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Comment by aashaykumar92 | Hacker News Reader

Having been to India quite recently (and being Indian), I talked to a lot of family members there about this issue, among others, as I saw it happen time and again. One of the things that really frustrated me was the pure lack of accountability in general. I said 'among others' earlier because I am also referring to environment issues such as littering and pollution. The people there aren't dumb--they know all of these actions have harmful and negative effects on others' help and the general environment, but they would rather not care than care for the most part. Herein lies the fundamental problem...if you would rather not care, well there's no solution to that. I am originally from Northern India but on my most recent visit, we went to Mumbai. If the ocean wasn't brown and there was less pollution, it would hands-down be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. But no one there seems to look at what could be but rather what it is and accept it.

So rather than spreading knowledge about these issues (which, don't get me wrong, is also good), there has to be an attitude change. You can't blame the government and I never like doing that, but it would be wonderful if the government would get involved in preventing these environmental/health jeopardizing actions. The problem with this, of course, that the country is so populated that it is extremely hard to make this drastic of an imposition and follow through with it.

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>You can't blame the government

Of course you can. And you should. This is all about terrible - and in many cases non-existent- governance. Widespread public problems this this cannot be solved by individual citizens or organizations. They need the power, money and resources of a government.

> the country is so populated that it is extremely hard to make this drastic of an imposition and follow through with it.

Population is oft quoted as the root cause of most problems in India. Perhaps it is. But population certainly doesn't explain why these problems don't get addressed or get the attention they deserve. That again is because the government of India does not effectively govern and manage the country. Elected officials rule over their subjects via institutions and political systems whose goals are more aligned with keeping them in power than the welfare of citizens. They lack a fundamental understanding that their job as an elected official is to govern and address issues of their citizens.

Problems like this can only be resolved with effective governance from which springs awareness, policies, infrastructure, funding and programs. But what happens when the people governing simply don’t care for their people?

The government in a developing country like India is responsible for this, but they can't help it, unless they make it a national focus, followed by their vote bank. In reality, this problem is so widespread that the government needs a truly non-trivial amount of money to fix this, over an extended period of time. No democratic government in India can afford to fix this.

This is the reason why people in the third world hate poverty, and would do anything (like 'jugaar'[1]) to get out of that mess. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad

> Widespread public problems this this cannot be solved by individual citizens or organizations. They need the power, money and resources of a government.

More to the point, they need an entity that is both powerful enough to force change and not bound by the same incentives that the polluting companies are.

It's down to a Nash equilibrium, which is the stable strategy that obtains when everyone makes the best decision possible for them knowing what everyone else has decided. There's no way for anyone to unilaterally change their minds without losing something, which is why the strategy is stable even if it is completely insane.

In this case, the stable strategy is to pollute and not invest anything in cleanup, because the first company to unilaterally invest in cleaning up will lose profits relative to all of its competitors who aren't cleaning anything. That isn't acceptable. Therefore, Mumbai has brown oceans and Beijing has brown air.

The only way out is for some powerful entity that isn't bound by the same Nash equilibrium to step in and force a new equilibrium state by imposing penalties on the polluters. That's something that, realistically, only the government can do.

(What happens when governments get locked in a bad Nash equilibrium? Well, you get the Cold War, where Mutually Assured Destruction prevailed despite nobody really wanting to end the world in nuclear flame.)

Being locked in a Nash equilibrium is an interesting way to look at this. That perspective however is based on the idea that both parties (polluters and the entity responsible for controlling the pollution, say the government) are doing the best they can.

Without having experienced/researched it, it is not easy to appreciate the extent of apathy the governing structure in India exhibits towards its people. From the perspective of someone living in a developed country, its tempting to view this as a reasoned and logically approachable problem between different interest groups. That approach works well when the underlying institutions and the people embodying them are functioning well and functionally logically. When the people responsible for governing are simply not, well governing, then we don't need to go much further in unravelling why there is status quo. The status quo here is not because of a strategic/organic deadlock between two parties but rather because one of the parties is not doing its job.

