Why Performance Based Grants are important.. Especially when you are in infancy stage of regulation

My kid Nirvik is about to turn 5 next month. We had very interesting negotiation this week. I offered him chocolate only when he will make 20 brownie points . I made sure that he is happy with terms and conditions and then we moved into next step. (https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zH-kO5VHWPQ)

Few very interesting things I was able to achieve actually-

3 points : He went to the bed himself ( Never Happened Before)

2 points : He used spoon and ate himself ( used to happen but didn't prefer, He preferred our support)

2 points : Cleaning up after playing ( used to avoid whenever he got chance )

So in fact was a great learning for me.. I was surprised that I could achieve this .. with same resource tied up with milestones.

Then I started thinking about this analogy with service providers in Nepal where Performance based grants has not been tried before. Why the negotiation with Nirvik was so successful and what lessons did I take?

1. Indicators were simple and Nirvik understood nicely - Its important that these indicator should not look enforced but should look like motivative , For example Keeping documentation in a nice way (less resource) should trigger the higher capital investments. The key performance indicators should not vague to measure. It should be quantifiable easily and should mean same for operator and regulator to avoid the conflict.
2. The first step should come from the operator, Nirvik after doing small good things started asking so how many brownie points I am going to get and every mistake he was asking how many points he is going to lose. One moment he was eating himself and he spilled some in the carpet. I said it is your first mistake and you will not lose points . He was careful next time. It is important that operator see their SWOT themselves and be open about their weaknesses their threats . It will make the mitigation job easier, its up to the regulator to mitigate those. So instead up using stick only , the carrot methods bring more rewards.
3. I kept close eye and we discussed points now and then. Nirvik was very curious about the points. The communication between the regulator and the operator is key. Transparency and accountability should improve the responsibility of the operator.

He is very fond of chocolates , but I am quite hesitant of giving him the chocolates. In fact post these points in stead of asking chocolates now and then he asked after getting 20 points. Which was in fact after four days . So I avoided the chocolates for 3 days. Same resource but very efficient results. So if you see in 3T's (Tax,Tariff and Transfer) , most of the time you end up using tariff more and the share of tax will be slowly reduced.

So instead of making operators dependent and entering into the vicious cycle of build-forget-rebuild performance based grants might be interesting way to keep operators and regulators both on toes.

PS: He was very happy after getting chocolates (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRqD6XSDKDg&ab_channel=Kidstories%26funactivities)

So if you keep on practicing the operators will be happy too, because it will look logical, evidence based and data driven.

Finally: Do like ,share and subscribe my kid videos , as I am learning children teach us pretty interesting philosophies of life ;)