Unintended Consequences

The economic prospects of Indian fishing communities are stranded at sea. More than 4 million people in India depend on marine fisheries for daily sustenance. India is also the world’s second largest fish producing nation with 250,000 fishing boats, contributing to about 7% of global fish production and the blue economy of the country contributes 4% to the country’s GDP. However, this community is the most vulnerable to climate change and the policies to make them climate resilient is abysmal, limited to subsidies which have not had the desirable consequences.  How can we solve this problem and make this community climate resilient? To answer some of these questions, Devleena Bhattacharjee deep dives into climate resilience interventions for India's fishing communities and its potential impact.

Recent developments in Indian cities have highlighted the reality of India’s climate problems to the Indian people. We experienced El Nino last year which reduced our crop output which had the consequence of rising inflation in the country. We experienced massive levels of pollution in Delhi and Mumbai. Now, the city of Bengaluru where I live is experiencing bouts of heatwaves and water shortage. According to the Global Climate Risk Index 2021, India is the 7th most affected nation due to climate change. Monetarily, India loses $87 billion annually due to climate induced extreme weather events. India has taken note of these consequences and is working hard towards implementing the national plan on climate change. But the plan suffers from some acute problems.

In 2019, incessant rains in the country which were the heaviest monsoons in 25 years, caused severe flooding in over 13 states, leaving over 1600 dead and millions displaced from their homes. However, in the same year, the country also faced severe droughts in the southern states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh and also parts of Maharashtra and Gujarat. What explains this dire situation of excessive rainfall and droughts in India? I speak to Vishwanath S (The Zen Rainman), Visiting Professor at Azim Premji University and the Director of Biome Environmental Solutions to decode India’s water conundrum and what the way ahead for us and our water policy should be.

Why did a sound policy like Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for electronics fail? The answer might lie in something called as Policy Entropy. In this episode of Unintended Consequences, I speak to Pranay Kothasthane, Deputy Director of Takshashila Institute and co-author of the book Missing in Action. He decodes why PLI by design is bound to fail and how we can anticipate the unintended when we design industrial policies.

Who are gig-workers? Why are there a flurry of policies around them? And why we should care? These are some of the questions you might have asked yourself when you read about Rajasthan's recent gig-worker policy. But like all policies in India, this policy is also not perfect. To decode this policy I spoke to Anupam Manur. He is an Economist and Assistant Professor at Takshashila Institute, a Bangalore based think tank. We discuss the fundamentals of the gig-economy and why the Rajasthan policy has good intentions but the recipe for bad implementation.

Turns out that we all suffer from decision myopia, which is, when we are in an industry, we are so focused on the short-term outcomes that we forget the long-term objectives. This is the reason why most of the disruptions that happen within an industry are made by people who are outsiders to that industry. In this episode of The Disrupt Show, I speak to Satyajit on how to overcome decision myopia through a simple exercise of asking better questions.

“I don’t need to be the smartest person in the room, but I must know enough to differentiate medicine from snake oil. That to me is decision making.” This is what Satyajit Rout told me when I asked him what is good decision making. Satyajit is a decision science practitioner and in this episode of The Disrupt Show, he answers some important questions about decision making. What is good decision making? What are mental models and how do they impact our decisions? Can you really trust your gut? These are some of the questions we aim to answer through this podcast. In this multipart series on decision science Satyajit will tackle some of well held notions on decision science and give us a look into how to make our decisions better and fool proof.