DailyPost 266
COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS
From being a financial concept, the cost benefit analysis has finally permeated all aspects of our life & seems to have become a parameter in most of our decision making process. It’s supposed to be objective & is destined to deliver results over & over again. The only issue that challenges the concept is the most of the long terms gains & improvements cannot be perceived through this direct formula. The more we calculate our lives on this formula, as a tool to success the more we falter. The woods are lost for the trees.
We have broken down the preparation for an exam paper on these lines, deciding on the marks to be achieved. This is certainly not the way forward to achieve knowledge. When knowledge & skills are not acquired in the long run, while all cost benefit analysis formula has been followed upon, the validity of the formula & its execution both remain in question.
The cost benefit analysis does not calculate the effort & certainly not the quality of effort. Still we keep calculating the cost of education & the benefits it delivers by way of pay packages, in a very direct manner. What quality education delivers to human life is beyond any formula to calculate and more you try to put make it in a neat economic game, the less will it deliver in life.
In professional life too, the pay & perks is a cost benefit analysis calculation from the employers side. The objectivity of the whole exercise is suspect & it depends more on the financial health of the company rather than any objective calculation of the employee’s contribution. The general employee is not able understand his actual worth & he is perpetually calculating his worth on his cost benefit analysis formula. This leads to attrition & dissatisfaction, a chronic disease in large number of companies.
The objective analysis of effort, learning, impact & contribution can be a better matrix. Too much of calculation is too bad a calculation in the game called life.
DIRECT COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS IS NOT AN EFFECTIVE FORMULA OF LIFE.
Sanjay Sahay