'The future depends on what you do in the present'

 – Mahatma Gandhi

There was a saying a couple of decades ago, “Everyone wants to follow [Mahatma] Gandhi, but no one wants to be [Mahatma] Gandhi”.  Although the saying may not be relevant today, given so many people, including Entrepreneurs, business leaders, and politicians are working towards creating a Personal Brand, a different interpretation of the saying can still help the society.  If the ‘saying’ was scalable, it may drive a complete nation (such as India) to become a ‘leader’, rather than following those which are decades ahead.

Several people in India plan to travel and long to settle in developed countries, which not so long ago, were at a similar economic development level as India.  It is not entirely a bad thing for our country, but an opportunity to understand our shortcomings and make an improvement plan for the nation.

During our recent vacation in Singapore my wife lost her phone in public places with hundreds of people around, twice in a single day; both times we got it back within 30 minutes! Very small sample size to conclude anything, but the probability of that [safe return of phone] happening in India would not be significant. There are several other societies which are developed on the principles of honesty and/or orderliness, with minimum variance in processes, and chaos being confined to a manageable level.  So, what resources these societies harnessed to achieve this development, and do we have these resources in India to follow the same path?

One may argue that some nations have/had resources which India may/does not have: Oil, sea-ports, gold, minerals, and now rare earth magnets! However, I am biased towards one particular resource which could play a significant role in a nation’s development: people’s emotions. Every society has this resource, but needs to harness it suitably: either in favor of few people or in favor of the nation.  So what are ‘Emotions’? As per Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a Swiss-American psychiatrist human emotions consist of either ‘Love’ or ‘Fear’.  People do what they do for either of these two emotions. Even Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs can be related to these emotions as:

• Base two layers ‘Physiological’ and ‘Safety’ Needs guided by the emotion of Fear [of extinction]
• Top three layers of ‘Love / Belonging’, ‘Esteem’ and ‘Self Actualization’ guided by Love [for friends/family/society, society’s perception of someone, own perception of oneself and finally for the spiritual self]

As per Maslov, unless the base two layers (guided by Fear) are not satisfied, one has the least motivation to work towards the top three layers.

Several mythological (or real) epics such as Mahabharata and Ramayana discuss social structures that were well developed, stable and satisfied basic needs of most participants. In such societies perhaps people would have followed their hearts and try to achieve what they ‘Love’ – leading to the efficient growth of society. Not debating if these epics were real or myths, but such social structures were rare to be observed for the documented part of the last millennia. Most societies lived in the fear of frequent wars, posing a challenge to our existence. Out of the need for existence (or fear of extinction), several leaders worked towards social developments to satisfy basic needs and retain the strength to survive. Some might also be guided by the Love towards Humanity and desire for a Better Life.

Back to the present, most of the developed nations, be it communist, monarchies or city-sized democracy have harnessed the emotion of Fear among citizens to some level and leveraged it to bring law & order in their society. This law & order is based on unambiguous rules, surveillance, detailed record-keeping, strict punishments and sometimes even controlled cash-flows. Once the basic needs and safety of the subjects is established, the government provides for facilities which the citizens ‘Love’; and the people in the developing nations such as India, long for. People born and brought up within these societies may not perceive how the governments have harnessed the power of Fear to retain social order, since such policies are typically introduced slowly leading to a quasi-static change. However, for an outsider coming from a developing nation, these changes are sudden or rather lead to a [cultural] shock. The question is how this can be implemented in India?

Creating Fear to Establish Law & Order in India

The above-discussed concepts are indeed well known to most leaders and have been applied in every society from time to time; India is no different. It’s just that when such changes are proposed by the government, several other social groups/leaders portray these changes as unnecessary, harsh, illogical, and even non-constitutional. Their actions are simply driven by the ‘Fear’ of losing their power over the public. Let us analyze a few of the recent actions by the government, which might be guided by the need to create orderliness in the system.

Demonetization:

The demonetization was carried out, with the ‘hope’ (or at least the government wanted us to believe) that the black money would be ‘caught’. The intentions and consequences always remained debatable. Not commenting on the efficiency of the process or the success of this project, two things which were achieved through this were: 

1. Fear that the government is capable of such drastic measures
2. Wide acceptance of UPI and electronic payments

At this point, it is worth reiterating “The future depends on what you do in the present”. This can also be interpreted as “What you do in the present, affects how the future will be shaped”. Hence, your Present actions can not change the Past, but can only help shape the Future. Was catching black-money ever an intention of demonetization? Or was it done to create the Fear, leading to the easy implementation of technological advancement? This not only will help the public in the future but will also enable the government to track cash flow in society.

