Leveraged buy out of poverty
An alternative to stupidity
By
Hridayesh Kant
(Founder of Project Small Family, Inc.)
First Draft (Feb 2005)
Copyright information
I want you to read this and someday I hope to make money out of it. So here is the great plan and associated rules.
- As long as it is reproduced in its original form in totality, you can make personal copies in any form
- You can distribute it to your friends and strangers in numbers which should not amount to mass distribution, provided you do not monetarily benefit from the transaction.
-
You are allowed to mass distribute (and profit from it)
it in countries with per capita income less than US$2,000 per year or total
fertility rate (TFR) more than 2.2. This implies that
If confused about any of the above, here is the golden rule.
Unless you make lot of money, I am unlikely to come after you.
Still confused. I can be contacted at HKGupta@ProjectSmallFamily.org
To the reader
There is only one original idea in this book and that is
‘It is possible to
stop world population growth in a very short time by financially rewarding poor
young women to delay pregnancies. No other existing scheme can match the
effectiveness of this approach.’
Rest of the book just expands on the idea mentioned above. Everything in this book has been said somewhere else by someone else. If a quote is not exact, it is my fault in not remembering it correctly. If a source is not acknowledged, it is due to my failing memory. Fact that I have reused quotes and material speaks greatly about the original creator and how much influence it had on my thought process.
This book is about logical thinking and reasoning. You may end up believing in what you read here and that would be as bad as believing in what this book is trying to debunk.
A good prequalification to benefit from this book would be to understand (not believe) the logic behind the theory of evolution.
For the uninitiated I will try to explain some of the underlying principles of the theory in simple English.
- It is about the survival of the fittest, not the fastest, strongest, cleverest, fattest or any other -est.
- Reproduction is generally detrimental to individual well being.
- Survival is of species, not of individuals, making reproduction an essential part of evolutionary success.
- It does not choose survivors, it just recognizes them.
- Genetic traits are passed on to next generation because they belong to survivors not because they are good. In long run it leads to the selection of traits favorable to survival of species.
- Genetic diversity happens because of mutation.
- Evolution is not a grand scheme of nature; it is lack of it.
Preface
Something wonderful happened in the tribal region of
- There was no medical help provided.
- There was no teaching.
- There was no preaching.
- The scheme was voluntary.
- And it was not a miracle.
All we did was got them interested by creating a beneficial situation for them.
What does it mean?
If we were to replicate these results worldwide (process is easy to replicate and practically idiot proof), we can stop the world population growth in a short time and keep it there forever.
What happened next?
Armed with this wonderful approach I tried very hard to
convince international aid agencies, large foundations, top level politicians
and bureaucrats in
What happens next?
“When all else fails, write a book.”
Writing this book is my last ditch effort to keep this process alive in the hope that somebody someday will pick it up and succeed where I failed.
Acknowledgement
Conventional wisdom is highly overrated. All it is good for is to maintain the status quo or occasionally delay innovations by thumbing its nose. But then there are those who thumb their noses back. This book has been inspired by them.
Thanks are due to the person or persons who came up with the crazy idea that the Earth was spherical, whereas it looked pretty flat to anybody with 20/20 vision.
And to the people who fought for the notion that Earth goes around our sun and not vice versa.
And to Charles Darwin, for coming up with the brilliantly simple theory of evolution, to explain the complexity of organisms.
And to Henry Ford for legitimizing the assembly line concept thus replacing master car builders with master third-nut-on-right-rear-tire fixers.
Thanks are also due to a large number of people, some total strangers to me, who supported Project Small Family, Inc., either in kind or kindness. I will name names, only if and when this project becomes successful.
And finally to Kindness.
“It is impossible to have a deal unless both parties feel benefited at
the time of deal making”
- Capitalism one-o-one
Table of
Contents
Current welfare projects in third world –
wasted efforts
How not to design a welfare project
Constraints on a good welfare scheme
Rapid population control through controlled
financial incentives
Ray of hope – Project Small Family, Inc.
How PSF process helps target audiences?
How is PSF process more effective than
other population control approaches?
Guidelines for large project implementation
Message to implementers of PSF projects
PSF process would like to thank
HIV/AIDS eradication using PSF methodology
I wish to eradicate global poverty.
Only way to achieve it is by encouraging poor families to follow small family norms as practiced by rich people.
In an ideal world, rich people should share their wealth with poor to help them.
In our not so ideal world, rich will never share their wealth with poor and I will not even propose it because I do not believe in ideals.
I believe in human greed (and fear too but do not wish to exploit it).
Let me introduce some concepts before we get into problem solving.
Let us do a simple experiment.
Open two shops.
- One sells $100 bills for $99.
- Other sells $100 bills for $101.
Why do all the customers shop at first shop despite the price difference being just 2%?
If you know the answer to that question, you know how to make anything work. All you need to do is create a beneficial situation (real or perceived) for customers and they will flock to you (remember they are greedy).
Capitalism understands this concept and thrives.
Socialism/communism/welfare refuses to understand it and lets its people suffer.
I, Hridayesh Kant, am challenging the basis behind all the poverty eradication approaches as they exist today, to satisfy this criterion of creating a beneficial situation.
Most of these will fail this simple test.
Welfare sector all over the world has failed to eradicate
global poverty for the simple reason that they do not wish to sell $100 bills
for $99. Their customers, the poor, refuse to buy into their current offer of
$100 bill for $101. It has not happened yet and is unlikely to happen in
future.
Let us first talk about McDonald’s[1] shareholders. If you are a shareholder and McDonald’s happens to make money, you are entitled to a percentage of that income irrespective of the fact whether you eat at this fine establishment or not. On the other hand if you ate at McDonalds, they will charge you based on number of burgers/fries/sodas ordered by you. The amount paid is irrespective of your ownership (3 shares you inherited) in this corporation.
Why am I talking about McDonald’s in a book about welfare sector? I want you to think of a nation (or planet Earth if like me you believe in the concept of global village), as a corporation. All citizens of this nation should be treated as shareholders as well as consumers. I want to talk about national budget and tax collection. This discussion is going to be the back bone of the arguments I make in this book.
If we think of all the citizens as shareholders in this nation, they automatically become entitled to their share of the national tax collection. This should happen irrespective of their contributions to the nation. Fact, that they have citizenship, should be enough for this entitlement irrespective of their earning capacity, criminal behavior, morality and bankruptcy status.
The consumer side of the same equation says that individuals should pay for what they consume. This brings in the concepts of income and taxes. Anything earned by you is like eating at a restaurant. Making more money is like eating more fries; you get a bigger bill (read taxes). You eat nothing, you pay nothing. Some individuals will disagree with me on the revenue and taxes with the argument that they earn because of their ingenuity and taxes just redistribute their hard earned money to those not working that hard. To all these ingenious people, I will humbly request them to relocate to some poor African country with an ineffective tax collection system and use their ingenuity to make kind of money they make today. A well managed country is like a high end restaurant, it lets you make more money (better quality food and service), and you need to pay for that.
Let us combine these two concepts. A country earns revenue (taxes) by letting people make money. These taxes should be flat rate (proportionate to the income) without any kind of deductions. On the other hand everyone irrespective of the prosperity should be entitled to a share of this collected tax.
For ease of calculations let us keep this profit sharing to about 50% of the revenue (This figure is close to what Intel, Microsoft etc report as operating profits versus revenue). So if a country collects an average of $100 per person as taxes, it should simply write a check for $50 (A direct bank transfer would be preferable, reducing paper usage is one of my other aims) to each of its citizen and use remaining 50% for its expenses. In this scenario Bill Gates receives $50 per month as dividend from his shareholding in USA, Inc. along with the guy who sleeps at sidewalk. To many, Bill Gates does not need/deserve this, but remember he too is a share holder in USA, Inc.
Once we agree to this scenario, every thing becomes easy. A flat rate tax system without any deductions will make life easy for everyone, and a universal ownership dividend will alleviate the need/argument for all brain damaged welfare schemes.
