Priming the right Pump

When economies start slowing down and economic sentiment becomes bleak, Governments have the habit of creating spending so that there is multiplier effect and there a revival in the economy.  This has been referred to as a Economic stimulus. This was a habit developed after the lessons of the Great Depression in the 1930s. This idea is debated a lot but the simple truth seems that stimulus is a good idea or a bad idea depending on the way it is implemented.

If it implemented in a way that something of use to society is produced (as measured by demand which will pay the full price for it) and/or it increases the productive power of society leading to higher taxes, then it serves it purpose. If this is badly done, it leads to only transfer payments which are spent away by the recipient on things without multiplier effects and the Government is left with  huge debts with no additional taxes to service this debt. The last 5 years have seen the Government wasting away Rs 19 lakh crores with little to show for. (see this link) These expenditures have not had any effect on reviving the economy and has not increased the productive capacity of the country.

As we stand today, the Indian economy is extremely sluggish. We need to find ways to revive it with a well placed stimulus. The easiest way to decide which place to focus on is to find things for which there is very high latent demand.

As is wont with this blog, let us also look at the areas of our economy terribly mismanaged over the past 30-40 years for the great headroom for improvement and growth may lie there.

There are many excellent candidates namely

1. Railways; It is perhaps the only good or services for which the demand can double if the supply doubles ! The infrastructure is very poor and there is an opportunity to build services around the footfalls created by the Railway stations: shopping, banking, postal services, hotel accommodation and  convenience stores.
2. Urban transport - buses and metros: It is a problem plaguing society as many levels.  Lack of urban transport leads to purchase of private transport either in the form of 2 wheelers or cars. This will reduce diesel and petrol consumption and thereby reduce pressure on our currency also, p
3. Low cost housing replacing urban slums. This is an idea which has great possibility but under the current political situation it is a non-starter, as the continued existence of slums is the lifeline on many political parties.

The last idea is a contentious idea and a difficult one to implement as it affects the economic of elections; so let us keep it aside for a later date.

Railways is perhaps the best idea for a stimulus. There is a ready market demand for its services.  The government needs to come up a plan to de-bottleneck the railways and invest in speeding up the rail network and increasing the capacity. There is a massive footfall at every railway station. Most malls would give an arm and a leg to have this kind of footfalls. Monetizing of this footfall could create massive source of funds for the expansion. Expansing the railways capacity will increase employment directly and indirectly and boost tourism all over India.  India has beaches, hills, forests and jungles, snow capped mountains and great places of spiritual tradition. Tourism can unlock the latent energies of many regions whose eco-balance may be destroyed by developing industry. Already we have blundered by increasing industry in hilly areas. This could help in reversing that policy and substituting tourism with industry in these areas.

Urban transport: Lack of reliable, high quality urban transport catering to all sections of society has created a situation where in many cities such as Pune and Bangalore almost everyone  owns his own vehicle. Owning your own vehicle is the modern equivalent of owning a horse. The costs of ownership (interest and depreciation),  fuel, insurance, repairs and maintenance are huge.  Owning even the smallest car sets one back by at least Rs 1,00,000 a year. The resultant load on the traffic system  has slowed down the traffic, increasing commute time and wasting fuel also. We could reverse this by investing in public transport. The transport infrastructure has to be of a world quality-no shortcuts or compromises. This will reduce our fuel consumption and jump start the Commercial vehicle industry, lower cost of living in cities.

Can we find the will to prime the right pumps ?

Capturing the "Entrance Exam Economy" and Firangi education economy

There is too much negativity in speech, though and action in our country today. We need to find ways to convert our negativity into a form of fuel for positive change. So the more negativity in society,  the more opportunity for change.

In this blog, we explore ways to improve the change some aspects of the education system using the negativity in it.

The Entrance Exam Economy (EEE) and the Firangi education economy (FEE) have reached  very large proportions.

