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Ashwin Mahesh

25 Apr, 8 tweets, 2 min read

Yes, India is the fastest to vaccinate (partially) 14 crore people, but at the current pace, India will also be last among the major economies to finish vaccinating its people The 14 crore is simply the result of a large population. Everything we do will have such scale.

It's a little odd to see, day after day, the fixation with insisting - despite all the contrary evidence - that the govt is winning the war against covid. Selective data, carefully worded claims are somehow expected to make us forget images of gasping patients and funeral pyres.

After a while, it starts to look silly. If you perform slowly, that's success. If you perform late, that's also success. If you perform partially, that too is success. By this logic, the only thing that is not success is performing swiftly, on time and fully !!

Why is it this way? I don't think it's just to make some leader(s) look good. I also don't think it's others' way of demonstrating their loyalty by overdoing the praise. I think there's something else going on - revealing a deep need to feel that we are great again, as a people.

If an Indian-origin kid wins a spelling bee competition, we think that's 'our' success. If a scientist leaves India in disappointment and finds success abroad, that's our success. There's a vicariousness to these things, the sense that we must somehow attach ourselves to success.

It's not just one party's thing or another's. It is more than that. It has built up over decades, maybe even centuries of being less than what we could have been, and maybe even a hark-back to a hazy and uncertain memory of what we once were.

Maybe some of us are more overboard than others in pursuing this, but I think a lot more people are in this trap than we recognise. It's important to think about this, I think, and also about how to get past it.

There are real successes in the country, and we need to figure out how to celebrate those more. The media could be part of the answer, but is ad-driven and therefore skewed towards whoever buys ads. A fuller picture of what we are achieving has to emerge from society itself.

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More from @ashwinmahesh

Ashwin Mahesh

@ashwinmahesh

24 Apr

Apparently they have atmanirbhar in other countries too. Which is how we got into various pandemics - climate, housing, employment, financial markets, etc. Looking out for oneself is a double-edged sword. Much better to acknowledge a larger good beyond ourselves.

India's historical mistake has been to equate 'self-reliance' with local production rather than widespread availability of goods and services. By insisting that India must produce many things itself, all we achieved is that many of those things are not accessible to most Indians.

Meanwhile we have self-reliance in things like voltage stabilisers and home water filters, things that many countries don't need at all because they're past those kinds of problems. Our low capacity on some fronts has led to poor outcomes on many fronts.

Read 5 tweets

Ashwin Mahesh

@ashwinmahesh

23 Apr

Harish Salve seeks permission to recuse himself as amicus curiae in the SC case on the government's covid response. TN government opposes reopening of Vedanta plant, citing environmental reasons as well as law and order risks, and also says TN has enough oxygen.

Solicitor General says criticism of Salve's appointment in electronic and social media shows that judiciary will have to step in some day to curb these. What irony.

Judges are now admonishing senior lawyers who criticised them, and those lawyers say that objective criticism strengthens the judiciary. Open slug-fest in the court.

Read 4 tweets

Ashwin Mahesh

@ashwinmahesh

22 Apr

Supreme Court Bar Association opposes transfer of covid related cases in High Courts to the Supreme Court. Most lawyers point out that HCs are in a better position to know local conditions, and also wonder how someone in London could be the amicus curae on such a vital matter.

Many petitioners in the HCs cannot approach the SC at all in a timely manner. And since 'time' is of extreme importance in this matter, the SC should let the High Courts deal with this.

On the one hand, we are seeing benches of the High Court being set up in the states to take justice closer to the people. OTOH we see the SC trying to transfer to itself the most important 'local' cases to come before the High Courts in a long time. Contradiction.

Read 6 tweets

Ashwin Mahesh

@ashwinmahesh

19 Apr

We're paying a heavy price to covid because we don't have meaningful district govts. In large countries, between state and local govts, it is common to have a county / district layer too. We go from an over-bearing and low-capacity state to small town councils and panchayats.

States are stretched to respond to all problems, everywhere. Local councils and panchayats cannot see beyond the end of their few streets. The taluk and districe-scale view of things, and the necessary response, is simply left blank.

The administration of state and central schemes in districts is left in the hands of (mostly) young IAS officers, who must somehow command the respect of long-serving and therefore experienced state cadre who can never aspire to the top jobs themselves.

Read 10 tweets

Ashwin Mahesh

@ashwinmahesh

17 Apr

The asymmetric power of sarkar over society and markets is the weakest link in our fight against Covid. Governments are used to not treating citizens and businesses as peers, but solving large, complex problems requires such a relationship.

Since governments prefer a 'we know everything' stance, they are the most who have to answer for the current situation. Broadly, we have to conclude that whatever is happening is mainly the result of the government's handling of the pandemic.

That's usually acceptable to governments because they don't need to worry about catastrophic outcomes, and they can get by with slow and minor interventions. In the face of a pandemic, however, slow and steady can only get us buried before the race is over.

Read 4 tweets

Ashwin Mahesh

@ashwinmahesh

11 Mar

@AamAadmiParty

The 'per capita income' goal in @AamAadmiParty Delhi budget is a good public target. The simple promise is - the people of Delhi will become much richer, measurably, each year that AAP is in power. Each year, the annual outcomes budget can report on progress to this goal.

AAP has created a positive feedback logic for Delhi Budgets. Public goods and services are provided properly, which means the people don't have to spend their own money for these. They use it instead to spend on other things, which drives local economy and tax revenues.

The 30,000 crores Budget when AAP took over is now at nearly 70,000 crores. And even in a pandemic, the revenue estimates are comfortable enough to allow continuing high investment in health, education, and other public goods.

Read 5 tweets

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