Will people stop generating/using black money? Of course not. But large population shifting to electronic/traceable/legitimate transaction methods, the efforts will be much less for the government to track anomalies in cash-flow and hence, a higher probability of catching illegitimate transactions.

CAA / NRC:

This being a very sensitive topic, rather than getting into the details or discussing the moral implications, let's analyze it only at the surface. Government’s [said] intention of catching the illegal immigrants or people’s perception that a particular class of the society will suffer, may not be the actual intention or outcome of this move.

It is not a secret that every society faces infiltration from neighboring societies with relatively fewer opportunities. If ‘Fear’ is a form of energy driving people’s behavior, people will flee from a society with high ‘Fear’ to one with low ‘Fear’ – as per the second law of thermodynamics. Please note, the legal migration of wealthy & worthy not necessarily follow this analogy; the wealthy & worthy would have crossed the two base layers of Maslov’s pyramid and are in pursuit of happiness.  To curb the illegal infiltration, some countries want to build walls, while ours wants to create a system. With this system, will the government catch all or even most illegal immigrants currently in the system? Perhaps not. If influential people could figure out ways to legitimize each & every currency bill during demonetization, the [illegal] immigrants are perhaps worth much more effort.

However, this should create Fear in the society, that once again the government is capable of drastic measures. When the current population complies with the new system, creating a traceable database for the government, and it will be much easier in the future to track and contain illegal infiltration. Once again, the efforts here are not intended to change what has happened in the past, but to help shape a better future.

Yet, similar to demonetization, this step of government has seen a lot of opposition and criticism, by those who ‘Fear’ to lose their power.

FASTag

It is very surprising that government’s moves such as demonetization and CAA have been widely and openly opposed, but no one has come out on the roads to oppose FASTag – on the contrary, they have complied with FASTag to come out on the road! If this doesn’t sound serious, read here how FASTag helped to catch a stolen vehicle. In developed countries typically all vehicles have some sort of RF identifier, which is useful for toll collection, pulling service records, vehicle identification in case of emergency, etc.; the WIIFM for the end-user. However, in places like Singapore, where the whole city is full of such RF receivers, the government could (IF they already don’t) use it to track any given vehicle, and hence the user. India is currently implementing FASTag for toll collection on the highways, but soon it will be implemented in the cities to track traffic violations.

So, when FASTag will be used to track non-stolen cars, and the cab booking apps will be required to share user data with the government for security purposes (such as a cab booking platform used to track user location even AFTER the cab ride), most of us could be tracked. People thought that demonetization and CAA are bad, because the government was trying to catch your past sins and where you came from, but with FASTag the government will catch where you are going! Imagine yourself at the immigration counter of Suvarnabhumi Airport, which of the following questions will make you most uncomfortable:

1. Where are you coming from?
2. How much Baht are you carrying?
3. What places are you going to visit?

Information on where you came from, hence knowing your sanctuary, what are you spending on, and where are you traveling, the power of this data is only limited by your imagination! All developed countries, even those who promote immigration, ensure you live in the country to generate sufficient digital trail, and analyze it before saying ‘we accept her one of us’.

What are our options?

Firstly, one should realize that the government is seeking only a fraction of data that you have already shared with FAAMG. With all its efforts, the government can not know as many details about individuals as these tech companies already know. How the data will be used (end result) may justify the means.

Singapore police proudly say that they can track Anyone in Singapore – it’s a routine task. And when Indian police track a fleeing criminal, we make an episode of Crime Patrol. No offense to Indian police or other armed forces. I have very high regard for them, that they carry out such tough tasks with minimal information, risking their own lives, while their counterparts in developed countries have all the data at their disposal.

Travel and immigration on Indian passport require so much scrutiny because India does not have strict laws to check illegal infiltration in the country. If our own systems were air-tight, our citizenship would be valued more internationally.

Money laundering and cash transaction have led to tax evasion. While 2% of the total population pays tax, many others reap the benefits of the system. If people are afraid of hoarding money and are open to paying taxes for keeping their money in the banks, it not only reduces the burden on the taxpayers but also provides more money in the system for circulation. On being accused of involvement in demonetization policy by an [not-so] Aam-Aadmi, Mr. Vijay Shekhar Sharma aptly replied, “Dear Sir, the biggest beneficiary is our country.”

The choices we have are: slow march on the roads or use the FAST-lane to zoom through the barriers. We will be paying the price for the development of the nation in terms of our data, but aren’t we paying it anyway in one way or another for the past 70 years?