A recent article in a business magazine puts the total number of aspirants preparing for the IIT  entrance exams at Kota at 1,00,000. (See this link). The total spending  by these students is estimated at Rs 1,700 crores per year. It is safe to assume that nationally the number of aspirants preparing for this exam  and the spend are multiples of this amounts. Surely, on a national basis, at least another Rs 8000 to 10,000 crores must be being spent on entrance exams to Engineering colleges. The EEE industry has clearly established the price that people are willing to pay for good education. The spending by students is estimated to be in the region of Rs 2-3 lakhs over two years of preparation at Kota.

The total number of seats at the IITs is 9,885 of which only 4,844 is in the open category.(see this link).  At a fees of Rs 90,000 per year for the open category and Rs  20,000 per reserved category students, the total annual revenue of all the IITs per year from undergraduate programs would be only about Rs 220 crores.

The number of   engineering seats available at  quality Institutions available for those who can afford to pay more but could get through the merit list at NITs or IITs  is very small  at about 50,0000 compared to the total number of engineering seats available estimated at 12,50,000 seats per annum  (see this link). The prospects for students from the higher quality institutes is perceived to  markedly different. Hence students and parents are willing to spend a lot of money getting into these courses. This is a symptomatic of every other sector of education where economic prospects are seen to be good namely management education and medical education. ,

The Firangi education economy ie the spending by students on going abroad for education. It is currently estimated at around USD 7.5 billion a year ie about Rs 45,000 crores (@60Rs/$)  (see this link).  While some portion of this will always remain, as some may prefer to go abroad independent of the costs, a large portion of this is due to difficulty in getting admission into good colleges in India. Also the loss of students to overseas institutions is not just a financial loss - it is also a loss of high quality human capital.  In many cases those who go abroad to study do tend to settle down there. While we may not have felt this loss in the 1960s and 1970s as we did not have a choice. Today we have a choice and hence cannot afford to loss our smart youth to other societies.

While the EEE and the FEE, in its current scale and scope, is definitely an undesirable activity for our country for reasons detailed in this blog  its presence provides a very good opportunity for the Government India to convert into a fuel for a positive change and solve  the following problems -

1. lack of supply of much larger pool of  higher quality engineers and management graduates in India  
2. high level of stress and angst that some of the brightest minds are put through by Entrance exams process
3. subsidy model of higher education where high quality higher education institutes are dependent on government funding and hence cannot expand to meet demand are expansion means more subsidy (which a Central Government with Rs 5,00,000 crore+ fiscal deficit is very reluctant to do)

In this blog post, we will explore possibility of creating a model where Institutes which cost a lot of money to put up will be self financing thereby creating a virtuous expansion mechanism where capacity will expand to meet demand for higher quality education.

As it stands the EEE and the FEE dwarf the domestic education economy in the quality education segment.  Apart from being a burden on national resources, the EEE  is undesirable as it is teaching students skills which have low value in the real world as compared to the expenses incurred in imparting these skills.  It also destroys their soul.  While the EEE is undesirable, its presence also gives one very good opportunity - that of capturing  and diverting this wasteful spending by building higher quality institutions such as  IITs and NITs and capturing this spend as fees and reducing  the  size of EEE to a more reasonable level.

We have strangled capacity addition of the colleges with the right quality due to regulations- fee limits, curbs on admissions and reservations amongst others. As a result, too much money and effort is spent on trying to enter the existing quality colleges.

What is to be done ?

Let us discuss a solution for Engineering. Other solutions will also be similar. Since existing Institutes are political hot potatoes- it would be better to create fresh solutions.

We need to create  new New Institutes  (NI) with about 50,000 seats capacity which will admit students in this ratios:

33 % for high paying seats  who will pay two times the actual costs of an IIT education.( say Rs 5 lakhs p.a)
33%  for open quota merit students who will pay fees equivalent to the real cost of IIT education
33%  for  Quotas -OBC and SC/ST  who will the real cost of the education.