Why isn't the government doing its job? I think it takes time for large democracies to come to age. I was talking about this to a friend who made the same point and asked me to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age#Politics to get a sense for life in the US during a similar stage of its economic development as India is in today. The section Politics is especially resonant.

In America the democratic governing institutions have had time to mature over 237 years. Even with its flaws, it is the best governance humanity has been able to achieve at scale. It has had its rite of passage, from the early days of Indian removal, slavery, the mexican war, expansion, the civil war and many other wars plus thing like Women's suffrage. Indian government is merely 66 years old. And its not starting afresh in a "new land". Its trying to govern huge masses of people whose separate histories go back a long long time. India needs to go through its rite of passage and I guess one of those alleys is full of shit.

> (What happens when governments get locked in a bad Nash equilibrium? >Well, you get the Cold War

Except M.A.D worked. It's an example of a beneficial Nash equilibrium because the stable state was a military stalemate.

If one side had the bomb and the other didn't you get Hiroshima and Nagasaki all over again, and if neither had the bomb you'd get a conventional WW3.

"Except M.A.D worked."

For a truly insane value of "worked" - running terrible (and largely unnecessary) levels of risk for decades hardly has much to recommend it.

What would be the better alternative?

The risk was far less terrible than, say, a few dozen tactical nukes used by one of the sides in a third war across Europe, as the status quo of warsaw pact borders wasn't that acceptable to both armies, and only MAD ensured that the cold war didn't become hot.

Everyone would have been deterred with a tiny percentage of the weapons that eventually ended up being deployed - no political leader in the West or in the Soviet Union could ever have contemplated a single city being hit by an H-bomb. The Soviets, more than anyone, knew what it was like to lose tens of millions to a war - for all their faults they had no desire to repeat this experience.

MAD was the only possible strategy. However, the insane level of weaponry that was actually in place was, in my view, completely unnecessary. If your opponent is deterred by one level of force then having a hundred times this level does not make you safer.

[NB In case anyone interprets my position as somehow being in support of the Soviets - they were, as far as I am concerned, a criminal regime just as "evil" in their own ways as the other nightmares of the 20th century. However, the level of strategic threat they posed was wildly overstated for political ends.]

> no political leader in the West or in the Soviet Union could ever have contemplated a single city being hit by an H-bomb

They certainly did contemplate that as valid military options - they had even placed nuclear "mines" (underground room-sized nukes) in [less] populated friendly areas, planning to detonate them below enemy divisions if/when they are forced to retreat. So even nuking your own civilians was considered as an acceptable cost in case of a hot war.

Fortunately, having plans in place and actually carrying out these plans are two completely different things.

One UK political leader has had the courage to admit that even if the UK had received a nuclear attack from the Soviets he would not have launched a retaliatory strike. After all, if your deterrent fails - what exactly is the point in using it? [Not something you can admit at the time, of course.]

Would a West German political leader really have agreed to nuclear land mines being used? Most of the weaponry in the Cold War was there for posturing - no political leader ever expected to use them. Even Khrushchev (who was clearly a hard bastard) could only cope with the thought of nuclear weapons by accepting the fact that they would never actually be used - it was all a bluff.

It worked because it was short enough not to work.

> Except M.A.D worked. It's an example of a beneficial Nash equilibrium because the stable state was a military stalemate.

True if you ignore the externalities of a huge military build-up. A better solution would be both sides agreeing to not have nuclear weapons and not start a conventional WW3.

What can be more powerful than the collective power of masses? Neither can the government be blamed entirely nor can people just wash their hands off saying we are not powerful enough.In a city like Mumbai there is a wide diversity of income classes. There are people who see open defecation everyday on their way to work but they do nothing about it. The least they can do is go talk to the people in the slums about how open defecation is bad and how they should avoid it. It is better to take some steps and do something about problems than to wait for government or any other "powerful" body to come help you out. It is not just the slums that are suffering, diseases can be easily caught by anyone else who does use proper toilets and sanitation.