Will this ever happen? No. Too many people will lose their livelihood if governments became efficient and transparent. More over my aim here is not to streamline the working of USA, Inc., I am just trying to introduce this concept to support my case for leveraged buyout of global poverty.
I got this welfare bug sometime back when I came across a
news item that a poor woman in
A mother sold her child for $60 and thought it was a beneficial situation! How are we going to solve this problem? We need to help her but how? Writing a check for $60 to get back her child (as done by some good soul in similar situation) is not going to get rid of this situation. We need to create a system where no mother has a need to sell her children.
As discussed earlier, rich people will not come in drove to solve global poverty. That leaves us empowering this poor family to help itself from its own assets. Let us start with an asset/liability analysis of a poor family in a poor country.
These families have nothing of value. No land, no jobs, no accumulated wealth or education. On liability side they have large family size, extreme poverty, ill health and a sense of hopelessness. One can not think of assets in this hopeless situation.
But assets this family needs, if it has to come out of poverty. Since there are no visible assets available within the family, we need to look at family’s relationship with the outside world and see if we can find something there. While analyzing this hopeless situation I had a eureka moment. All national governments and international aid agencies always talk about per capita money raised or spent. All of a sudden I had an asset (even if by my twisted logic) available to me belonging to this poor family. The money spent (even if it never received it) in the name of helping this family either from national budget or international aid had this family’s name written all over it. It was their money, to be spent for their welfare and this share was based on the number of family members.
Once we accept the logic that this money belongs to this family and is based on number of people in the family, we run into some serious problems. In order for a family to maximize this benefit, they should have as many members as possible but this will lead to further poverty as larger families consume more resources, and larger size even with increased total aid will lead to even larger expenses. Only way a family could benefit from this situation was to claim more members than it had thus receive more benefits while maintaining expenses at smaller numbers. This is an ideal situation for corruption where you claim what does not reasonably belong to you.
Now we have an identifiable asset in terms of number of members and also liabilities in terms of number of members. If we were to legitimize this opportunity for corruption and let the family keep the entitlement irrespective of its size, we have created a win-win situation. A family producing more number of children gets more benefits (whatever the corrupt distribution system allows it to have), but a family not having expected number of children is given an equivalent amount of what was to be spent on the children not produced thus taking away the incentive to produce more children. In fact this encourages families to produce less number of children in order to maximize per capita benefits.
What have we done here? We have taken a liability (number of children expected to be born in a family) and converted it into an asset. Suddenly there is an additional income stream and reduced liability (fewer children born). This family, now, has extra money which can be used for productive purposes like education.
With this explained, I am now ready to talk about a little
experiment called Project Small Family (PSF) and the possibility of stopping
world population growth on a dime by doing a leveraged buy out of poverty.
Before you get to know this process, prepare yourself to go through lots of
pages trying to explain status of welfare as it exist today and what it should
be in my view.
Need for welfare systems?
A lot has been said about the welfare societies. Communism takes it to extreme and distributes to everybody what is technically earned by some. Socialism takes a part of wealth and redistributes it. Even the capitalistic west has large number of welfare programs to redistribute some wealth to poor.
Whatever the structure of society, this redistribution of wealth is always referred to as welfare or something similar sounding, as if the rich wanted to help poor. Reality is directly opposite. Welfare projects are created in order to safeguard the interests of well off. We need to protect rich from relatively poor, thus creating a well fed society where poor have no need to go around shooting rich. Altruism has a selfish motive of self preservation by making oneself look good to the less fortunate.
The rich in a society should understand this selfish need for welfare activities, then and only then we can create a highly efficient welfare system thus creating a safer society for all of us.
With the current pace of globalization and increasing
awareness it is not possible to have extreme poverty without discontent.
Earlier the poor people did not know better and considered poverty as their fate,
but with the increasing awareness, better off among poor feel bad for the
plight of poor around them. This is the cause of all social conflicts. It is
not the poorest and the most disadvantaged who protest, it is the rising
aspiration of better off among them which motivates them to demand more. A very
good example of this can be seen in the relationship between high and low caste
Hindus in
The present day caste conflict in
To avoid a long painful transition period of social adjustment, it is important that welfare projects are implemented quickly, efficiently and in a fair manner. A long stretched out welfare program leads to apathy among those who fund it and discontent among beneficiaries.
Current welfare projects in third world –
wasted efforts
Kalahandi, Orissa in
Kalahandi is not an exception, this phenomenon of poor not rising above poverty line despite massive aid, is repeated all over third world. There is something wrong with the way help is administered to those who need it. Either we are addressing the wrong people or we are not doing it right. Answer is both. Most of the international projects suffer from poor design and subsequent poor implementation. Poor design also leads to wrong targeting, instead of helping the poorest it leads to helping better offs among them.
We will now look at all design issues and the players involved with these projects.
But first, a story
about milk (Can’t remember the source)
Once upon a time,
there was a king who had everything going right in his kingdom except that he
suspected that the royal milkman was adding water to the milk supplied to the
royal household. Having never read this book, king naively appointed a milk
inspector to keep an eye on this milk man.
This made matters
worse. Milkman now had to bribe the milk inspector and to compensate his bribe
expenses he increased the amount of water in the milk
King was not at all
pleased. Instead of chopping off the heads of the milkman and the milk
inspector (Like all good kings did in those times), he appointed a supervisor
to keep an eye on the inspector. Newly appointed supervisor was soon
compromised and the additional bribe to this supervisor led to more water being
added to the milk.
King was confused but
he was not the king for nothing. Instead of realizing his mistake, he persisted
and appointed a manager for quality control. This led to more water in milk and
resultant creation of ministry for milk quality. And so on.
Before I finish this
story, let me tell you that this milk quality management ministry is still
expanding and the royal household is drinking milk which is 90% water. No harm
done as milk is fattening to begin with.
End of story
Most of the welfare projects suffer from similar fate. There are very few examples of poverty reduction as a direct result of poverty reduction schemes.
It will be very easy to blame individuals for the failures of poverty alleviation schemes. Reality seems to indicate otherwise. Failure of communism all over the world indicates inherent flaws in the system. It will be foolish to assume that those involved with communism experiment were all corrupt or incompetent; a more logical explanation would be that the communism as a concept is not workable irrespective of its laudable goals.
First problem with welfare projects is the approach. Somehow in their wisdom these agencies think that by providing food, education, housing, medical facilities and clothing to these people, they can get rid of poverty. All these things are necessary but providing them is not the solution, we need to enable people to acquire each of these things. What we need to create is opportunities for people to rise, and they will take care of themselves. We also need to raise our expectations for these people. Instead of looking at these people as helpless, we should think of them as being in a helpless situation.
Unfortunately for these people, aid givers look at them as helpless and lesser beings. They are treated with kid gloves and an attempt is made to provide them with material things. Even this giving of material things does not work very well because of inherent corruption and inefficiencies.
Road blocks to implementation
Over time, welfare sector has lost its focus. Instead of being in problem solving domain, it has shifted its focus to business of helping. This shift in focus has made life difficult for implementers at all levels starting from funding agencies to last mile implementers interfacing directly with beneficiaries.
- Lack of effort/result relationship – There is a very weak link between efforts and results[2] in any welfare project. A poverty reduction scheme trying to give away free food can be extremely efficient at the distribution side (effort) but will hardly make a dent in poverty. To be fair to these schemes, poverty alleviation is not their main aim; it is to help the needy.
- Slow gratification – For a good person involved in welfare project, watching abject poverty on day to day basis, slow pace of progress is biggest de-motivating factor. Even the good things like education, have returns far away in future.
- Hand holding – Humane side of welfare projects leads to some kind of interface between participants and implementers. This last mile implementation requires large number of implementers. It is difficult to find large number of good and honest people in any poor society suffering from extreme deprivation. This results in undesirable people gravitating to such jobs in large number and crowding out good people.
- Vulnerability to corruption – Hand holding and lack of accounting in welfare projects lead to corruption. Corruption happens because systems with weak design/governance allow implementers to benefit with very little chance of getting caught and punished. It is unfair to blame individuals for becoming corrupt. We are all fallible, it is wrong to subject us to temptation.