These new colleges would use the same entrance exams such as IIT-JEE and give seats based  only on rank, even to those who can afford the higher fees.

The only major constraints for this initiative will be in finding good teachers for these institutes and perhaps in finding adequate land. The Government will need to find ways to attract the best talent especially from the Indian diaspora and even among Professors of other nationalities.   We also need to find creative ways in using technology, in ways like www.coursera.org or Khan Academy (See this link),  to achieve a much larger Student Faculty ratio and tide over Faculty shortages.  This will also help the institute lower the cost of education and also tide over difficulty of getting high number of faculty in a short time.

Education institutions are  relatively very pollution free activity and so these new institutions can be put in eco-sensitive zones (instead of putting polluting industries there by giving tax exemptions as is the current policy). Industrial development has followed the setting up of good education institutions, if the right environment is created. The progress of Stanford and the parallel development of Silicon Valley is an outstanding example of this. In our country, the development of engineering industry of Belgaum is an excellent example of the role a good college in the neighborhood namely NIT - Surakal in creating entrepreneurship.

We need to create high quality townships which will  have high quality amenities so that it becomes attractive for Professors from overseas locations. The NIs should also have spaces for  development of industries along side it.

We could create a  National Education fund and provide it tax free funding similar to NHAI and REC and  allow it to raise funds for creation of new institutions. This would allow access to funds at 6% per annum and this may even allow for creation of institutions at almost zero government funding.

What will this accomplish ?

• Since the Colleges will be self funding all they would require only temporary capital and no permanent subsidy or grant for yearly operation. This would make it easy to create and expand the colleges without annual financial support from the government.
• Students who are willing to pay more need not go abroad to study. This will save forex and make available a much larger talent pool in India making India an attractive destination for Foreign Direct investment.
• Students from families who can spend more may prefer to go to NI rather than spending a lot of money and slogging mindlessly for Entrance Exams with low chance of success. Once admissions become easier, students will not want to go through EEE but can use their school years to actually gather knowledge. The  spending on EEE and FEE can be converted into spending at NIs. 
• More IIT and NIT seats, which are subsidized and hence more affordable, may go more towards more economically weaker section students
• Creamy layer among reserved sections may also choose to go to NI  freeing up seats in IITs, NITs etc.
• Creation of new high technology industries around these institutes over a period time- leading to better development and revenues for the Government.

Conclusion

Our country is poor and rich at the same time. There are people who are willing to pay for quality. By not recognizing this diversity as a strength, we have kept fees at higher education institutes low even for those who could easily afford more. This low fee structure has made these institutes dependent on the Central Government for funds and incapable of expanding to meet demand.

We have thus created a  man made shortage in higher quality education and have created a EEE and FEE industry. The revenue models of the IITs, NITs, IIMs are constrained by one-size fits all approach. It  is not advisable to change the models of these institutes at this point of time, as it will become a political hot potato.

To solve these problems, we need to create New Institutes which would have high quality and cater to the classes who can pay full cost and more for high quality education.

Lok Sabha Elections 2014: Increase in voter turnout and other factors

          Increase in voter turn out:

Let us first look at the poll numbers of previous Lok Sabha Elections namely 2009 and 2004. The data is as below.

2009 electors 71.7 crore. Voted 41.7 cr  Congress : 11.90 cr, BJP : 7.80 cr. 

2004 electors 67.1 crore  Voted 38.9 cr  Congress : 10.34 cr, BJP : 8.63 cr

The 2014 Scenario 

Given past trends it is safe to assume that electors increase at 1% p .a  to say 75 crores. Given increasing voter turnout in all elections in the past two years and the nature of the high profile election battle ahead, a voter turnout of 70% seems the most likely outcome. If the economic situation deteriorates further and there are social tensions then the voter turnout could be even higher  - perhaps even 75% ! Let us consider both cases.

