Politicians and such

I recently read a post: Why Does India Have Such Terrible Politicians? It lists various reasons from greed to money and what have you. But the only thing suggested by way of solution is stop the flow of money into politics. It indeed is an effective solution and should be pursued. Only if people in charge have the political will to do it.

The thing that struck me the most was (and I'm quoting):

Clearly, there is something about the profession that induces even otherwise decent fellows to behave caddishly. It is the way the game is played.

This reminded me of a book that I read recently: The Tipping Point By Malcolm Gladwell - How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference. To give you a background I will quote some other reviewers comments:

The Tipping Point is the name given by epidemiologists for the dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once. The flu, for example, can be held in check for a long time without being an epidemic. But suddenly, once some threshold is crossed in terms of number of people infected, things get much worse very quickly.

Gladwell believes that by understanding how such tipping points are reached, we can deliberately use them to market products, or push for social changes, or just understand ourselves better.

Gladwell argues that there are three rules for a situation to hit the tipping point.

1. Law Of The Few - explains how only a handful of socially well connected people can quickly spread a message, any message.
   
2. The Stickiness Factor - explains why the content of the message is important.
3. The Power Of Context - explains how the environmental factor affect the situation.

You guys might be aware that New York City was a mess in the early 90's until Giuliani took over. Again quoting from the review:

Perhaps the most well-known example described is the rapid fall in crime levels in New York City in the mid-1990s. Murder rates fell by 64.3% in a five year period, with other types of violent crimes dropping by 50%. This happened after years of steady increase. Gladwell argues that the factors conventionally cited as causing the improvement (improved policing, declining crack use, and aging of the population) are not sufficient to explain the suddenness of the change. All three factors included gradual shifts in behavior, and yet the drop in crime occurred very rapidly. Gladwell makes a convincing argument that the police in New York put into place certain conditions that suddenly “tipped” the crime epidemic, sending crime rates into a decline.

Gladwell explains how the graffiti in the NY subway trains encouraged (at an unconcious level) people to commit more crime and the effect erasing them had on the crime rate. The graffiti in a way created a context or environment for more crime.

Coming back to the subject in question, I think the last rule: "the power of context" is most important.

In my recent visit to Bangalore, a friend of mine came to pick me up at the station. We were together in Dallas until he moved back to Bangalore. To my surprise he was driving like any other bangalorean (no pun intended). I asked him why is he not following the rules? He said: "I did try (initially). Giving the right of way to pedestrian etc. But nobody here respects that so what's the point?"

I really think it's the power of context that encourages our politicians to be so terrible. Every body is corrupt so what's the point?

If the message in this book is anything to go by: it takes very small things to snowball into a big thing and become an epidemic of social change. I hope I will live to see that day.

PS. The book Freakonomics By Steven D. Levitt offers an alternate explanation for the drop in the NYC crime rate. If I remember correctly he attributes it to Roe v. Wade but that is for another day.