> go talk to the people in the slums about how open defecation is bad

The people in the slums probably know that it is bad, but the facilities available to them are so shit-house (literally and figuratively) that they choose to defecate onto the ground.

True only if the masses care. And (worldwide) they don't (otherwise there would be ~99% participation in voting, and so on)

> What can be more powerful than the collective power of masses?

An entity that isn't tempted to defect from a boycott:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Milgrom

> Milgrom, together with Barry Weingast and Avner Greif, applied a repeated game model to explain the role of merchant guilds in the medieval period (Greif, Milgrom and Weingast, 1994). The paper beings with the observation that long-distance trade in the somewhat chaotic environment of the Middle Ages exposed traveling merchants to the risk of attack, confiscation of goods and unenforced agreements. Merchants thus required the assistance of local rulers for protection of person, property and contract. But what reason did rulers have to provide this assistance? A key insight from the paper is that neither bilateral nor multilateral reputation mechanisms can support the incentives of a ruler to protect foreign merchants as trade reaches an efficient level. The reason is that at the efficient level the marginal value of losing the trade of a single or even a subset of merchants—in their attempt to punish a defaulting ruler—approaches zero. The threat is, thus, insufficient to deter a ruler from confiscating goods or to encourage their expenditure of resources or political capital to defend foreign merchants against local citizens. Effective punishment that will deter rulers' bad behavior requires more extensive coordination of effectively all the merchants who provide value for the ruler. The question then becomes, what incentives do the merchants have to participate in the collective boycott? Here is the role for the Merchant Guild, an organization that has the power to punish its own members for failure to abide by a boycott announced by the guild.

The parallels between this scenario and the one we're talking about are obvious: Any company big enough to cause serious damage by its pollution is not going to be harmed by a boycott unless nearly everyone in India participates, but the value gained from defecting (in game-theoretic terms) from the boycott is too large for that to happen. So, instead of forming a guild to punish defection, which just increases the misery in the world, we institute government agencies to punish polluters directly instead of trying to use boycotts to punish them. Say what you will about the morality of such a system, I can go outside today and see green grass, clear skies, and breathe the air without damaging my lungs.

> It is better to take some steps and do something about problems than to wait for government or any other "powerful" body to come help you out.

Except in this case, this do-it-yourself strategy has been demonstrated to not work.

You don't want too much Government in that department. But, it really is easy to fix by a simple Government regulation. Folks in Singapore used to litter a lot. Like really a lot. The place used to be extremely polluted too. So polluted and littered. We're talking about 1960s. At that time Singapore probably didn't look better than Mumbai looks today. Simple regulation: fine of $100 or more per each piece of paper you drop. Great income for the city, so hell yeah they would make sure to enforce it. And don't give me "cultural" differences stories because Singapore has rather large Indian population and they had to adjust to this too. How to get rid of pollution? Look at the UK. You know how Thatcher famously solved problem of pollution coming from big factories? She passed a law that said that the factory had to have its water input right below its waste water output. And factories need really clean water to operate and not waste water. In other words if the factory didn't invest in the top-of-the-line water treatment plant they could as well go out of business. Because waste water would enter the factory processing machines and probably brake them. You see, simple solutions work. Especially those that bring financial hardship on offenders. Hundres of buraucrats with their political agendas will just make matters worse.

>> Simple regulation: fine of $100 or more per each piece of paper you drop

While you are right about the fines imposed on Singaporean society, the Singapore government's policies had far wider scope and were coupled with efficient execution.

The fines were augmented with large scale awareness campaigns. Even today, you can see posters in many different places in the city exhorting citizens to not litter. Garbage bin density is so high, that you can mostly find one within 10 minutes of wherever you are. Of course, the various awareness campaigns were part of a much larger nation building effort which include a conscription system (all males serve ~2 years in the army), a compulsory national savings system, policies to maximize home ownership, and so on.

