Nudge is what push is not

In recent years, several countries have been drawn to nudges to makes progress on pressing social problems as these do not cost a great deal.

Nudge, first as a creative hypothesis and later as a compulsive policy prescription, has come a long way since a housefly imprint in the loo pots at Amsterdam Schipol Airport dissuaded millions to avoid unwarranted spillage, by targeting the elusive fly instead. Partnering with fellow economist Richard Thaler, Cass Sunstein took the little-pot experiment to dizzy heights in their pioneering work Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, published in 2008, which helped the subject of behavioral economics gain an unparalleled political traction, and earned Thaler an Economics Noble Prize in 2017. Applied to influence public behavior, a nudge is any aspect of the choice architecture that helps people opt for change without any significant economic incentives. An alarm is a nudge, and so is a warning and a recommendation. 

In recent years, several countries have been drawn to nudges to makes progress on pressing social problems as these do not cost a great deal. Dozens of countries including Australia, France, Canada, UK and Germany have constituted their behavioral science teams whose work has reportedly helped reduce poverty, improve public health, and help clean the environment. Sunstein himself led one such team in the White House from 2009 to 2012. But nudge as a process of social change has accumulated its share of criticism, charged for diminishing autonomy, threatening dignity, and violating liberties. Nudging has also been criticized for being short-term politically motivated initiatives at the cost of long-term behavioral changes. 

Trusting Nudges is the outcome of surveys conducted in as many as 17 countries to understand why nudges are sometimes considered a form of manipulation, and are therefore rejected for being in pursuit of illegitimate goals. Across countries, however, there is consistency of acceptance for nudges that are designed to promote health, safety, and environmental protection. Cultural orientation and political lineage are known to play a significant role in public response to nudges. For instance, only a small majority will accept automatic change of women’s last names to that of their husband after marriage whereas a call that requires chain restaurants to tag calorie labels on their products is sure to win an overwhelming support. It may seem simple but in reality there are many a slips between acceptance and rejection of nudges, as choice architecture is often motivated with some form of unavoidable paternalism. 

Findings from their multi-country surveys have helped Sunstein and Reisch to conclude that nudges oscillate between comparative receptivity and comparative skepticism, driven by factors like age variations, cultural background, cognitive ability, political orientation, and trust in government. There is no one size that fits all. Considered covert, manipulative, and based on excessive trust in government, growing misconception about nudges have led many to believe that these are unlikely to solve large problems. However, the authors are convinced that nudges remain a way forward to maximize social welfare. 

To overcome bias and inertia, a list of guiding principles to frame a Bill of Rights for Nudging have been proposed. Trusting Nudges is a timely contribution for prudent policy-making, else governmental push - for toilets under Swachh Bharat Mission - will get counted as nudge. One of the guiding principles of the proposed Bill states ‘nudges must not manipulate people’ in staking unsubstantiated claims. For those who have followed nudge hypothesis, this book is a welcome addition to a growing literature on the subject that captures citizen’s central concerns in legitimizing the role of nudges in civic life.      
            
Trusting Nudges
by Cass R. Sunstein and Lucia A. Reisch
Routledge, UK
Extent: 145, Price: US$ 39.95

First published in the Hindu BusinessLine, issue dated Oct 21, 2019. 

Not really convenient, and yet

Trains are rolling libraries of information provided one is willing to relinquish home comforts; is ready for the unexpected; and is alive to searching the unknown. 

Monisha Rajesh’s seven months of uninterrupted travel with her fiancé on eighty different trains’ criss-crossing continents can hardly be about convenience, but surely reflects true grit and perseverance at this time when train journey is fast losing its allure. More so, as she had already traveled and published Around India in 80 Trains. Trains may mean different to different people, but to her it meant ‘an open window into the soul of a country and its people.’ With empathy fading from existence, a train journey allows an unrestricted peep into unedited footage of other people’s lives, without them being aware that someone had shared their life moment. Train journey can make the discerning feel to be part of the whole.   

Rajesh draws valuable lessons from her 45,000 miles journey, without being unduly bothered that she had only five different T-shirts to negotiate varying temperature regimes. That she dragged her boyfriend Jem, now her husband, on this arduous journey turned out to be a wise decision. But for such travel, they would not have discovered traits in each other’s personalities that only the dynamics of travel could unfold. As much an act of discovering the outside world, rolling from one side to the other in a confined space on a train can lead to an exploration unto oneself. 

Around the World in 80 Trains takes the reader on the twists and travails of train journey from London’s St Pancras station to the vast expanses of Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, Tibet, Vietnam, North Korea, and to Canada and the US. Refusing to believe pessimist economists that railways is dying a swift death, Rajesh asserts that trains are rolling libraries of information provided one is willing to relinquish home comforts; is ready for the unexpected; and is alive to searching the unknown. The thrill of train journey is that it can never be fully under control, she cautions, and that is what makes it an exciting undertaking. 