Case 1 : Voter turnout  at say 70%  means 52.5 crore will cast their vote.  Additional voters over 209 will be about 11 crore voters

Case 2 Voter turnout at  75%  means that 56.25 crores  will caste their vote. Additional voters over 209 will be about 14.75 crore voters

Whom  are these additional voters of 11-14,75 crore  going to vote  for  ?

         Important factors  likely to play a big role  in Elections 2014: 

1. Muslim bloc vote may matter less and less : Muslim vote is a maxed out credit card ie it cannot be increased any further. Its size and importance can only shrink as a % of the votebase.  A large portion of Muslims usually vote. Muslims until now have tended to vote  as a bloc but this is also changing. There are Muslim parties coming up who want to represent themselves. There is a greater fight for the Muslim vote with parties who claim to be more Secular than each other. They may not ally with Congress due to mistreatment of allies ex: Samajwadi Dal, Trinamool Congress, DMK etc.  Also as witnessed in the 2013 Gujarat state elections some muslims are now voting for governance - some surveys put 30%+ of the Muslim vote for BJP in this election. This may negate the effect of the Muslim bloc vote too !

2. Increasing value of Non-muslim vote: Muslim vote is 20% of electorate. In 2009 election 60% voted. So if large portion of muslims voted say 90%, then 30% of vote was muslim.  This also aithmetically means that only 42 of 80 non-muslims voted giving a voter turnout of only 52.5% for non-muslims. There has been substantial increase in voting in all elections in last 2-3 years namely West Bengal,  Tamilnadu, Gujarat, etc. This is likely in Lok Sabha elections of 2014 also. So the increase is likely to be in non-muslim vote, non-caste based voters and pro-governance voters (given the nature of our politics the others are already voting anyway) and  hitherto apathetic voter now wanting to participate in the electoral process.

3. Relations of Congress with allies is at an all time low: For the Congress, going with allies has its own problems- lack of credibility and image issues, going alone has its own problems - numbers wont add up at all  and secular vote will get divided. The 2009  election  saw the best electoral  leverage for alliances for Congress. In 2014 allying with allies like NCP or DMK can be be very costly for Congress.   

What will all this mean for the Lok Sabha Elections 2014 ? Will the old formulas of working out vote bank politics work as effectively as it has done in the past ?

Corruption : Tat vam asi

Over the past few years, there has been an uproar over rising corruption levels in India. It is undoubtedly an evil that is crippling our society. However in its current state, there is also a divine blessing hidden in it.

If any of our leaders could see it and use it wisely,  a lot can be done using the same "evil" and it will turn into a very constructive force for change. Let me elaborate.

As a result of corruption at various levels, citizens pay a high price either through bribes or wasted time and resources for accomplishing any work related to or in concert with a government department or agency. These costs are now routinely factored into daily life- for example the costing of a vada pao on a roadside platform now includes the cost of hafta for the beat cop.

As corruption has increased, these costs have also increased so much so that everyone knows they are paying a hefty price for everything and is accustomed to doing so.  Many times this fee is 10 times or an even higher  multiple of the official fee. Since the citizens are used to paying high prices, the government needs to  officially introduce high prices services for quick service at the same price as it is done unofficially by creating a tatkaal option for as many government services as possible. Simultaneously the government should offer same services at a lower price albeit at a slower speed also so that poorer citizens also are served properly and benefit from the system. The poorer citizens still benefit as the abuses from "discretionary powers" and inefficiency from poor workflow management are eliminated thereby vastly improving service delivery.

Before doing this, the government should implement technology platforms for these services so that all these services will be speeded up, the abuse of powers curbed by creating a clear  workflow  that can be tracked online in real-time  and monitored. The productivity of the government employees will also go up and more private organizations could be inducted into service delivery thus saving the government from taking on permanently tenured employees.  In this way, the government would only need to hire higher senior level officers and could offer much better compensation to attract a better quality staff into government at senior levels  Over time, this will also eliminate one of the problems of the government namely too many overpaid low level employees who never want to leave their jobs and underpaid senior level employees with skills who tend to leave their jobs for greener pastures.