The Singapore bureaucracy itself quite a unique system in it's own right. The best students are awarded scholarships to study in Oxbridge, and they are expected to return and serve in the civil service.

Considering all of this, i'm sure solving these problems entails good governance, and is certainly not a "simple" matter of imposing fines.

Exactly. Good policies are worthless without good execution.

This can be said about any policy. And there is no way to find out how execution will go without at least trying to execute vs. complaining that execution won't work.

Funny. Because when you read my post you will certainly see that I explained the execution part. Good income source for Mumbai -- fines for littering that is. When fines are high enough and cops get their monthly quotas of them - as explained in my original post - this would lower the scale of the issue if not resolve it completely. I also have given an example of Singapore with large Indian population where this has worked.

It seems some people prefer to always complain than to actually at least try doing something...

You are right, and the reason that people don't care enough is because they have so much on their plate. I live in India, and I have realized that apathy is prevalent here because it is the only way to survive for the educated middle class Indian.

If you start thinking about the abject poverty, mind boggling corruption, lack of infrastructure, the safety of women, the general social practices, crime, population bomb (just to name a few) you will go crazy. Instead, the average Indian believes he lives in a super developed city, wears his / her goggles, pulls up the car window, turns on the AC and listens to Bollywood or American music. Simple, problem solved (at least for the day).

> the reason that people don't care enough is because they have so much on their plate.

This is the 'false cause' fallacy[1]. It is akin to saying, because I have too much work stacked up, instead of making progress, I'd rather cool my heels and not do anything at all, ever.

[1] https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/false-cause

No, it's not. It is akin to saying thay I have too much work stacked up, so instead of making progress on issue X, I'd rather invest my limited resources on issues other than X. That is not a logical fallacy, that's basic decisionmaking.

> That is not a logical fallacy, that's basic decisionmaking.

No. The parent had this to say---"Instead, the average Indian believes he lives in a super developed city, wears his / her goggles, pulls up the car window, turns on the AC and listens to Bollywood or American music. Simple, problem solved (at least for the day)."

Clearly, there is no decision making issue here. The issue is that there are several problems (the plate being full) but the onlooker (the more privileged in the quote) is not doing anything---it's not as if he/she chooses to tackle a part of the problem e.g., sanitation, he/she does nothing. That's why I said the reasoning amounts to false cause---it's not because the plate is full that people are not doing anything. More likely cause is that they simply don't care.

>>don't care enough is because they have so much on their plate.

No, its not because of that.

Its because people think unless they are directly effected by a problem they shouldn't care. Be it anything- Corruption, waste or blocked sewage pipes.

If your home has a blocked sewage pipe, which is likely to effect others soon. Try talking to your neighbors about writing/talking to the local municipal office about it. I bet not one will come forward. Now try after a few days when they are effected and see how they react.

> You can't blame the government

It is hard to believe that this words are said my some Indian.How can you,aren't you aware of indian political culture ? If Indian politicians stop playing politics and start concerning about Indian,this type of thing may not occurred it,atleast not in such phenomenon .

It's interesting that getting people to cooperate to improve the commons is so hard, given the obvious and stark benefits to everyone in doing so.

The only solution that has ever actually worked is for government to step in, tax, regulate, and build infrastructure. I'm not aware of any case in all of history where anything else has been effective.

I think this presents a real problem for libertarian theorists. The ball's in their court-- come up with an alternative mechanism and demonstrate it. Otherwise stop arguing against similar efforts over here to create public transit, common health care, etc.

> The only solution that has ever actually worked is for government to step in, tax, regulate, and build infrastructure. I'm not aware of any case in all of history where anything else has been effective.

That is far from the truth. One of the recipients of the 2009 Nobel (memorial) in economics documents cooperative solutions to commons problems: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2...

Are these theoretical or have they been done in the real world?

I have seen an endless procession of game-theoretic illustrations of nove problem solving techniques. In the real world the only technique I have seen work is "hey, you, stop shitting there or go to jail." The reason is that game-theoretic arenas are idealized computational worlds where all the rules and influences are known, while real environments are full of unknown perturbing factors not accounted for in the model.

