The Eternal Game of Decisions
Why is female participation in labor force across the world so low? And even when women do enter and actively participate in the economy, why is there a giant income gap? Why does the Indian parliament only have 8.37% women? And what is it that it is keeping Indians generationally poor? Rather what is behind India’s slow, unresponsive, and apathetic governance.
I asked a question to my mother, “Mom, tell me one completely individual independent decision that you took in your 50-year long life, approximately 30-year long adult life?” She fell out of words, her answer was none.
I became obsessed with this question, “How many completely Individual Independent decisions did you take in your life”.
Across economics, psychology, and sociology; decisions form the backbone of life, society, and economy. Yet, Indian society is particularly insidious, in thwarting that decision making machinery resulting in countless adults with underdeveloped decision making muscle. And while there is a pursuit of power, money, fame, and position which is deeply ingrained in Indian society, there is no efforts towards building a strong decision making machinery.
From the day, we emerge out of high school and decide what subject to pursue in college, and find that decision making power completely eroded by ranks, grades, and perceived notions of “best subjects”. Computer Science and Economics, everyone wants to study that, and no one knows why? Philosophy, Psychology, Accounting, Carpentry, Pottery, Agriculture; where are these subjects, why did no one in a country of 1.3 billion people, no one “wanted” to and actively “decided” to pursue that.
Soon after graduation, without any exploration of “what is a job”, “what kind of job” and a job as a means to a particular kind of life, and hence “what kind of life” does one want to live, and students line up for a “placement” in the hierarchical order of payscale. The sheer lack of time investment to understand and evaluate the job market and lack of avenues for experimentation, failure, and exploration within it further creates just workers and not decision-makers. Even in 2020, the majority of Indians “opt for” arrangement marriage, yet another case in the lapse of individual independent decision making and “just going with the flow”.
And we find ourselves with 30 years something, middle to upper income, educated members of society, who have taken a limited number of decisions in life and living with a dwarfed decision making muscle.
The lack of decision making further exacerbates more evasion of decisions as an individual grows up, face high risks, lower safety nets. This is exhibited more in the females and low-income populations; leading to the insidious negative feedback loop.
Making a decision and living with its consequences forms the life trajectory of a person and life of countless people dependent on him/her. The age at which a woman decides to have a child determines the lifelong bone structure of the baby. A decision made in the import/ export tax structure of different items percolates down to the 1.3 billion consumers on cost of rice, wheat, computer screens, and TV. A decision on moving to a city or not affects the income structure even three generations later.
Yet within the traps of high grades, sought after subjects, arranged marriages, “safe and secure” jobs; we as a society have been just “going with the flow”.
From the pursuit of a subject or many, or even starting to learn a new subject, to even shift in jobs, every career change, making the choice of one’s life partner, picking the city or town or village to live in, choosing to start a new business, the more a decision deviates from the regular course of action, riskier it is, more prone to success and equally to failure it is.
And in the so-called socio-economic spectrum, higher you rise, more decision-making agency and ability you will find, and vice-versa. In our country of India or rather in the world at large, countless people with much less skills or knowledge to take certain decisions that affect millions or billions of people, are making those calls, while millions of people are deprived of taking absolutely independent individual decisions pertaining to their personal life due to lack of resources or simply the repressive social system.
And the only way to find that balance, is to today and actively recognize the beauty of making decisions, the fun in falling and succeeding, in starting to build that muscle at a very early age, in taking many micro and mini decisions before taking big ones, and becoming acutely aware of the personal agency of making decisions.
Only that will build a strong decision-making muscle in our society and generation, which will later be supplemented by knowledge and experience to make the more right ones. But lest be sure, if we make 100 decisions, we will make some wrong ones and that is perfectly alright. But if we make even one decision that pertains to life of others, we must at least try to be absolutely “in the right”.
On that note, go take more and more individual independent decisions.
