Towards the final semester, around the time that the Rs 64 crore Bofors kickback scandal was consuming the country, a bunch of us took our economics veteran, codenamed Attila the Hun, by surprise. “Is it unimaginable to have isms other than capitalism and socialism?" we asked her. “Why are economic theories and models obsessed largely with the means of production? Why is GDP the only marker of the wealth of a nation? Why don't we have a more humane and caring economics?"
Attila, no mean economist herself, glared us down. As if we were precocious six-year-olds, she said sarcastically, “You can propose these ideas to a foreign university. If nothing, you may be given some bold thought award." That did it. We began dreaming the fancy stuff: London School of Economics & Political Sciences, Harvard University, MIT...you get the drift. We didn't believe they were bold, but what the heck. Then ‘real life' intervened. We found other callings, shelved our ideas of “humane economics" and “real wealth" and “alternative isms" until two events happened, independent of each other, in two years: in 2009, Elinor Ostrom became the first woman economist to win the Nobel prize in economic sciences for her work on showing how common resources are successfully managed by people using them rather than by governments or private companies; and last year, the formidable Riane Eisler released her book, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, which received rave reviews from worthies such as Dr Jane Goodall and Gloria Steinem, among others. It was tempting to imagine the outcome if we had, individually or collectively, taken our economics—and our bold ideas—more seriously than we had back then; we might have done some quality research with such economists.
Boldness, whether it be in thought, action or imagination, comes rather naturally to the young. So it should, given the lack of burdens of personal and collective histories, their new-minted worldview, and a sense of daring, though, of course, the youth don't hold a patent for boldness. As the nation gets younger—half of India's current population is below 25 years of age and over 65 per cent below 35 years—it should presumably get bolder too. Can we safely reckon that the boldness quotient in India, had it been enumerated along with other census statistics, would be higher than it ever has been? Is this the boldest generation of young Indians—at least of young Indians living in the cities? Indeed, there are issues in ascribing characteristics or attributes to an entire set of people grouped only on the basis of their age, but boldness quotient is a broad-brush question.
From all that abounds around us, it would seem the boldness quotient is at its highest, young people playing with concepts that push the frontiers of life and life choices: wireless energy, water as fuel, trans-national research, robot-guided surgery, merging Picassos and Razas with the innumerable possibilities offered by e-design, making computers irrelevant, creating food in labs to feed the world's burgeoning population, building holiday homes on the moon, even the ultimate idea of them all—to beat death. But it needn't be just that one big idea: assertiveness can be shown in small actions too. For many young, upper-middle-class youths, their boldness quotient is expressed in strong personal choices, such as escaping from a hostel warden or PG landlord at 2 am for a weekend bash, indulging in rave parties, learning skydiving, walking out of their most-feared-teacher's lecture, committing suicide, working with venomous snakes, walking confidently out of a sex-shop, ambling the city streets almost naked, raising adopted children as a single mother...the list can go on. The natural energy, ambition, innovative spirit comes through in some ideas put across at forums like TED (technology, entertainment, design), an idea-exchange conference that has quite a following online: tax systems that allow payers to decide how their money is spent, taxing stock profits at a percentage inversely proportional to the time of investment, turning jails into schools and building a world free from money of any kind. Read the full report here.
Source: Smruti Koppikar, Outlook India, October 31, 2011.