How not to design a welfare project
A process is as good as its design. Corruption, inefficiency, lack of infrastructure and manpower are all ground realities in poor countries. If one needs to design a working solution, one needs to address all these realities. Unfortunately for the poor of this world, very little effort is ever made to tackle these realities at the design level of welfare processes. It will be very easy to ask a hungry person to protect a plate of food and blame him later for eating it, whereas the fault lies in the initial assignment itself.
A good design overcomes the need for a large number of good implementers, a bad design can mess things up even with best of people working on it.
We will now analyze the characteristics of welfare projects and the causes of failures.
There are two parties involved in any business transaction, sellers and buyers. Sellers have a profit motive, and to achieve that they try to discover an opportunity either by entering a product category or by creating a new product category. Having identified the market segment they try to distinguish themselves by either creating a better product or product image through promotion. Buyers on the other hand try to maximize their purchasing power by looking for the best product deals. This attempt at maximizing the gains on both sides ensures an evolutionary market place, where only the good survives and the inefficient/unwanted is weeded out.
Welfare projects suffer from lack of ownership. By definition these are not-for-profit entities meaning that top officials have no direct interest in the success of these projects. All, these officials derive from these projects is salaries (and bribes if they are not honest). Their only interest is the continuation of their jobs implying the need for the continuation of their organizations. If we successfully eliminate poverty, most of these organizations will become redundant and people employed by them will lose their jobs[3]. This is not much incentive for these people to meet their objectives; in fact it is counter intuitive for them to be result oriented.
Any welfare project has two parties associated with it.
1. Welfare Agencies
Welfare agencies are generally governments, private charities or quasi government bodies like UN agencies. They normally represent a group of people and no body has any personal financial benefit at stake. Implementers do get salaries but it is irrespective of the results achieved. Most of the time the measure of success is the effort involved, not the results achieved. Since there are no personal stakes involved, the cost benefit analysis of the project is not an issue at the time of project design.
2. Beneficiaries
Beneficiaries of welfare projects are generally disadvantaged people. These people do not have requisite capabilities or motivation to do well in society without external help. Due to unconditional nature of welfare support, they look at it as entitlement and are unlikely to do anything which will stop this benefit to them. It is counter intuitive for them to improve their lot and stop receiving these benefits.
I once watched a program on British television where some out of work people on dole were doing the cost benefit analysis of either staying on dole or taking a low paying job. This discussion was happening in a pub and most of them found it advantageous to continue on dole as long as possible unless a better paying job turned up. Initially I was surprised by their attitude but later on I understood the logic of their thought process. It made perfect sense. They work so that they can make money. If they can make the same amount of money without working, it will be meaningless for them to work as the additional revenue earned was negligible. This was true capitalistic thinking in a welfare system and quite an eye opener for me.
“It is not what you give, it is what you empower others to achieve.”
All welfare agencies, by nature, try to solve problems from
supply side. They identify a problem and try to patch it. People are not
educated, open free schools. People are using drugs, go and kill suppliers in
Also due to unconditional nature of help, it is normally usurped by the middlemen (corruption) and undeserving (incorrect targeting). Supply side approaches may work in a perfect system where corruption does not exist. However a corruption free society is a myth especially in extremely poor countries.
When something dies in jungle, nature’s cleaning mechanism
takes over. Scavengers like vultures and hyenas descend in droves to this
windfall. This cleaning mechanism is extremely efficient with even the last bit
of dead body going to feed tiny microbes. Nothing is left. But before microbes
get their share, most of the meat is eaten by bigger scavengers. Most of the
supply side welfare projects suffer from similar fate. Unconditional help is
like dead meat being thrown. Before it hits the ground, scavenger like
politicians, bureaucrats and middlemen descend in droves to take their share
before the microbes (intended beneficiaries) can dig in. Late Mr. Rajiv Gandhi
(Ex Prime Minister of India) went on record saying that only 15% of intended
money ever reached welfare recipients in
What is likely to work?
“Give a man a fish, you feed him once. Teach him how to fish, you feed
him for ever.”
Above saying is a good argument against redistribution of wealth, being practiced by aid agencies. What is missing in this pearl of wisdom is a mention about access to fishing holes. Even the best fishermen will go hungry without access to fishing holes.
As explained in our previous discussion, we have seen repeated failures of welfare systems (Especially in poor countries with weak governance), it will be futile to continue with the same approaches if we want to achieve measurable results.
I am proposing to create an approach of designing welfare schemes with following specific goals
- Process should target the weakest in group in order to best utilize the funding
- Process should be results oriented; a scheme without measurable results is money down the drain. Current approaches rely on measurable efforts like blankets distributed or children fed.
- There needs to be an instant gratification, preferably in the form of cash distribution, for participants to keep them motivated. This incentive should be directly linked to participant’s performance related to a specific measurable objective.
- Participants should be empowered to control their behavior without external expert help. Absence of hand holding is very important to keep systems corruption free.
To a rich person perched high in rarified atmosphere of western
prosperity, everyone in
A lot has been said about trickle down effect of success. It is assumed that a population in general will prosper if any of its segment progresses fast enough. This effect is a reality but is too slow to deal with extreme poverty. If you take a patch of earth sufficiently moist and pour water at top, it will reach lower levels after saturating top layers. However if the clay is extremely dry, a limited amount of water poured at top has little chance of ever reaching the lower layers of soil. We need to change this model, what we need is something like a three dimensional drip irrigation apparatus to evenly distribute the limited amount of water available.
The need for result oriented nature of processes is obvious to everybody in business sector but the concept is lost to implementers in welfare sector. Here the need for results is replaced by a hope for results. Most of the poverty alleviation programs operate on the assumption that results will be achieved. Poverty is still with us despite massive inflow of money into such projects. Not one of these schemes has ever been declared wrong despite lack of results. Failure to achieve results is always attributed to other factors like corruption, lack of education and weak governments. Inadequacy of process design is ignored because everybody knows that the heart is pure and the goal is noble. And nobody can argue with that. How can feeding the poor, clothing the naked and sheltering the homeless be wrong?
World has spent lots of effort on these nonworking solutions
but still everybody wants to continue with these non working approaches. Let us
look at Kolkatta (formerly
To keep a person interested in any activity requires some kind of gratification. It can be argued that threat of force can also generate interest as people are interested in avoiding physical, emotional and financial harm. But we live in a civil society (at least we pretend) and use of force is normally frowned upon except when forces of good march to annihilate forces of evil.
Before we make an unsubstantiated judgment that a process is in the interest of common people, we need to understand that the interest of common people is different from common people being interested in it. By definition all welfare project are in the interest of common people. We however need to subject each and every welfare process to following tests to ensure that target audience will be interested in the success of the welfare process.
- Immediate
gratification – unless there is an immediate gratification like monitory
gain, most of the people are likely to ignore any voluntary process.
Failures of rural education schemes in poor regions are prime examples of
this. Benefits of education are so far away in future that uneducated
parents do not feel motivated to educate their children. On the other
hand, long lines outside free food distribution camps at certain temples
in
- Substantial
– A reward should be substantial in nature. A US$5 per month reward is
unlikely to find many takers in
- Of general interest – Reward should be simple and of general interest. If we were to distribute one quintal of coal to every family, many families will drop out as they may not need coal or find it too cumbersome to carry it from distribution center. On other hand cash given in bank account gives recipient complete flexibility of use. Recipients are free to utilize it for whatever purposes they want. Normally it is very difficult for aid agencies to accept the general utilization of aid money. They like to give aid for a specific purpose. We need to get over this mentality and let people prioritize the usage of welfare assistance.
- Badly needed – Welfare assistance should be given only if it is badly needed otherwise recipients look at it as entitlement. This in turn creates a dependence on dole instead of helping people out of their misery.
