concerned parties. However, such laws did not exist in the past during the era of feudalism or slavery as the power relation was unidirectional and therefore, the plight of the serfs were taken for granted and coerced to suffer and in such an environment it does not make sense to indulge in an academic debate over the relevance of trust or irrelevance of mistrust. Like this almost all matters in the realm of economics can be associated with trust or social or individual bond as economics is ultimately dealing with the behavior of social animal - human being. Thus, what concerns economics mostly today is not simply scarcity of resource; rather it is concerned about scarcity of trust between economic agents.  Therefore, out of two important concepts in the very definition of modern economics that received major attention, scarcity of resources, is under threat. Critics of this view may raise here the question of perennial poverty and misery found in the various parts of the world today. In my view, it is not the scarcity responsible for this as world is rich enough to cater to the decent need of the human being. This kind of problems exist simply because we concentrate our attention rather excessively and strategically only on the efficiency at the production disregarding efficiency at the distribution of so produced pie as a result of which a major section is still deprived of even basic amentias of life.

Second thing is impact of modern economics on the ecology of human being. Unbridled pursuit of modern economics to find optimality conditions has taken its toll on the very health of ecology in various forms like carbon emission, consequent climate change and environmental degradation like pollution, global warming etc. Now at least from some quarters we here exhortations like- reduce industrial production like automobile- is just contrary to what we were told just decades before as to produce as much as possible so that you will be an efficient producer.  It is worth mentioning here Chian’s recent decision to ban purchasing of car simply to address the problem of environmental pollution caused by the automobiles. Similarly the rhetoric heard from developing countries in connection with the debate over the issue of carbon emission and subsequent climate change is also similar to this no-more-production advocacy. Developing countries have accused developed countries of being responsible for bulk of the carbon emission and therefore, they should reduce it rather that victimizing developing countries for their mistake. This otherwise means that let developed countries shut their polluting industries or find better eco-friendly technological alternative which is undoubtedly time consuming. In short, there is unanimity of opinion today among global community that minmum production is the efficient outcome.

Above mentioned two developments in the field of economics amply makes it clear that economics should be redefined as a study of how to produce necessary goods and services within the limits of trust–deficit.  This definition of economics replaces the old concepts, ‘efficiency’ and ‘scarcity of resources’, with ‘necessity’ and ‘scarcity of trust. To realize the underlying importance of this definition of modern economics, we have to foray into what went wrong with economics in the past that led to a situation warranting even the re-definition of the very subject.  For this we have to introduce here another familiar concept called ‘equity’. While the proponents of efficiency advocated that the pie should be enlarged as much as possible, champions of equity advocated that such a large pie should be sliced between stakeholders equally without allowing it to get concentrated in a few hands. Thus, the proponents of equity advocated for a fair-deal to the larger section of the society with a normative perspective over the positive perspective of the proponents of efficiency.

However, it is here economics went wrong. In the pursuit of ensuring that all get fair slice of pie, including scientific innovation discovering new technologies under the patronage of the political class (the survival of which always depends upon the appeasement of the people irrespective of the fact that such an appeasement is bane or boon) to expand the pie (industrial production) so that all can be catered and thereby fair-deal can be ensured. However, what was missing fatally in this process was ensuring a fair-deal to the ecology. In other words, the zeal to ensure fair deal to concerned socio-economic stake holders cast a shadow over the necessity of ensuring a fair-deal to Mother Earth. As the limits of the tolerance on the part of ecology crossed, it began to respond with fury pushing even the very existence of the humanity into danger zone. Let us recollect the fact that thousands of billions of years old ecology of human being is under threat simply because of the pursuit of the so called development models over just two hindered years of industrial revolution.  Thus, today we are forced to cut carbon emission and other pollution to save ecology and thereby human being. Thus, the failure of the development models otherwise remind us how inefficient has been our efficiency in the past.  At the same time, the new definition of economics reminds us to live a contented life with necessities inculcating the spirit of brotherhood, humanity, harmony and social bonds.