In a bid to bring transparency in public distribution system (PDS), Orissa government today announced introducing food coupons and biometric cards to avoid duplication of ration cards.
I guess the beneficiaries cannot go outside the PDS to use their coupons or biometric cards. This is similar to the pilot being tried in Bihar. I hope these govts will extend the scope of these instruments so beneficiaries can use them at any store they want. Let the PDS compete with other stores.
School vouchers work and work very well. The idea is spreading is also comforting. In some Scandinavian countries like Sweden school choice has been in practice for over a decade and the results are as expected. That is not the point of this post.
Betraying ones own people. Especially when they are poor, desperate and especially when it involves saving the future of those poor and desperate people. How does one do that ? Year after year, even in the face overwhelming evidence that what you are supporting is overwhelmingly wrong. Check out..
The Education debacle of the decade by Bob Ewing from Institute for Justice
There is a mention of Washington DC Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton was one of the principal opponents of OSP and was instrumental in ending the program. (Washington DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP). Established in 2004 as a five-year pilot program, OSP is among the most heavily researched federal education programs in history.)
This lady is one of those perennial Black politicians that the media dredges out when they have to discuss something about Blacks. One of those pols who survives year after year, even though she is completely out of sync with her own community. Amazing demonstration of some of the cynical aspects of Public Choice Theory. (Fascinating subject you should research about)
What is sad is that Ms Norton has spent an entire lifetime not just talking about civil rights but even putting her life on the line for it. I guess getting elected and suddenly seeing people lining up to pay obeisance to you changes all that. Also some people, I have observed, get fossilised. Their idea of what is civil rights (or any other cause they fought for) seem to get frozen in time. Times change. What people want, Black parents in this case, change. Unfortunately fossils find it difficult to change with time. They go through all kinds of twisting and turning to convince others why their dead, warped ideas are still in sync. They will play the race card, “what will Dr King do or Jesus do” card, ….. but they are not able to tell you the truth. That they are too comfortable with what they have, too afraid to lose it, too used to the comforts of attention and spotlight. No longer able to stand up to the current special interests, like they used to, to the special interests of the past. So they continue to occupy time and space, unfortunately this time, at the cost of the future of millions of children. Their own. Sad!
But I am hopeful. I am of the opinion that liberals who promote ideas like vouchers have won the war. Yet we may have to continue fighting battles, even lose some, but the future has already been written. Reading history, feeling the historical trends, keeping in mind human nature and historical record of ever expanding circles of individual freedom and autonomy. ….. the Nortons of the old world will be buried in infamy. Along with all quislings and collaborationists of the past who callously or otherwise, betrayed their own.
Revolutions devour its own children. Surely it tries. Makes feeble attempts. But then, when revolutions get fossilsed, the children devour the revolution and excrete it out of the other end. The revolutions children move on to create the next revolution.
Another great piece from my friend Mohit. Water Tables and the Politics of Pricing
What is interesting is that many who would talk about pricing parking, roads, etc. don’t extend it to water. As I have explained in some earlier post, this is usually because of valid fears (poor will have to pay for water). There is also their inability, purposely or not, to extend the parking/road pricing logic to water. There is support for parking and road pricing because of the assumption that this will force the rich to pay for what they use. Well then why not make the rich pay for the water they use, whether the rich is a farmer or not?
Just like road pricing is complex and will take a lot of thinking to implement, so will water pricing. Does the poor rickshaw walla have to pay for using the road? What about the cyclists? Why not ? How will you check and implement this?
It would be far easier, I think, to price water and hence help the environment and the economy (read people in both cases!) For example, any farmer deemed poor could be given electricity credits paid for by taxpayers. The farmer still pays for the electricity he uses, but the money come out of the taxpayers’ pockets. For drinking water, I have discussed this in one or more earlier posts.
One critical issue is delinking the operating and capital cost/revenue of the company (public or private) providing the service from the subsidy. Otherwise it starts of a vicious cycle – company looses money, hence cannot upgrade its facilities, bad service, lose due to theft and leaks, company looses more money. ……