Most of the welfare processes suffer from ‘We know best’ syndrome. Process designers assume that the recipients are incapable of taking care of themselves and are greedy enough to latch onto whatever alms are thrown their way. It is assumed that recipients are incapable of responsible behavior. Surprisingly, however, same process designers also assume that the recipients are capable or strong enough to fight a corrupt and inefficient system to claim what is their just share. There is no in-place mechanism to protect welfare recipients from implementers.
Most of the poor countries suffer from corruption and inefficient governance. Due to cost and security concerns it is not possible to implement last mile distribution networks on large scale. All international aid agencies depend upon either local governments or non government organizations for their end point distributions. Local governments are useless entities. Poor are poor because of them. Local non government organizations are created either to siphon off aid money or are acutely lacking in management skills. In fact because of the whole international aid system, honest NGO’s can’t even access aid money.
Constraints on a good welfare scheme
Due to above mentioned short-comings; I would like to subject any welfare scheme to following tests.
- Direct-to-participant
– Aid should flow directly to participants. Any layering creates opportunities
for siphoning off of benefits. All that the local offices of UN aid
agencies in
- Protection from middlemen – Corruption in poor societies is a fact of life and is practically impossible to remove because of lack of punishment to those who indulge in it. It is actually foolish not to indulge in corruption as there is very little downside to it. It is important that a welfare process should have minimal number of implementers, preferably none at all thus creating highest level of protection from corruption.
- No hand holding – Get the customer to move. This is a solution to the last mile problem in any process. Success and rapid spread of cell phones all over the world including in the poor countries tells us that it is possible to rapidly scale processes, provided we get rid of last mile. A cell phone provider does not have to lay wires all over or even visit customers to install phones, thus increasing deployment efficiencies. We need to follow a similar approach while designing welfare processes and ensure that there is no last mile implementation which requires welfare personnel to visit recipients.
- Welfare/responsibility trade off – No self respecting person likes to be on dole. However lack of opportunities and continuous availability of welfare without responsibility creates social dependence and sense of entitlement. All welfare should be provided either as loans to be paid back when the times are better, or the participants should be asked to participate in better social practices. Sections on population control and HIV/AIDS provide excellent examples of this approach.
- Process aloofness – Kindness always kills. Act of forgiving though noble, promotes irresponsible behavior. Charity creates sense of entitlement. A welfare project must have a well defined payoff at the onset and then only the willing should be allowed to participate. It may sound harsh but the non-participants are making an informed choice. Also the concept of payoff gets rid of undeserving and opportunistic people who normally hog all the benefits meant for poor.
- Auditable
– This is the most important part of any project process. If you can not
audit a process afterward, it will invariably lead to corruption,
inefficiency and plain stupidity in execution. Threat of audit and
subsequent punishment is what keeps people honest. Even in a well
developed country like
Rapid population control through controlled
financial incentives
“A nation is not being honest with its poor, when it asks them to
practice small family norms without sharing the benefits it derives from this
practice. If poor were to share in the benefits a nation derives from zero
population growth, zero population growth will become a reality even in the
poorest and most uneducated parts of the world in a very short time.”
I came up with this idea to solve world population problem
in 2002. Idea is simple. Poor people need money. Poor countries like
This is not a new idea and has been presented in various forms before. My contribution is to take it from simple concept, subject it to strict design regimen and implement a trial project.
With what I have seen and learned, I believe that western
model of capitalism is the best (not the perfect) available. Countries in
Coming back to the population control idea, I spent six months designing the process subjecting it to all the constraints I have discussed in previous sections and created a simple process. To test out results, I created a not for profit organization called Project Small Family, Inc. (PSF) with help from some of my friends. There was a one point agenda for this organization to tackle the uncontrollable population growth by financially empowering poor women in third world countries in exchange for practicing small family norms.
The process was successfully tried in the tribal region of Madhya Pradesh, India with 390 participants and achieved 30% drop in pregnancy rates as compared to prevailing pregnancy rates in that region. Were this process to be replicated, it would solve the population crisis in a short time.
Subsequent discussion will explain the project process and rationale for each step. While reading these chapters, try to keep away from moral issues and think only of the participants, treatment meted to them, results and workability of the solution. Also remember that this is a voluntary process and can be audited any time. Morality is a luxury to be enjoyed at a time of plenty. Do not burden the hungry, homeless and extremely poor people with it.
Problem at hand
The world population is projected to grow to between 9 and
10 billion by 2050 from existing 6 billion. Unfortunately most of this growth
will happen in regions too poor to afford it. Due to lack of resources and
awareness, these nations are unable to give proper priority to the worst crisis
facing them in 21st century. Also the approaches used to address this issue
have demonstrated very little success except the one child policy in
Why do we care about
population growth?
What is the right number of people which can be sustained by our planet? There is no correct answer to this question. If you understand evolutionary process, it does not matter how many people we produce. Laws of survival will keep adjusting the population. For example look at the population of mice. If mice were to reproduce at their peak fertility rate without being eaten by others, they will cover the entire Earth in a very short time. But this does not happen. Any excess is eaten away by friendly predators thus maintaining the mice–Earth equilibrium. In fact even the mice–Earth equilibrium itself is a wrong concept. Earth will survive even if all mice disappear for ever. Fortunately we are not mice and we do not need friendly predators to keep our population in check.
Coming back to a magic figure for world population, people have different views. I personally believe that a final number is not the core issue here. Core issue is the quality of life for individuals. If Bill Gates were to produce 1000 children, they can all live happily in Microsoft luxury for ever. Having large number of children is not a drawback if they all can be provided for properly. But you will never see rich people producing large number of children because they understand the subdivision of property if they have too many children.
I am not leading you to the argument that poor people should be forced to have few or no children because they can not provide for them. I do not believe that forced solutions can work in present global society. Ignore the Chinese success story of one child norm. Chinese people have suffered enough and I would not like to repeat that experiment anywhere else even though the results achieved were remarkable.
I would like to see a world where opportunity and expectations are same for everybody. I do not wish to give people things. I wish that if they so desire, are willing to work and are smart enough to take the opportunities, they should be able to do so. We will never have a perfect playing field, but a playing field without too many barriers will be a welcome change.
I would like to see people educated. It is not possible for governments in poor countries to provide quality education to their citizens. Most of the population is incapable of educating their children because of poverty and large family sizes. If we can somehow create an opportunity and properly motivate general public to space their children, it will create a breathing space for every child born allowing for it to be educated.
My argument for encouraging poor people to have smaller families is for the sole purpose of creating educational opportunities for those who are born. If a poor woman decides to produce a dozen children, it is her choice provided she does it out of choice, not because of religious and moral compulsions coupled with lack of education. If a PSF like prosperity option is available to her and she still decides to have a dozen offspring, it means she loves having children enough to let go of prosperity. We should respect that even though it will mean miserable existence for the dozen born rich in love and poor in means. It is about choices.
Barking at the wrong
tree
Apart from the fact that most of the population control
schemes are badly designed, they also address wrong demographics. Most of the
fast growing populations suffer from poverty, lack of education and male
domination. We need to understand that families do not produce children.
Couples do not bear children. It is only the women who produce children. In a
country like
If we ever realistically hope to solve over population problem, we need to talk to these women directly bypassing middlemen (Husband, family, society etc.). I do not mean that we assault them with audio-visual barrage about the benefits of small families; I mean that we help these women so that they can rise and find their place.
A girl child in a poor society starts with three strikes
against her. One, she is poor because her family is poor. Two, she will remain
uneducated as society does not expect her to study. Three, nobody wants her in
a male dominated society. Birth of a boy is a ray of sunshine while birth of a
girl child is considered a curse. We expect that an educated society will treat
its girl children better, but a society transiting towards better education is
different. Upwardly mobile lower middle and middle classes of
If we ever expect poverty and social inequality to go away, we need to focus on girl child. This does not mean printing posters with smiling poor girls or singing songs in their praise. This means that we need to empower them by making them take hard decisions, empowering them to control their situation. If they are the weakest, they need to work hardest. We should not create a sense of entitlement among them simply because they are weakest and suffer most.