Don't get me wrong. I would love to see such a real world example, since I dislike authoritarianism. But I'm just not encouraged by what I see. I do know that telling people "things would be better for all of you if..." never works. People would rather suffer than change their behavior, even if a change in behavior is low-effort and brings about an increase in wealth or standard of living. I actually sometimes think the problem is that people are insufficiently greedy-- inertia and laziness is more powerful than desire.

As evidence for my final cynical dictum I present: American eating habits. People would rather be miserable, fat, poisoned zombies than to stop eating empty carbs with a side of sugar and mystery meat. They choose the comfort of the known over a healthier, more alert, and longer existence.

They are all real world. Click the link.

  > documents cooperative solutions to commons problems

Such as? It would help everyone if you could summarize any aspect of the approach here instead of expecting everyone to read the 21-page PDF.

> American eating habits. People would rather be miserable, fat, poisoned zombies than to stop eating empty carbs with a side of sugar and mystery meat.

This is entirely untrue, as should be obvious from the absurd conclusion it forces you to reach.

> It's interesting that getting people to cooperate to improve the commons is so hard

As an Indian I attribute this to a combination of the bystander effect and broken windows theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory)...

By their powers combined, all of us (even those among the 'educated class') turn into captain litterbug.

> The people there aren't dumb--they know all of these actions have harmful and negative effects on others' help and the general environment, but they would rather not care than care for the most part.

Well that's just disgusting. I don't think you could pay me enough money to step foot in that country.

That is what happens when a plethora of cultures have migrated to a region, each culture growing it's own little bubble. India has been a recipient of migrants from Central Asia, North Asia and Europe over the last two thousand years. India to it's smallest unit is a hive of ghettos, each ghetto not caring about the other one, while striving in the futile exercise of ensuring it's own survival. People don't care about cleanliness or have general civic sense because they don't see themselves as one community. The lack of the sense of "India" is appalling. We have Kashmiris, Biharis, Marathis, Gujaratis. Oriyas, Nagas, Tamils, Other South Indians, Bhaiyyas(from Uttar Pradesh), Punjabis and a thousand of other sub-cultures. India has not had Independence long enough to have that sense spread in it's massive population.

From the heights of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pataliputra, and later http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijayanagara_Empire, India has been seizing to become a more "me and my tribe first" civilization due to the always constant influx of foreigners looking to settle. In 2013, it's just, "me and my 1000 square feet flat first".

Indians are in for a massive shock when they realize they can't keep themselves prosperous for long without thinking of the community first. The "Red Revolution"(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naxalite) and the massive protests in the big cities are indications of a society in great distress. It's going to implode. In any case, it's going to get much worse before it get's any better.

The 10th century chronicler, observed this about India: "The Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs.They are haughty, foolishly vain, self-conceited, and stolid. They are by nature niggardly in communicating that which they know, and they take the greatest possible care to withhold it from men of another caste among their own people, still much more, of course, from any foreigner ... Their haughtiness is such that, if you tell them of any science or scholar in Khorasan and Persis, they will think you to be both an ignoramus and a liar. If they traveled and mixed with other nations, they would soon change their mind, for their ancestors were not as narrow-minded as the present generation is." --http://www.shunya.net/Text/Blog/AlBeruniIndia.htm

The US is also mostly immigrants from different places. It is also more individualistic, but not in the sense you describe India. A lot of people know their families are mostly Irish/German/Whatever but for the most part no one cares. I'm not saying this because of "my country is better than yours" shit, but I'm legitimately interested in what causes the difference. Why do some groups assimilate into a common culture and others do not? Immigrants to the US did initially congregate and form their own communities like that.