The higher revenues gathered from the official tatkaal services will pay back all investments made into the technology platform very quickly and will also help government offer much better services to poorer citizens at a lower cost.

The Passport Seva Kendra which recently celebrated the issuance of the 1 crore passport is an example. One key success factor is that these technology enabled service delivery reduces the "discretionary powers" of most of the Government officers and thereby speeds up delivery.  It also substantially reduces cost of delivery as there are very few tenured government officers, very few peons/clarks hired for this process. Due to outsourcing of the project, bulk of the services purchased for delivery of the services are actually sourced by TCS the vendor for passport seva kendra thereby eliminating corruption in managing the facility, recruitment, overheads etc.

Once the technology investments are made, there should be a gradual reduction of the price of these services so that they are in line with the real costs. This way the evil of corruption can be milked for all it worth to build a good system.

The following services could be easily added to tatkaal.
1. Building plan permissions
2. Property registrations


One of the great strengths of our society has been the ability to recognize the divinity in everything around us. The mahavakya Tat vam asi illustrates this aspect of our society.

Can we recognize the "Tat vam asi"  prevalent in corruption in every aspect of our society and build government services delivery using that ?

If w  could do it, we would  turn our worst curse into our greatest blessing.

What do you expect from the next Prime Minister of India ? Part 1

A recent post on Facebook asked this question.

I wondered what can a practical person do which will lead to results within 3-5 years. Here is a list of all the low handing fruit issues which  could be implemented easily. Many have already been implemented at state level by some governments and hence there is no excuse to not bring about these changes.

1. 24X 7 power in at least 70% of the nation

The issues with electricity shortage are currently four-fold namely
a. shortage of coal and gas  leading to shortfall in generation especially considering that considerable investment has already gone into power generation and these assets are lying idle.
b. losses due to poor distribution a distribution networks are geared to deliver power for one light bulb but is actually used to run televisions, washing machines and all other housing.
c. due to electricity theft and
d. wastage/mis-use of power delivered due to agricultural connections.

All of them have solutions which have been tested and can be easily executed. This would empower a large part of India to find solutions to their economic problems and would be the better economic stimulus for the country than sops such as subsidized food, rural employment guarantee.

This would also immediately stop migration to bigger cities.

2. Fix the leakage in Public sector undertakings (PSUs): This requires no great effort. All it takes is to appoint competent and honest managers. If they are in short supply, give more than one duty to the honest ones and keep the dishonest ones without any work.  It is cheaper to pay dishonest ones their salary than have then damage the finances of the country.

The main targets should be to turn around Air India, BSNL and Postal Department. These can save at least Rs 25,000-30,000 crores per annum of assistance being made to these companies currently.

3.  Substantial increase railways capacity substantially and modernization of Railways

Today if there is one good/service which sells at a black market premium - it is railway tickets. Clearly there is demand for much more passenger services.  This should be taken up immediately. Investment in railways will boost the economy as there will be greater movement of people and it will lead to economic growth.

Simultaneously the railways should be modernized to improve speeds and reduce accident risks. The railways has enormous land banks. Railways have very high footfalls next only to temples. This should  be used constructively to make multi-use real estate  which will boost cash flow for the railways and also make railways stations hubs of activity for people.

4. Remove discretion given to Revenue Department Officers

Recently our retired Supreme Court Chief Justice Kapadia observed that in many cases the law is vague and includes law equivalent of saying that one "should drive with care". He said there is no clear definition of what amount to driving with care. He said this allows great latitude to revenue officers to interpret the way they want. This allows for mi-use of laws for personal benefit.

Clear laws are required which unequivocally state the law and its clear interpretation in a definitive manner. This will let officers implement law rather than spend time interpreting it. This will also prevent unscrupulous assesses from bending the law to their advantage by corrupting Revenue Department officers.

