Samaj, Sarkar, Bazaar - Why does the citizen end up drawing the short straw?

Some 12 years ago, still in the private business fold, I began waking up to the potential for larger good that the businesses and technologies that I was promoting held inherently. The idea of the larger good was never shot down by potential business partners, but was never acted upon either, even if there was the promise of large rewards over time and scale.

Simply put, there was no room for the germ of altruistic thought even if it made business sense in the boardroom. The presiding deity of the boardroom was the shareholder ostensibly, but really it was all about quarterly numbers. A bird in hand always was better than two in the bush.

More so when competitiveness and a generic approach to business was the only model that the boards knew. 'More of the same', being the operative principle. And then, there were of course the interests, that were vested as they were. The Bazaar has its own predilections. The bazaar is also clever.

The Public challenges have of course always been large opportunities too; but not a priority to anyone who could make the penny drop. A public that was not even asking, and perhaps not even awake. Most advocacy then falls on deaf years. The Samaj is just too busy dealing with existential stuff to think beyond the convenient.

Governance neither was in a hurry nor did it have the capacity to climb out of its box of habit. Fortunately, that is now less so; but only just. The motive force is just not there. Brushing things under the carpet is far easier. Sarkaars world over are mostly somnolent, happy to get someone else to do things for them. That makes it a happy hunting ground for the Trojan Horses of the Bazaar; who are born out of the rent seeking proclivities that the bazaar tends to develop rapidly.

As they say in Hindi, ‘maa bhi bachche ko doodh tab hi pilati hai jab vo rota hai (even the mother only feeds the baby when it cries)’.

The result is that public causes remain orphans. Particularly Public Health issues. It is no secret that a Vitamin D3 Deficiency is epidemic in proportions, and is a fountainhead of a very large part of the disease burden that exists. Conventional supplementation methods have failed miserably in making a dent on the problem and the causal factors are not about to change anytime soon. The only remaining option is to surface methods of sustained delivery which ensure absorption and compliance. Platform technologies that can solve the problem successfully can be developed indigenously to make them available to pharma companies to be able to produce products that can help address the problem at scale.

On their own pharmaceutical companies are understandably reluctant to invest money in R&D on a low return product, regardless of how large the volume can be. The reluctance could stem from development, regulatory and commercial risks. Existing players in the space see no reason for further investment in the space or are keen to protect their existing business.

There are a number of such examples in healthcare, and surely even more in other domains where innovative platform approaches can make a very significant difference to the life of the common man. Things however keep falling between the stools of Samaj, Sarkaar and Bazaar in absence of an answer to the age old question – who will bell the cat?

A country of 1.4 Billion people has a viable case for its government to invest and bear the risk in developing platform technologies and then co-opt small and medium business to address projects of public good which big business, with its unique dynamics, may be understandably reluctant to. Trickle down may be too slow a process to trust when human lives are at stake.

The fear of failure, and its possible retrospective consequences in a democratic society promote a kind of inaction that we are all too familiar with. The number of Public Interest Litigations (PILs) that a free society can inundate any well-intentioned initiative by an administration, creates a NIMBY (Not-in-my-backyard) approach to doing things in the interests of political correctness or safe retirements.

Notwithstanding the talk on innovation and enterprise and so on; Until such time as we understand that failures area a stepping stone to success and be more understanding of that in our public life, the common citizen shall continue to draw the short straw.

No matter how loud the proclamations of welfare from any quarter!

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