U.S has had the benefit of favorable geopolitics(a good read:http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/geopolitics-united-states-p...). A large living space and a fairly sturdy inland waterways.Historically, the pressure on natural resources has been mitigated by easier transport of goods and people(unlike India which doesn't have inland waterways). In last few decades U.S has also closed gates on immigrants for good. Though that has slowed down the process of ghettoization, eventually large swathes of U.S will convert into American-Hispanic and other similar sub-cultures. And then it's just "my tribe vs. your tribe". The U.S is at the beginning of the road, and in time when there is a greater pressure on resources, you are looking at yet another India within the next 100-150 years.

Let's just hope that it doesn't happen too soon and that human social mechanics today is advanced enough to handle another great civilization falling into chaos due to clash of cultures. The good news is that this time we have the Internet.

The US has certainly not closed its gates on immigrants for good. Immigrants as a percentage of population is close to the highs of ~15% seen in the late 1800s and early 1900s and has been steadily rising since the 1970s.

When my parents grew up in postwar NYC, they were part of a fairly insular Irish-catholic community. Sundays at church, weekdays at the church school. The church you went to was dictated by your country of origin. They talked to the Italians, but eyebrows were raised if you were hanging out with the Polish or god-forbid, some protestant.

Prosperity broke down the ethnic neighborhoods. This still happens today. Talk to Chinese kids raised in America what the family dynamics are like when you are an "ABC". Ditto for children of Indian descent or really any group with strong ethnic identity.

You see continued strong ethnic clustering where the ethnic identity is also associated with business and prosperity. Greek Orthodox communities are good examples of this.

Ha! I don't know why are you putting multi-ethnicity of India and people being apathetic towards general well being of society they live in. For last 200 years or so, survival has been single important goal of a middle/lower class Indian family. We have been plagued with unchecked population growth, famines, diseases & poverty. You read some of books (By Premchand, Tagore) and it used to be worse. Winter used to kill people in thousands and then famines. For a country which was dependent on Agriculture for such a long time, uncertain rain (and fight over who gets the canal water) used to spell disaster.

The problem is - even today for middle class families for whom survival is not a problem, haven't started caring about India they live in. We take our world for granted. :(

I am confused by why this would be relevant since generally water, sewage, and garbage collection is managed by local municipalities. At least that's the case in every country I've been to (which is many, although sadly India is not yet one of them).

It's about the mentality of keeping your house clean by dumping your filth in the streets. "It's not my problem", is the common refrain here. And when citizen's don't care, the government is just going to be the reflection of that. We are about to reach the tipping point within this decade though. I see citizen watch groups forming every day. Protest becoming more violent and widespread vigilante justice in some far-fetched areas.

Agree with most of what you said. Just a note: 'Bhaiyya' is a 'taboo word' (or mildly derogatory, if you prefer) for folks from UP. Source: I am from UP, India.

So is a "Bihari", in most parts of India. I am from Bihar, India. That's why I said it: to emphasize on the classifications we have created and abide by. It's less derogatory than a "chamar" or a "musahar" or a "dom". I am sure there are terms even lower than these.

Taboos hold back.

..says the American, whose average daily energy use has harmful and negative effects on global warming and rising sea levels, perhaps permanently damaging the planet for all future generations of humanity, but would rather not care than care for the most part.

I assure you that there are people like this in every country.

>>> The people there aren't dumb--they know all of these actions have harmful and negative effects on others' help and the general environment, but they would rather not care than care for the most part.

>Well that's just disgusting. I don't think you could pay me enough money to step foot in that country.

It's not a property of a country or nation, it is a basic behavior shared by homo sapiens as a species.

I've downvoted you as I don't see what this adds to the conversation. But on a personal level I'd like to add that it's your loss. You'd miss out on an incredible experience and witnessing one of the world's great cultures.

It's a bad situation to be sure, but it's still rude to denigrate the entire country like that.

> but they would rather not care than care for the most part. Herein lies the fundamental problem...if you would rather not care, well there's no solution to that.

I concur. It is the Apna Kaam Banta, Toh Bhaad mein jaaye Junta (Translation - As long as my work gets done, I don't care) attitude.

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