5. Transport and energy use reform

We do not have the oil that we are consuming.  The powers that have the oil are states hostile to a non-violent Hindu  majority state that we are. If we want to continue to consume oil in the current fashion we should have a massive change in our geo-political strategy and become like the USA. This is very unlikely. I doubt if our society will give license to our leaders to invade other countries, assassinate their leaders etc  merely to secure more and more oil for our consumption

Hence the only option left is to substantially reduce the Energy consumption  to GDP ratio. We need to create disincentives for  private vehicle ownership and increase use of public transport.

 6. Reduction of fiscal deficit

a. We are having many problems like over-use of fertilizers and large subsidies for fertilizers. No one is gaining from these problems. These need holistic solutions such as using bio-waste of cities converted to bio-manure. This will solve the cities problems of waste disposal as well as the farmers problems of fertilizers.

b. Use of Private-Public partnerships for providing Government services

We need  to cap the employment in the government.  We need to use technology for our country's administration - it is not enough if do great work for the whole world while but dont solve our own problems. We need to create large scale roll out of private-public partnerships. We already have many examples: Example: Infosys in income tax returns processing, TCS in passport seva kendras. We need to find more areas where delivery of government services is sub-standard and bring under this kind of arrangements.  We need to try experiments and also take already successful innovation across the country in areas such as government schools, bus transportation among others.


All of these are actually easy to do but if they are implemented our country will look very different. Is this asking for too much ?

The convergence of the ridiculous and the sublime

Sometimes we witness something which at first glance appears quite ridiculous. The nationalization of Indian banks by Mrs Indira Gandhi was one such act. There was no real need to do it except some political  reasons for the same (more on this here and here too). No doubt, this was unnecessary and could have been easily accomplished by regulating the banks well. But this perhaps suited the the very short term political objectives of a cornered politician namely Mrs Gandhi.

However history has given this a new twist.  For reasons beyond the ken of the originators of the idea of bank nationalization, it has turned out to be a sublime idea. Through the nationalized banks, the Indian government controlled flow of credit, consumed much of the credit itself  and choked the Indian economy.  So much so that in the early 1990s, the Credit Reserve Ratio (CRR) and the SLR (Statutory liquidity ratio) was a combined 53% (up from 27% at the time of independence and 32% at the time of bank nationalization.(Chronology of CRR / SLR changes Source: RBI website)

This was patently ridiculous at the normal level of analysis but it accomplished many things which Mrs Indira Gandhi never could have visualized. India entered the credit based growth game too late and hence the credit fueled bubble that  has propelling the world economy since the collapse of Breton Woods did not affect the level of credit and loans in India. The low home loans to Nominal GDP ratios is instructive in this regard. Even today it is only  8 % of India. This is very low in comparison to Western countries and developed Asian Countries like Singapore (54%), Korea (36%) or other European countries such as Germany (47%) or UK (85%) or the US at 77%.

This has definitely saved us from the  mad consumption fulled economic rise and the implosion that is happening/will happen in these countries  following the collapse of credit availability  If you wake up too late and run a race where people are running very fast for a long time ( albeit in the wrong direction), you will be the last in the race. The upshot of this  means when the reality of credit filled booms and busts sinks in we would have run the least distance in the wrong direction and be in the best position as we are in now in 2013!

This is the sublime effect of bank nationalization.

We maybe witnessing another ridiculous/sublime convergence today. The Food Security bill which is being pushed through now could  have such effects. It is being pushed through at this time because of political compulsions rather than national compulsions. There are a hundred other ways to ensure that all people have food but none of those will make the Opposition look in bad light and the ruling Government look in good light. Thus the nation will have its Food Security bill.

