#126 A Little Boat Adrift 🎧

<em>While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways.</em><br/><br/><em>Audio narration by </em><a target="_blank" href="https://www.ad-auris.com/"><em>Ad-Auris</em></a><em>.  </em><br/><br/><strong>PolicyWTF: Our Democracy In Wave 2 </strong><br/><br/><em>This section looks at egregious public policies. Policies that make you go: WTF, Did that really happen?</em><br/><br/>- <em>RSJ</em><br/><br/>It is difficult to write anything with clarity when almost every second message you read is a cry for Oxygen, ICU beds, Remdesivir or plasma. This isn’t an exaggeration. This is the reality of every urban Indian today. Yet they are lucky. The ability to amplify is itself a privilege. There are many others going silently into the night; mourned by their voiceless kin but unnoticed, uncounted and unmourned by the state. Because it is inconvenient to even acknowledge them. <br/><br/>This is a difficult moment for India. It is not easy to write with perspective and acuity about our criminal neglect of lives while retaining empathy for those on the frontlines of this battle. So, excuse me if I ramble a bit in this edition. <br/><br/>No Information, No Democracy<br/><br/>There’s a lot made about democracy in India. If we were to believe our own hype that is. We have a rambunctious multi-party system. Our elections are festivals celebrating people’s choices. The <em>janata</em> is the <em>janardhan, </em>apparently. For years, the more cynical among us have seen through this charade. Today, the despairing shallowness of these claims are laid bare for all us to see. <br/><br/>At its heart, democracy is about availability of information. As information became more accessible and moved with greater speed in the industrial age, societies had to adopt democratic norms. Other choices could only be coercive. Because information is power. It