DailyPost 1942
SOLVABLE PROBLEMS, INSOLVABLE PEOPLE
If you decide to do something, a thousand doors open or the world will connive to make it happen. Which of our problems are insolvable? And if they are so, why are they so? Why does a simple app and even a server in the service of the nation not behave as it does in matured organizations in India and globally. The problems supposedly declared as insolvable on account of numbers or geography, command the largest chunk funds. If it cannot be sorted out, then what are we doing for reducing it or improving it, as the case may be. There are intractable problems, but the problems which are shown in that manner, are the ones which could have been resolved a long time back. The crux of the problem are the insolvable people; the decision makers, the executors, the implementers and the ones who are mandated to sustain and improve.
With the problem at the core, an ecosystem has been created, where there is no final delivery and hence no timeline. Some vague figures could be played around to silence you, just when you are about to raise a hue and cry, otherwise even that is mostly not required. It is a case of occupational therapy, where you are taught to live with the problem, rather to gain normalcy through hard work, and move ahead like a winner. Physiotherapy is not their therapy. It can be treated as antithetical to the existence of the cozy ecosystem of non-growth. Peaceful coexistence with the problem is our DNA, it is a very surreptitious game of managing without hard work and effort while giving a semblance of going all out for it.
Insolvable people deal with the problems at the superficial level, it is beyond their competence to understand it at a serious level. They have not seen anything worthwhile happening and have never made an attempt to get into any transformative task. It is believed that such declarations are grandiose and are meant for public consumption and more during elections and similar events. For a clarion call against poverty was made way back in the 1970s, we are still in the process of providing food doles, COVID-19 situation notwithstanding. Have we made an effort to even understand the problem. Poverty as an issue, has never been understood and hence a sustained multipronged yet integrated effort has never been attempted, in right earnest. Poverty alleviation means giving some cooked food, or grains or money or combination of these. What a pity?
Welfare economics is not our cup of tea, nor is program budgeting. Insolvable people, the decision makers are the biggest bottleneck. Where will this mindset and work culture take us? Execution is a choice and numbers are for fancy. Why can’t the quality of education be improved, when the investment made is to that tune? Can we not even manage teachers and students’ attendance? If quality education is not to be provided, why get into it at all. Why die for a failed model? Insolvable minds can’t solve anything. They cannot understand the transformative potential of education. What is so difficult about creating and maintaining primary health infrastructure? The creaking health infrastructure is the true reflection of the health of the nation and also the mental health of people who were mandated to create it in the first place. Insolvable minds cannot see the problem itself, which would be staring right in their eyes.
INSOLVABLE PEOPLE HAVE TO BE FIRST SHOWN THE DOOR, BEFORE WE MAKE A VERY SERIOUS ATTEMPT TO SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS.
Sanjay Sahay