In 2017, US economist Richard Thaler, one of the founding I fathers of behavioral economics, won the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Prof Thaler, of Chicago Booth business school, co-wrote the global best seller Nudge, which looked at how people make choices and how a population can be nudged towards better behavioral outcomes. It was called the NUDGE Theory. Some Western Nations used it to find innovative ways of changing public and economic behavior.
I only got to know about The Nudge Theory when Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize in 2017 and began reading about it. Halfway through my reading, I realized, with a start, that Prime Minister Modi had been using it ever since he came to office in 2014. Had he heard about it before or was it his instincts? He used the Nudge Theory in so many welfare and other projects even before it became known worldwide after 2017.
Modi even nudges his bureaucrats, cabinet ministers and Chief Ministers to timely action and dedicated goals that are result driven. This is the kind of accountability India has never seen before with strict timelines for building infrastructure, toilets, housing, piped water, laying of fibre optic cables, and prodding people into seamless payments by UPI. It's astounding how much has been achieved in just 10 years.
The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Misson), started as early as 2nd October 2014, was to nudge Indians to clean up their environment and he did it by taking a broom, along with several ministers and supporters, and sweeping an area clean. The video of a PM doing this went viral and Indians were In 2017, US economist Richard Thaler, one of the founding I fathers of behavioral economics, won the Nobel Prize for Economics.
The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Misson), started as early as 2nd October 2014, was to nudge Indians to clean up their environment and he did it by taking a broom, along with several ministers and supporters, and sweeping an area clean. The video of a PM doing this went viral and Indians were suddenly made to realize how much debris and muck we allow ourselves to live it.
But this wasn't his only effort at changing behaviors. There was the huge effort to make the poor people of India open bank accounts even with zero deposits; the demonetization scheme, came in suddenly but after months of talking about how corruption that led to black money was being stashed at homes and lockers and was literally eating into our formal economy and taxes. Every new scheme he brought out was spoken about in his Mann Ki Baat, from gas cylinders for the poor to toilets and homes. During the Covid lockdown, again our PM used nudging people to accept a lockdown and made sure that they would be provided with free rations and welfare.
In fact, Modi was several years ahead in behavioral economics as bit by bit, he made Pay TM and UPI and cashless payments a norm.
I have never met our Prime Minster but my interest in him as a journalist started when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat around 2010. A friend of mine from the UK was posted to India as the head of a major corporation. She told me that they had wanted to do business in India and when they went to Andhra Pradesh, they were given a run around by bureaucrats and ministers for months. It seemed the government then was not into attracting business, so they went to Gujarat with their proposal to meet the Chief Minister Modi.
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