Suman Joshi
Sep 6, 2018 · 4 min read

Factfulness around us !

Hans Rosling’s Factfulness was a delightful read for me.The book outlines various instincts or biases we fall prey to, while framing our world view. The “Blame Instinct” I thought was immediately applicable to the policy space. Using the Syrian crisis as an example where the heart rending image of an infant washed ashore caused outrage everywhere, Rosling draws our attention to the blame instinct we fall prey to. When the defining pic of the Syrian crisis was splashed across the media, the world at large was quick to make villains out of the airline officials who didn’t allow people to board and the boat operators who charged exorbitant sums, without once caring to read through the immigration laws of the EU. Summarising the chapter Rosling says -“look for causes, not villains; look for systems, not heroes”

A significant part of public policy is also aimed at behaviour modification in people to achieve the desired objective. Looking around, in everyday life, applying factfulness with principles of public policy as has been a revelation. I have listed below situations in everyday life where factfulness comes to the fore.

The traffic situation outside the apartment block I live, is a nightmare. Every possible traffic rule is violated. We have people driving on wrong side of the road, two wheelers jumping over the medians, and the regular switching lanes and the works. Of course, the immediate instinct is to make villains out of the rule breakers. Notwithstanding the persistent rule breakers, I began to think about why was there such rampant breaking of rules. The authorities due to some earlier prevailing situation, had cordoned off some roads and making them one-way streets a few years ago. While it fulfilled the need at a particular point in time, with the ever increasing volume of traffic this blocking of a turning ,seemed to have outlived its utility adding as much as 15 minutes of driving/riding time for less than a 100 metre distance. Needless to say, the incentive to break the rule was more appealing to two wheelers. The immediate solution was to station policemen to catch offenders there. Now, if only we looked for causes the rule breaking was happening and not search for villains, we would’ve arrived at a solution that would be a win-win for all. Reversing the one way rules, pelican lights, regular maintenance of roads and of course the police only acting as a deterrent are being evaluated as solutions and hopefully this will change soon.

Another area that comes to mind immediately are tax laws- if tax laws were simpler and proportionate, we probably would have had better tax compliance. Sure, there are always some people who look to break the law. But if we looked for causes why people evade taxes or not file returns, we’d probably end up with simple solutions like improving ease of filing returns, simpler tax structures which do not need services of expensive tax consultants, besides of course increased income, we would have increased tax realisation. Would reducing information asymmetry between the government and citizens on tax utilisation increase tax compliance? I would think yes.

What about the recent fracas on so called Maoism/terrorism/separatism threats? As Nitin Pai outlines in the piece titled -“how do we address the Maoist challenge “, it probably is more a governance deficit that causes these movements and it is important to look at all reasons for these movements to arrive at an optimal solution.

Of course, I could be over-simplifying in all the above cases, but the larger point is- looking at problems from a factfulness perspective will help us with robust problem definition and therefore increase chances to design and implement the best solution.

The other side of the coin is the tendency to look for heroes rather than to credit systems and institutions.

The demonetisation story presents a wonderful example for this second part.One of the claims of the pro-demonetisation group has been the increase in the adoption of digital transactions. However, on analysing data, it has been seen that this was anyways on the rise, due to the efforts put in by the system viz, the RBI and its eco system and would’ve continued to rise and there was no need for a disruptive event like demonetisation. The system would’ve taken care of increased digitisation and hence the claim of heroism of proponents of demonisation falls on its face on this aspect too.

In summary, if we looked for the cause and worked towards resolution, there would be fewer villains to the story. If we credited our systems and worked towards strengthening our institutions, there would be no need to create heroes out of nowhere. Pretty common-sensical isn’t it ? That’s what the book does- steers you towards developing a factful outlook. Do read !

Here’s to a more factful policy discourse !