Seven months on a journey can take the fizz out of any travel, unless one appreciates the unique qualities of the rail journey. Rajesh does it with aplomb, packing her multi-layered travelogue with hard facts, deep reflections, and intellectual acuities. Blessed with an elegant writing style, she shares her hits and misses of dealing with fellow passengers and the train staff, and the city life they were exposed to in selected places. While it is not uncommon to have moments of blind trust when travelling, the chances of being tricked is no less certain on travelling across territories. A woman dispensing a pack with just 36 playing cards at a throw way price indicates that certain habits are cross-cultural and trans-national.  

Rajesh’s eye for details is what makes Around the World in 80 Trains a delightful reading. More than a lifeline for commuters, trains have redefined its status in the race for appropriating resources from far-off geographical settings. It is still fresh in memory that the so-called British benevolence of gifting the railways to India was nothing but a fast-track plan to facilitate the plunder of loot from remote places. China is acting like the British in Tibet, the introduction of much-publicized train in Tibet is doing everything to extract everything they could at the cost of eroding the indigenous culture. Trains link the past with the future, via a troubled present. 

From Jules Verne’s historic world travel in 80 days to Monisha Rajesh’s world travel on 80 trains, the nature of travel may have changed but the contours of exploration and learning have been kept alive. Anyone could sit down, draw up a schedule, buy tickets and travel around the world, but important is what such personal heroic can offer to the society at large. Rajesh offers essential insights from her travel for those who value adventure over risk. 

Around the World in 80 Trains
by Monisha Rajesh
Bloomsbury, New Delhi
Extent: 325, Price: Rs 599.

First published in the Hindustan Times, dated Sept 7, 2019.

Trees are from Eden

Liberalization of morality notwithstanding, the heroism of surrender and sacrifice is unlikely to fade anytime soon.

With the characters sticking on our minds and the songs staying in our hearts, Bollywood has turned repetitive scripts into a sub-culture of obsessive cinema from which there has been little escape. More by design than default, songs convey what the script cannot, in reflecting the overt and covert anxieties and aspirations of both the characters and the viewers. The combined effect of these two parallel strands created the cinematic possibilities of carrying forward the moral overtone of post-independence reconstruction of the society on the Gandhian principles of simplicity and celibacy. 

In his frame by frame decadal analysis of most popular films, Sanjay Suri sets out to establish that the dominant idiom of the films gets reinforced through moral obligations of the hero, reflected in his retreat from wealth and desire. In this intriguing analysis, cinema emerges as the creative paradox that triggers desire in the guise of austerity.    

A Gandhian Affair is as much exhilarating as entertaining in revealing a contrived method of film-making that cinematically projects the cultural necessity of rejecting desire. As viewers continue to identify with it, storytellers churn out much of the same stuff again and again. With slight deviation, however, desire in song and surrender in script makes our cinema stand out in its texture. Suri’s contention is that it couldn’t have been any other way, and there are any number of examples – from Mother India to Naya Daur and from Ram aur Shyam to Lage Raho Munna Bhai – to show how cinema defined its boundaries for and in a conservative society. 

Yet, the linear juxtaposition is not without its share of ambiguity! While the heroine resting her head in the lap of a man she was close to had outraged audiences to seek change in the ending of Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam, the most sexual song Aaj sajan mohe and laga re, janam safal ho jaye (Take my body to yours, my life will be fulfilled) was curiously accepted by both viewers and listeners. 

The glaring disconnect between prose and poetry provides a discordant note on the art of film making. That songs are a departure from the scripted values on which the film rests draws attention to the inherent contradictions in the society. Only cinema give audiences an opportunity to unleash suppressed sexuality through songs that it identifies with, and lives on. Suri asserts that while the hero’s conduct has been largely Gandhian, sex has continued to dominate cinema in a curious hide-and-seek game. The question remains whether or not the portrayal of sex should be taken as a cinematic reflection of battle to gain inner control over human desire? 

Much has changed in the millennium decades though, but Gandhi has not yet been totally unsighted. Unless all of India becomes at least middle class, argues Suri, an idea of Gandhi will continue to resonate in the mainstream cinema. Liberalization of morality notwithstanding, the heroism of surrender and sacrifice is unlikely to fade anytime soon.  

Bollywood has attracted serious writings in recent years. Sanjay Suri makes a significant addition to growing literature on the subject by helping us understand cinema the way it may not have been viewed. A Gandhian Affair with cinema is engaging and entertaining. 

A Gandhian Affair
by Sanjay Suri
Harper Collins, New Delhi
Extent: 247, Price: Rs 499.

First published in weekly Outlook, week ending Oct 21, 2019.