#144 Yeh Democracy Hai Aur Yahan Hamari Pawri Ho Rahi Hai

Back with a new edition of this newsletter. We spent the past 5 weeks trying to work on a few long pending items that needed our attention. Unsurprisingly, the earth went on spinning and nobody missed us.&#160;Not much work got done either.<br/><br/>Anyway, things happened in these intervening weeks. We reached a billion vaccine jabs last week. Quite an achievement. We often lament about the ineffective state and the poor health infrastructure in India. But there&#8217;s no denying there are times when the state can will its agencies to reach an ambitious target. <br/><br/>The vaccination number was a measurable target, its benefits to people were clear and there was a vaccine administering infrastructure available that&#8217;s been built over the years. So, the state moved with speed and purpose because the incentives to get this right were aligned to the government&#8217;s desire to strengthen its self-image of being effective and driven. These occasional instances of the state doing its work often lead people to momentarily forget the overreach and the many subsequent failures of the state that are apparent all around us. <br/><br/>There&#8217;s a common sentiment expressed in such situations - if only we could tackle all our problems the same way we did this. Unfortunately, the other problems that we must solve as a nation aren&#8217;t so unambiguous, their solutions aren&#8217;t easy top-down diktats that need to be followed, nor are the interests of everyone so clearly aligned to those solutions. The state will continue to flounder there.&#160;<br/><br/>That apart it was business as usual in India. A megastar is being hounded because of what appears like a minor infraction of his son. The underlying motives are open for speculations because the remarkable focus the NCB has shown in this case belies their previous track record in controlling drug use in India. The news channels have picked it up with the same fervour like they did with the suicide of an actor last year. We wrote about that episode <a href="h