In the race of life rich people are already ahead. There are only two ways to bring rich and poor at the same level.
- Ask rich people to drag poor to their level. Not going to happen ever. Rich have worked hard and smart (maybe cheated, stole and robbed too) to separate them from poor. They will do their best to maintain this status quo and preferably widen the gap if possible.
- Other option is for poor to run twice as fast to catch up with rich. Unfortunately for poor, they will not understand this as their educational level is very low. We can induce them to run faster by creating opportunities and inducements, but they need to do the running themselves. PSF process is an attempt to achieve exactly that. It provides them with an instant gratification to do better than rich in the race for better family size. Only in this case better means smaller. If rich and poor have same family sizes, poor will stay behind as they start standing at the back when the race begins. This is reality and there is no other way out. Anything else is just plain wishful thinking.
Ray of hope – Project Small Family, Inc.
Project Small Family, Inc. (PSF) is culmination of what I have discussed earlier. I believe that
- There is need for poverty elimination in third world, in order to create a better and safer global society.
- Growing population because of poverty and male domination feeds this vicious cycle of poverty.
- Lack of education is a function of poverty. It is not possible to create educated class out of extreme poverty.
- Governments in poor countries are incapable of addressing this issue.
- Present approaches to solve over population problem will never work.
- Girl child is the weakest link in this equation. Any attempt to break over-population and poverty cycle without exclusively addressing poor girls is waste of resources.
PSF was started in
January 2003 with following mission
To promote small family norms in under privileged segments of the world population by providing direct financial assistance to female members of the households. This had the objectives of:
- To raise the status of women in their households by improving their financial status
- To raise the financial status of family by promoting smaller size
- To control the runaway population growth in regions where it is least affordable
This model PSF process describes what I would like to see happening if this concept takes off. Pilot projects were implemented with many restrictions and for shorter duration due to funding limitations.
Following justification for model PSF process is based on
the national budget of
Facts
-
-
Present TFR (total fertility rate) for
Assumptions
- Let us assume that on the average these children will be born 2 years apart, at the ages of 18, 20 and 22.
- The average per person-planned expenditure will remain constant over next 50 years at $60. (It is most likely to increase).
The proposal
We propose that the nation offers to share with the lower middle and lower class women in the reproductive age group, any planned money saved by their not producing children or delaying their births. This scheme should be voluntary and verifiable. It should offer them $60 per year per child delayed from the expected national average. For example:
- 18 years old, no children should get $60 per year
- 20 years old, no children should get $120 per year
- 20 years old, one child should get $60 per year
- 22 years old, no children should get $180 per year
- 22 years old, one child should get $120 per year
- 22 years old, two children should get $60 per year
Since these women are saving the nation this money, these benefits should continue for their entire life. This will provide for security in their old age.
Benefits
Since net expenditure by the country is zero, this becomes a zero cost scheme to the country. Money is paid only if childbirth is delayed resulting in money going to potential mothers instead of the children.
It is not
redistribution of wealth
On surface this approach looks like distributing large sums of money to poor women but it is not redistribution of wealth as practiced by other schemes. We are trying to leverage what we have (money) to achieve what we want (smaller world population). 5$ a month is not a large sum but it has a very high leverage in poor countries because of poverty and lack of opportunities. To me, potential participants are not dole recipients; they are clients for a population control product being sold. As you will see in implementation details, every design detail is targeted towards getting them to join and retain them in the program.
Potential interested
parties – implementer side
Ideally governments of poor countries should jump on a
chance to implement this elegant solution to their most pressing problems,
namely overpopulation and extreme poverty. In reality it will be foolish to
think that the rulers of these countries will address this issue without a
reason for instant gratification for themselves. I will limit my reasoning to
If any of these national level leaders decides to take PSF
process on its political agenda, it has the potential to change the political
landscape of this country. Potentially up to 10% of
How PSF process helps target audiences?
Even though financial benefit is the only instant gratification to the beneficiaries, there are myriads of other benefits to the beneficiaries, their families, their country, environment and the developed world.
- We are creating a prosperity option for some of the poorest women in the world, with a steady stream of income along with reduced liability because of smaller families.
- This money is provided directly to women resulting in their controlling the money directly and independent of their men folk. This improves their status in the families.
- Since the money is given through bank accounts and women are required to come to a central place every three months, they learn to deal with banks (probably for the first time in their lives) and travel independently. This helps in the empowerment process.
- Project process does not require any direct involvement of the men in the family. For the first time these women are treated as individuals making independent decisions (not as somebody's daughter, sister or wife). Their successful stay in this project depends entirely on their actions and decisions.
- This project helps the family by bringing in extra money into the family and also by encouraging a smaller family size, which prevents sub-division of resources for individual family members.
- This project helps the region by reducing population pressure and pumping extra money in it. This process is extremely effective as money is completely spent in local economy. These people are extremely poor and likelihood of their spending this money on luxury items is remote.
- This process should make environmental activists very happy as the region is likely to enjoy all the environmental benefits related to a smaller population
In addition there is a larger global issue of disparity and resultant discontent. The huge divide between rich and poor is unlikely to be removed without massive intervention. Normal laws of natural growth will support those who are already ahead in the game of life. Rich people, as a rule, enjoy the benefits of lesser fertility, better education, higher expectation and better return on their already accumulated wealth. On a level playing field they will prosper faster than the poor people.
Any show of discontent on part of disadvantage will result in a massive reprisal from the rich. Without going in the merits of individual act I would like to mention the rise of KKK in US south to retaliate against rising black aspirations, forming of local militias in Bihar, India to put lower castes in their place, annihilation of Afghanistan and Iraq economies as a pay back for 9/11 attacks on world trade towers. There is very little hope for poor people to catch up even under best of the situations.
PSF process on the other hand will be capable of achieving the impossible. It tilts the balance in favor of poor by giving them the security of assured income. It also nudges them towards a lower fertility than the rich, allowing them to catch up. Resultant removal of extreme poverty will create a content third world leading to more peaceful society.
How is PSF process more effective than
other population control approaches?
Most of the traditional family planning approaches rely on PUSHING family planning messages on a target audience, which is mostly illiterate and is unable to see any long-term benefits of maintaining small family structure. PSF process on the other hand is a PULL approach. We do not teach family planning, we only reward it. Beneficiaries can see immediate rewards and themselves seek out the family planning method of their choice in order to continue getting rewards.
In addition PSF process has been designed to be:
- Efficient – PSF process is highly efficient in resource utilization. In a very large scale implementation, more than 99% of the money will reach the participants.
- Simple – A typical PSF project running at optimum level will require one full time person to handle up to 10,000 beneficiaries. Most of the implementation team work is done by call center operators making simple decisions like verifying photographs, visually judging pregnancies etc. None of this requires any specialized training.
- Easy to audit – Since all the benefits are transferred through banking channels, the PSF disbursements can be verified at any point of time.
- Women driven – PSF process is completely driven by the participants. There is no pressure on them from PSF to continue in the project, except the possibility of discontinued benefits if they do not follow PSF process steps. This makes them more aware of their responsibilities towards participation in the scheme. PSF process puts no burden on implementers to ensure continued participation for a specific participant.
Why should PSF
process be implemented?
Given the effectiveness of this process it should be implemented by the parties most likely to benefit from it.
Short cycle solution
PSF process has an end date if implemented properly. We anticipate that if we flood 100% of a region with this process, we will be able to achieve 0% population growth with immediate effect. New participants will only be required to be added for first 10 years. After 10 years, young women of 18 years (who are 8 years old today) will have no experience of seeing large families and will accept small family as way of life without any need for incentives.
PSF process cost structure is totally result oriented. Except for the initial cost of registering, the participants are paid only for delayed pregnancy. Since the process is participant driven, we anticipate results to be dramatic. It is highly likely that the population growth will go down to zero or may even go negative in a fully implemented system in a time as short as six months.
No external aid
requirements
Despite its high cost of preventing pregnancies, PSF process makes very clever use of local budgeting process.
