In a previous newsletter on marketing fallacies, I argued how we’re prone to the Apex Fallacy the most. It’s widespread because some companies do indeed beat the conventional wisdom and win big. We see it unfolding right in front of us. And, we risk being seen as too soft when we appear skeptical about its applicability to our business.
This applies even more to Public Policy. It’s always useful to benefit from international experiences regarding a problem. But transporting the solution from elsewhere, without considering the local context, is fraught with challenges.
India is particularly more vulnerable to isomorphic mimicry, a tendency to mimic the policies in the more mature western economies. All without possessing the underlying systems and state capacity that help these nations efficiently execute the policy and derive positive outcomes.
This is the central argument of “Premature Imitation and India’s Flailing State” (henceforth “paper”) by Shruti Rajagopalan and Alex Tabarrok.
Ambitious policies vs. State capacity
Given the massive number of people employed in the government sector, it is believed that the Indian state is gigantic. However, when judged on the basis of personnel per capita, the Indian state is surprisingly weak.
A google search reveals that India’s police per capita is 153 police officers per 100,000 citizens as compared to the USA’s 350 police officers. India’s capacity is considerably lower than the United Nations’ recommended standard of 222 police officers per 100,000 citizens.
This capacity difference dramatically changes the policy’s implementation effectiveness and outcomes. As the paper observes: “The lack of state capacity (relative to ambition) doesn’t simply mean the government does everything at a proportionately smaller scale. The lack of capacity creates diseconomies and problems, such as corruption, that reduce capacity even more than resources.”
When confronted with weak state capacity, the government must refuse to spread itself thin and instead prioritize a few important areas. It must conserve its energy to rigorously implement and enforce policies in these focus areas.
However, India is guilty of coming up with several “phantom legislations”, which Antony Allott described as “the passing of laws which do not have, and most probably cannot have the desired effect. The illusion of progress, of doing something, is given, but the reality is far different. Such legislation is an expression, not of power but of the impotence of power”.
What Fuels Elite Imitation
Elite imitation is intimately tied with luxury beliefs. There’s an ideological dimension to these laws; as the paper says: “It’s part of what the Indian elite thinks is good, just, and prestigious in the international community”.
In a previous letter, The Cost of Luxury Beliefs, I talk about how this ideological aspect animates what Rob Henderson calls “Luxury Beliefs”.
“Luxury beliefs are defined as ideas and opinions that confer status on the affluent while often inflicting costs on the lower classes. And a core feature of a luxury belief is that the believer is sheltered from the consequences of his or her belief. There is this kind of element of duplicity, whether conscious or not…”
The paper cites Maternity Leave Bill and The Right to Education Act among the examples of elite imitation.
Maternity leave law
India’s maternity-leave bill (2017) requires firms to provide women with 26 weeks of paid maternity leave. It was boasted that India was offering a leave longer than what most developed countries (like Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and South Korea) mandate.
So what’s wrong with such an international-class initiative?
Just that the law has little applicability to the bulk of India’s womenfolk.
As the paper grimly notes, the law will only apply to less than 1% of all females.
Further, the law burdens firms with unreasonable costs (26 weeks of paid leave). Given the labor surplus in India, how likely is it that Indian firms would still prefer women? A law marketed as women-friendly could at best benefit a minuscule minority or, worse, end up further fueling discrimination against them.
The Right to Education Act (RTE)
Poor parents in India prefer to send their children to private schools for a nominal fee over government schools for free. That’s because the private schools have a proven record of achieving better outcomes at lower costs.
Ideally, the private schools must be applauded for taking up the mantle of public schools. Because, this is, above all, a failure of the government schooling system.
Yet, to the powers that be, an educational institution is only good when it comes with the elitist trappings: well-stocked libraries, playgrounds, separate toilets for boys and girls, and low teacher–student ratios.
Ideally, these are good to have. But we live in a world that requires judicious use of scarce resources. The choice is not between a well-furnished school vs. a poorly-maintained one. It’s between functional, affordable schools vs. elite schools that have been priced out for the poor.
And, the RTE Act, with all its sugarcoated aims, achieved the latter.
Let’s ignore the RTE Act’s stated objectives and instead focus on what it HAS achieved: According to a survey, about 10,000 to 1,00,000 private schools had to be closed since RTE’s adoption.
Musings by Madhav 
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