This decision is ridiculous because it assures food to farmers, whose precise job it is to provide food to others in society. Arguably, this violates the basic social compacts in society.  This will drive out many marginal farmers from farming and could reduce incentives of many farmers to produce food, as food is to be given to them at such low rates. We could see substantially higher food prices as a result. Once food prices go up usually there is incentive for marginal farmers to produce food but under this system, if food is made available to them at ridiculous prices along side assured income from employment guarantee schemes - they may just decide it is not worth sweating it out in the sun.  Already most of the farming families have partly diversified out of farming. This will expedite it a full diversification out of farming for those who own small and  marginal farms. Thus increasing food prices may not lead to increasing food production but will lead to increasing consumption as the food is sold at heavily subsidized prices.

Thus it is likely to be a ridiculous outcome but there are likely to be many unintended outcomes. Increasing food prices will shift a lot of the economic power from the cities to the villages. This could reduce migration, improve opportunities at the village, modernize the village as the increasing affordability will quickly lead to urban facilities being available at rural areas. This is already happening in many states but it will happen faster and in all states including states like Bihar where this transformation is in its infancy. There is no magic bullet like prosperity to solve many problems. No doubt it will cause new problems but these problems of plenty are likely to be  a welcome situation than a large part of the country languishing helplessly with very little choice. If this prosperity arrives, the farmer will be an empowered decision maker and his political choices may be pro-development rather than poor thereby destroying the pro-poor political model of the political agents who bring about this prosperity.

It could reverse the catastrophic loss of income earning power of land brought about by Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru's Green revolution wherein the production went up with increasing cost of production thereby reducing the profits/surpluses of farmers drastically.  The Green revolution ensured the country gained everything and the farmer nothing.

It could make India a net buyer of food when the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of Europe and the US Food policies may be on their last legs. It could alter the relative price of food with respect to services, energy and manufactured goods and  practically everything else. This could make India's economic and social position very strong as a very large number of people are dependent on farming or are living in areas where farming is the main economic activity.  This could also cause a shake out in the cities as it may be very costly to live in the cities. Land prices may become more affordable in the cities.

Who knows it may be the magic bullet on our march to superpower-hood. This could be the sublime aspect of the Food security bill.

Should we welcome it or not ?

Lot of bad news is good news - Narada speak

We are always open to listening to good news and avoid bad news. This is perhaps because we like to have pleasant immediate consequences and are not really bothered about consequences of consequences (c-of-c) or the sconsequences of consequences of consequences (c-of-c-of-c)

Sometimes bad news  especially when it is big,  has some wonderful c-of-c or c-of-c-of-c especially when they push any phenomenon to a tipping point which creates real change in society.

For example, the news about the editing of documents by the Law minister is definitely bad news for the country but it has ended up exposing the working of the CBI comprehensively and, perhaps, may pave the way for CBI to become a truly independent body.

Today, I heard another piece of  very bad news.  There are now month/s long coaching classes that are being held to help students "crack" the aptitude tests of companies like Infosys, Persistent etc. At one level, this is bad news but at another level this is good news as the companies are going to be flooded with successful candidates who know how to "crack the exam" but do not have the real skills for which this test was a proxy measure. This is going to create a tipping point for the companies, who are going to be sorely disappointed by their  picks and be forced to come up with a better way to measure students' abilities.

I once read a story in Narada Purana in which a sage asks Sage Narada why he goes on instigating people with an evil bent of mind. Narada's answer was simple "It is only when the cup of evil if filled to the brim that the wicked attract punishment."

I have learnt from personal experience that to look at the good news embedded in bad news requires a training of the mind - to suspend the usual way of looking at immediate consequences and look to downstream consequences. In this state, a lot of bad news begins to look really good and not enough  of it doesn't look good because it causes no change in the system. Paradoxical !

I confess, I too tend to keep falling back into the immediate evaluation state but it takes continuous effort to change the way we look at things.

In these times where there is no shortage of "bad news", I welcome you to try and look at reality in this way to see where  there may be positive change and where the new opportunities  may lie.