- It does not create any major infrastructure thus avoiding need for any significant imports. Even the high technology components used by central server and PCOs are a miniscule percent of the project size.
- It distributes what was supposed to be potentially spent on the next child to be born. Delay in pregnancy just shifts the expenditure on potential child to a reward to the mother. If numbers are properly worked, a country can come out ahead by paying little less than what should be a proper reward.
- There is no need to depend on external agency like World Bank or UN aid groups. Poor countries are continuing in poverty in the faint hope that either these agencies or Sunny Bono will rescue them some day. It is not going to happen. Former do not care and latter does not have resources. I would like to say this in defense of international aid agencies that they do not owe anything to poor countries. If they do something, great otherwise it is their money to waste. Poor countries need to solve their problems themselves and PSF process is their best bet.
Three step strategy
for global solution
PSF process is very efficient but expensive. No single organization can raise enough resources to implement it worldwide. Our three-step approach is to gradually draw in the organizations with resources or which are likely to benefit most from these activities.
-
PSF has already conducted couple of small projects in
- Approach large foundations or national level politicians to start a bigger set of projects across various nations to demonstrate the effectiveness of this process, irrespective of target country or region.
- After step 2 we expect third world countries to implement this process from their national budgets as this process saves them money on immediate basis.
Performance
measurements
PSF process is designed to be highly result oriented. We capture sufficient data to derive all performance matrixes. We do not need to conduct any external surveys to measure process effectiveness. All results can be calculated from captured quarterly verification data.
- Interest Ratio -From the existing population profile we will have an idea of number of women who qualify for PSF benefits. The number of applications received in a target area in relation to the number of eligible women will show the interest ratio for this process. This number will not be very exact as the poverty profile data available may not be very accurate.
- Acceptance Ratio - This is the number of women who join the project versus the number of women continuing in the project. This is expected to be almost 100% as very few will reject the free money once they get used to it.
- Drop Out Rate (DOR) - This is the most significant number demonstrating the effectiveness of the PSF process. This is the percentage of women dropping out of the program every quarter. It is assumed that the reason for their not showing up is their pregnant status. This number will be used to calculate the effectiveness of the program. This number can be cross checked with regional birth records to ensure accuracy.
Guidelines for large project implementation
A process is as good as its implementation. It is assumed that a large scale PSF process implementation will face ground realities of slack governance, corruption, participant disinterest, lack of infrastructure etc. Process design has to address all these issues if it is to succeed. Following sections will first introduce the process as envisioned and subsequently explain how to address each potential problem.
Even those not interested in over population, should go through this discussion as it talks about how to anticipate and deal with problems. There is no attempt to find good implementers. Instead the process creates safety and get rids of those who impede success. There is no attempt to improve the performance of implementers; the process just gets rid of those who are not up to the mark, implementers and participants alike. It is designed to work like the process of evolution and I hope it will prove to be as effective when implemented. This is a must read for those who are interested in any kind of problem solving.
Large scale PSF process implementation will be based on
centralized
Video call center
- All participants will go to registered PCO (Public Call Office run by independent venders) style video conferencing facility.
- Participants will be given a two week window for quarterly verification events thus allowing them some leeway in visiting these verification centers.
- They will provide their identification number to log into central servers. This will verify
· Identification number
· Due date
· Finger prints
· Face recognition
- Once the beneficiary has been identified by database software, the video session will be transferred to a female operator who will verify the pregnancy status by visual inspection.
- If the operator is not able to determine the status within 15 seconds or is unsure she can pass the video session to a supervisor.
- If the supervisor is unable to make a decision, the participant will be asked to visit a PSF lady doctor at a central place.
- Participant will pay a fee of Rs. 5 (Approx. US$ 0.10) to the PCO operator. (This fee will discourage them from making unnecessary visits to PCO’s. This will also cover the cost of PCO operations. Considering 200 participants per day a PCO operator should be able to do a business of Rs. 25,000 per month.
- PCO operators will need the following
· Video phone or PC with video conferencing software/hardware
· Finger print scanner
· Printer for issuing receipt and next appointment details (This will have the picture of participant)
· Broad band internet connection or high band width communication line. In absence of non availability of even a cell phone, high cost satellite phones can be used
· Female attendant to assist participants. These attendants will be registered with the central servers and will be required to be present during the session.
- Participants will be able to go to a PCO of their choice. This will encourage quality of service. This will also prevent operators from extorting bribes from the participants for letting them connect to the central system.
Central server
- It will have a database containing all participant information along with the recordings of all their verification sessions.
- It will have a bank of terminals manned by female operators trained to identify pregnancy status and verify that right participant is present. They will be aided by stored historical pictures, finger prints and video clips of the same participant from previous visits.
- The operator assignment will be random thus preventing collusion with participants.
- Entire session will be recorded and randomly reviewed by supervisors.
- Review will also help in identifying operators who make too many mistakes.
Advantages
- A central server with 100 operators can handle approx. 50,000 participants per day. This will cover 3 million participants considering a quarterly verification cycle.
- There will be no need for PSF people to go in the field. Everything (Initial registration, periodic verification and audits) can be done with the help of these video conferencing PCO’s.
- Since all sessions will be recorded, it will help reduce the possibility of fraud.
- Their will no need for field offices, officers and other related infrastructure. This will drastically reduce the cost of operation. It could be as low as 1% of disbursement amount.
- The technology component in the central server is fairly simple and most of the processes are already well established in call center operations, video conferencing, face and finger print recognition software.
Disbursement to
participants
- All money will be disbursed through bank accounts
- Banks will be provided with participant photographs and finger prints
- In order to handle undocumented participants who are unable to open bank accounts, a new bank instrument (Picture money order) can be created. This will have picture and finger prints of the participant. Banks will collect matching finger prints before cashing these instruments. The instrument will be sent directly to the bank.
- Participants will know in advance the bank branch and the date of fund being available
- Normally the banks will be reluctant to take these poor people as customers and may require service charges for these facilities. An alternative solution will be to use the upcoming network of ATM’s with these participants registered as ATM only customer.
Having presented the PSF implementation details, we will now focus on individual issues and how this process addresses them.
Initial registration
In a country like
Instead, the approach is to verify data in-house as much as possible using statistical methods and get rid of any requisite documentation. We will try not to make individual decisions. As far as PSF process is concerned, it needs to ensure that
- Women are poor
- Of the age they are claiming
- Have number of children as claimed at the time of registration
- Same women appear at the pregnancy verification event as initially registered
- Duplicate registrations are not allowed
- Does not allow men to join
We will let the women claim whatever age and number of children they declare at the time of registration using video conferencing. This registration will give us initial photo and finger prints along with a self declaration that they belong to poor segment of society. We will also ask them for any identification document they may have and record its serial number. Having a document is useful only if our statistical methods fail to establish them in our program. We will also ensure that we do not accept any official document created after the PSF project start date eliminating the sudden rush to get new government documents. Any body not having any documentation will have to rely on passing the PSF statistical tests as described later.
You will notice that we have totally bypassed local administration by not insisting on any documentary proof for their claims. This frees up poorest women to join the program without running after government machinery. This also prevent any extra load on local government officials as otherwise they will have to do extra work to provide and verify any requisite documentation.
First a look at
statistical verification technique
Since we have all our data on online computer storage and access to a large number of operators, we can develop some very efficient approximation techniques for data verification. For example we can show a picture of a participant to 30 randomly chosen operators for two seconds each and ask them to guess her age. Computer software can then calculate average age after removing far off guesses and arrive at a number. If this average number is within accepted variation (say within 2 years) from what the participant is claiming, we shall accept her claim as valid. Total time taken in this approach is 60 seconds (2 seconds multiplied with 30 operators) and will cost us very little as any statistical verification can be scheduled at off peak hours. Our approach to statistical verification will also create a load balanced system in our call center. Whenever live call volume goes down, software can automatically schedule statistical verification and audit activities to keep operators occupied.
Pregnancy
verification
In a pregnancy verification activity, software will randomly select an operator who speaks the regional language spoken by the participant. This operator will have access to previous pictures and video recordings of this participant. This session will last for approximately 15 seconds and will involve the following
- Participant verification – Face recognition and finger print matching software will try to determine a hit, comparing the current and stored data. In addition the operator will do a visual check.
- Pregnancy status – A side profile of the participant will be compared with previously stored pictures and a determination will be made about pregnancy status. 98% of the cases will be negative. In case of a positive determination, participant will be asked to confirm the pregnancy. In case of dispute participant will be referred to a doctor and the cost will be passed on to the participant if her claim is wrong. In any event all disputed cases will go through multiple audits as described later.
- Live test – In any large scale disbursal of money, hackers will show up to feed stored pictures in place of live participants. To prevent against such creative interferences, operators will ask participants for some specific physical activity to be performed, like raising her right hand or touching her head. To avoid slackness on operators’ part, software will randomly generate such live test requests from a list of activities to be performed.
Age verification
Age verification will be done by statistical average approach as described earlier. This will accept the participants claim in case the average is within permissible variance.
Verification of
number of children
This is a tough one. We do need this information for determining the starting benefits for a specific participant as their benefits get reduced if they have more children. However it is impossible to judge this information just by looking at pictures. Asking local implementers to collect and verify this will lead to management and cost overheads along with possibility of corruption.
We shall have a published policy of throwing anybody out of the project if she has provided any wrong information leading to increased benefits. Details of the policy are described later. It will be strong enough to be a deterrent in case somebody tries to give wrong information at the time of registration.
In addition PSF will compare statistical claimed averages against the national trends to determine possible large scale frauds in number of children declaration.
Name verification
Name verification is not important for the process implementation as we will be using other techniques for duplicate detections. It is in the interest of the participants to provide correct name as they have to open bank accounts in order to collect benefits. Self interest of participants will ensure correct names.
Prosperity
verification
We intend to widely publish the names of all the beneficiaries. This will ensure that every body knows who all are claiming benefits. In close knit poor societies, shame of being on dole will prevent rich people from claiming benefits.
We will also use our wonderful statistical approximation technique to look for people who look prosperous. This will just go by looking for people who are relatively overweight (fatness is a sign of prosperity in a poor society) and exclude them. This is not a foolproof method as it will qualify rich and healthy women but we do not expect them to show up at our verification centers. Their will be inadvertent omissions but that is just plain bad luck. This project is not an entitlement, if the process makes some genuine mistakes we will have to accept that.
In addition, list of beneficiaries will be cross checked against the list of people having property, cars and telephones to filter out those who do not qualify.
Also the meager amount being disbursed in small monthly installments and the headache of visiting verification centers every quarter will make it unattractive to those who are better off. Every body wants free money but will not go far if the pay off is not substantial.
Duplicate
registration
This is the most important issue facing PSF process. Given the large amount of money availability, people will make every effort to register multiple times. Advent of advance face recognition and finger print matching software puts PSF process one step ahead of those trying to deceive it. We will have the advantage of having all our data online at central servers and this will facilitate the duplicate detections across entire list of beneficiaries.
Prevent men from
joining
Lure of free money coupled with extreme poverty will induce many men to defraud the system by impersonating as women. PSF approach of not insisting on documentation and relying on statistical data will make it easy for such impersonation. We will have to again rely on statistical judgment to determine the sex of applicants. In case of doubt we can send the participant to a medical facility for sex verification.
Penalty for fraud
Since large scale PSF process is intended to be run by national governments, very strong deterrents can be built against those who try to defraud it. We suggest the following
- As long as a person does not derive any excess benefits, there should not be any penalty. This will encourage undocumented poor to join in the program.
- Benefits should be considered a loan to be paid back (with compounded interest and penalties), if misrepresentation was made by prosperous women to join the program.
- For those misstating number of children at the time of registration to derive extra benefits should be required to pay back the benefits with interest and penalties.
- There should be zero tolerance policy of terminating any one misstating the facts to derive extra benefits. A wrong name or address does not give any material advantage and should not be penalized.
Create incentive for
fraud detection
Corruption flourishes because those who indulge in it benefit from it. Others just stand on the sidelines and watch as it is not their duty to stop it. Those entrusted with preventing corruption are generally either inefficient or corrupt, resulting in a no win situation. PSF implementers should create a monitory reward for those helping detect any attempt to defraud the system. These rewards should be based on actual fraud prevented and should be on first come first serve basis encouraging people to act quickly. There should also be a nonrefundable deposit before a complaint is registered as it will discourage false reporting.
Central call center
operators
When Henry Ford created his first assembly line, basic concept of master craftsmen making superior products was shattered. Instead of hiring experts in car making, he could now hire minimally qualified people and train them to do something simple like mounting tires or weld a specific spot on a car door.
Entire PSF project implementation relies on call center operators. Simplicity of process allows us to use low cost unskilled operators with minimal training requirements. Their performance and effectiveness can be monitored by software as each and every decision made by them goes through subsequent verification or is a part of statistical guessing of age, prosperity etc. Software tools can be developed to train and monitor their performance. Those not performing can be removed from the operator pool.
PSF central software
system
PSF process is highly centralized because of its control structure. A centralized system is prone to large scale corruption and inefficiency if not designed and implemented correctly. PSF design protects it from beneficiaries, last mile implementers, middle men and field staff. The only step remaining is to protect PSF project from itself. Following is recommended to protect PSF process from top level functionaries
- Publishing data and results – It is proposed that all the PSF data including the results be published on daily basis thus creating a transparent system. The data should be made available in electronic form so as to allow analysis by third parties including investigative media
- Publish and make available all software code and specifications as implemented, in an open source initiative style
- Statistical analysis of data to figure out local systematic fraud – Tools should be developed to analyze data in order to pick anomalies and identify possible systematic frauds.
- Multi-audit – Data should be made available to multiple agencies for audit. Some good candidates are Human Rights Commission, National Organization for Women etc.
Message to implementers of PSF projects
In the course of trying to peddle my wonderful approach to politicians, bureaucrats and international aid agencies, I came across many people who were decent enough to listen to me. Except for very few of them most of the people were quick to suggest improvements to the process within ten minutes into the presentation. They wanted me to include additional components in order to improve the effectiveness of this process. I can understand the reason behind these suggestions as people have their own ideas and they would like to help.
It is possible that someday this process may get implemented on large scale. If this happens, there will be an attempt by the implementers to improve the process, in order to make it multi purpose or to put a more humane face on it. I have following to say to these people.
- Do not change the process unless you have put the changes through the tests as proposed in this book.
- Multi purpose things though they sound attractive, have very little utility in life. Just think how many times you use your Swiss knife in a day.
- Putting a humane face on a process is required only when its effectiveness is in doubt. We write songs about our brave soldiers because we do not pay them enough, on the other hand nobody writes motivational songs for high paying jobs like software engineering, investment banking etc.
PSF process would like to thank
PSF process is not an original idea. I have tried to draw from various successful practices from all over the world and included in this design. Following is a representative list
Micro financing
PSF process was inspired by the claimed successes of micro financing projects in poor countries especially in Bangla Desh. I have many reservations about the viability of these projects and their ability to collect back the money when these projects are finally stopped.
What I like about these projects is the direct distribution of money to end users instead of creation of large infrastructure as done by other aid projects. What these micro financing projects lack is a quid pro quo. Participants do not give back any thing in return for the opportunity to avail these unsecured loans.
Dolphin training at
sea aquariums
If you have ever watched a video report about how an elephant or a horse is broken into domesticity, you feel sorry about the plight of these animals. On the other hand a video on how dolphins are trained is a welcome sight where the power of positive persuasion (offer of food as reward) is used to get these animals to perform wonderful tricks as seen in sea aquarium shows.
Human beings, even in poor countries, are intelligent people. It is possible to create reward based behavior changes instead of using punishment. PSF tries to take this high road of using rewards instead of punishment.
Olympics
Olympic Games are perfect example of a result oriented system. Reward is a gold medal and its associated glory. Task is to show up on a particular day at a particular time and be first in a specific event. As long as you have followed all the rules, glory is yours. There are no excuses. You could be the best in the world but if you are late for the event, you lose. If you have a cold and are not able to perform on that day, you lose. You trip while running, you lose. You are caught cheating, you lose. System does not allow for goof ups. And you get only one chance in four years.
As a result of this unforgiving process, Olympics help create some of the finest athletes. There is no slack, no entitlement, only an opportunity to achieve unmatched glory. The no nonsense approach of PSF process has been inspired by the unforgiving code of Olympic Games. Instead of helping the fallen as others do, PSF will reward those who stay up and not fall.
Two heads are better than one. Next logical step would be to
use three heads instead of two and so on. Good folks of
Spread of cell phones
Rapid spread of cell phones around the world is testimony to the success of a solution if the last mile distribution is simplified. Unlike land line telephones where a wire needs to be laid to each subscriber’s door, a cell phone implementation requires just the distribution of hand sets to end users.
A complicated last mile design requires large number of trained people and has all kinds of man management issues. PSF process has greatly simplified the last mile step. Unlike other welfare projects requiring handholding of participants, PSF process stays away from the participants and forces them to conduct the last mile connection.
Assembly line
No task is too complicated if you break it down deep enough.
Henry ford understood it quite well. Assembly line concept has made it possible
to use low skill labor instead of master craftsmen. PSF process uses call
center operators with minimal training by creating a design where only simple
decisions need to be made. To overcome the imperfections in even this simple
yes/no type of decisions, it makes use of
Just like an auto assembly line, there are no experts in PSF operations.
PCO (Public call
office)
Sometimes a simple idea can make a big difference in public
life. Before liberalization took place in
Before I digress too much, let me come back to phone services as managed by our beloved GOI. There was a waiting list of approximately a couple of years if you wanted a phone. For those who did not have these phones (which was most of the population) only option was to use payphones managed by GOI. During that time I rarely saw a working payphone as the upkeep of these GOI phones was done by GOI itself.
Then something unheard of happened in this utopia. Some enterprising bureaucrat convinced the Minister for Communication to allow private individuals to manage these payphones. This service was known as Public Call Office or PCO. Suddenly everything changed. Now you had payphones mushrooming everywhere with private operators competing with each other. They provided air cooled place to sit down while you made telephone calls or waited for your turn. They provided messaging service for people without phones and added lot of other values to the basic telephone service. I have never ever witnessed such a qualitative change in life by a change so simple.
PSF is using this successful PCO model for its last mile solution. PSF has replaced its entire field staff requirements with video conferencing enabled PCOs operated by private parties. PCO operators do not make any decisions or collect data. All they do is to provide a connection to PSF central offices and are paid by the participants for services provided.
But for the inspiring example of PCOs and its success in
Call centers
Most of you who live in developed western nations are familiar with call centers. Before this concept started, services were limited to physical locations of service providers. If you needed to deal with a bank, you drove to the bank and conducted your transactions. If there was a wait at this branch, you had no choice but to wait as the next branch was far away and you had no idea of the waiting period at other branch.
A call center eliminates these problems. You can now do your banking from the comfort of your home or work. The waiting period has gone down as all the queues at individual banks are now merged and served by a collective of operators resulting in increased efficiency and reduced wait time. This has also brought down the cost of banking.
PSF relies heavily on this model for its central server in order to reduce cost and improve implementation efficiency. It also helps in eliminating corruption by separating participants from implementers.
“True equality for women will happen on the day when number of male
prostitutes in the world becomes equal to number of female prostitutes.”
Equality is based on one’s perception from the side of the
fence, one is sitting. In
Modern technology has brought female feticide in large numbers to Indian middle class. Demographers are calling this gender imbalance, a crisis of epic proportion for future generations where a large proportion of young males will be left out in cold without female companions. At the risk of sounding callous, I can not find any arguments against this practice.
- It is the right of families to choose the children they want to raise. If these people are willing to terminate a female fetus, they are unlikely to take good care of her, even if the society forces them to have this female child. This child will always be unwanted in that family.
- A shortage of females in future may create a demand and supply solution to female inequality problem. It may even create a reverse dowry situation and will eventually lead to female children having more value in families.
- Hoping that common sense can prevail by educating the society in general is just wishful thinking. These practices have evolved over time and will not go away unless shocked by sudden prosperity (unlikely) or gender imbalance.
American women today enjoy better equality than their
counterparts in
-
It took a long time to get women voting rights in
- The real revolution happened with the advent of modern appliances, freeing women from household chores and allowing them to enter work places in large numbers
- The next big step was the advent of birth control allowing women to plan their families. There is a huge difference between looking after two children as opposed to raising six.
But the better empowered as compared to Indian women does not mean that women in west are equal to men. They still share disproportionate burden of household work and child rearing. Also the number of women in top positions in politics, industry and entertainment is miniscule. This situation will continue for quite sometime as the momentum created by earlier wealth in the hands of men will favor men in gender race.
HIV/AIDS eradication using PSF methodology
As mentioned in population control section, it is possible to minimize spread of HIV/AIDS in poor countries using a PSF like methodology. People do not die of diseases, they die of poverty. AIDS is a good example. Today very few die in western countries of this dreaded disease but the spread in poor countries is unchecked despite massive efforts by world health agencies.
Using the PSF model we can do a massive buy out of AIDS in poor countries. We should create a system where young girls in the age group 12 to 30 are offered monthly financial incentive to stay HIV negative. The scheme should be as follows
- Allow 12 to 25 years old girls to register in the program
- Collect face and finger print identification along with DNA sample
- Collect blood samples every year resulting in minimal contact with participants
- If the sample is HIV negative, provide $5 per month to this girl for next year
- If the sample turns out to be HIV positive, drop this girl from the program
What will happen?
This money will force these girls and their families to find ways to keep receiving this windfall. There are many ways to achieve the objective including abstinence, use of condoms or having sex with safe partners only.
Their will be many unfortunate failures like babies born with HIV or the ones who contract it through blood transfusion. Their will be those who will try local medicine or voodoo to stay HIV free. But slowly the population will wise up to real solutions as they will seek proper help and receive it.
The Cost
The cheapest treatment for AIDS in
Why this solution
makes sense?
Despite their documented successes, reward based approaches are not very popular. Human beings have genetically evolved to react to crisis situations. In evolutionary scheme of things immediate survival is way above quality of life and future longevity. When we see a person in crisis, our kindness genes (I just made that up) get activated. That is why people react positively to charitable projects involving pictures of crying or dying people whereas same people will be lukewarm to the idea of charitable schools.
There are two possible way to address a problem.
First is to fix it after the fact. Most of the AIDS dollars go towards treating people who are already suffering from it as it makes sense to help those who are needy. Efforts to prevent AIDS are mostly restricted to educating people about the downside of it. Unfortunately in poor and uneducated societies this does not work.
Second approach is to be proactive and ensure that people do not develop AIDS. PSF like scheme described above will be able to achieve just that. By encouraging young girls to remain AIDS free we should be able to break the transfer mechanism for its spread. Targeting only girls will exclude the spread of AIDS in gay community. To overcome this problem, we will have to include men in our reward scheme thus doubling the expenditure. In case money is available, we should go for general implementation irrespective of sex. But in a real world situation we will never have enough money and I would like to restrict money incentive for girls only. They are the poorest in this target audience and will be more vulnerable to positive influence of this scheme.
Note: There are those who will prefer AIDS awareness education/campaign over PSF like approach. Unfortunately these campaigns do not work because they are not selling $100 bills for $99.
You may have noticed my repeated attempts at targeting women only. There is a reason behind it.
PSF or PSF like processes are designed to be opportunistic. Just like a tiger stalking a herd of buffalo tries to pick the weakest animal because that is easiest to chase and capture, I have identified poor women as most disadvantaged thus most vulnerable to positive influences.
PSF process is just an attempt to con poor women into prosperity and I hope this con works.