Your Fault Mohamed Hassan, Pixabay
Passing the Buck
Last week, I commented that the Prime Minister has sought to invert the relationship between citizens and our elected representatives, by reminding us of our duties, rather than renewing his pledge to ensure our democratic rights.
Three days ago, in case you thought that this was a passing comment, he underlined the centrality of his political intent by renaming New Delhi’s iconic boulevard, from Rajpath to Kartavyapath.
In the same week, a tragic road accident underlined how convenient it is to reframe the citizen-state relationship. Cyrus Mistry, former chairman of the Tata group, was driving with three friends, from Udavada in Gujarat, to Mumbai. Dr. Anahita Pandole, a gynaecologist, was at the wheel when the car hit a divider. Cyrus Mistry and Jahangir Pandole, who were in the back seat, and not wearing seat belts, died instantly. The driver and her husband, Darius, were wearing seatbelts, their airbags deployed, and they are recovering.
Mr. Nitin Gadkari, our Minister for Road Transport and Highways commented, “even a Mercedes car in the hands of an unskilled driver can create problems.” Next, he blamed the road construction companies, whose project reports are apparently of poor quality. Then, he promised to bring into effect a law making it compulsory for passengers in the back seat to wear seat-belts. This is probably a good thing, and I’ve begun insisting that all passengers in my car are buckled in. Meanwhile, Mr. Gadkari has neatly deflected the problem from his duty to run a safe road network to unskilled drivers, untrained contractors, and to our failure to wear seatbelts in the rear of our cars.
Speaking to mid-day, Harbans Singh Nanade, of the All India Vahan Chalak Malak Association, clearly pointed a finger at faulty road engineering at the spot of the accident:
“The width of the southbound lane on Charoti flyover is 10.50 metres, which is narrowed down to 7-metre on the bridge which is built over Surya River.”
Driving at highway speeds, this sudden constriction of a highway is asking for trouble, and the National Highways Authority of India, NHAI, has not erected any warning signs at the site, making for “an L-shaped death trap.”
In what Sucheta Dalal calls “the barrage of tutorials on seatbelts”, let’s not lose sight of the fact that two-wheelers account for 88% of vehicular traffic on Indian roads, and they have seat belts, neither in the back seats, nor in the front. Few of the buses operated by our state transport corporations are kitted out with seatbelts, nor are the trucks and tractor trollies that often double as people movers, on highways, or off. None of these road users will be protected by a seatbelt laws for cars, which account for only 15% of deaths on Indian roads.
India is the global leader in road deaths, and if we want to change this, we must demand roads that are better planned and maintained, helpful signage, vigilant policing, and stringent tests for driving licences. If we don’t consistently demand responsible governance from the state, we will be happy to be led up widely publicised alleys of diversion, such as seatbelt laws.
If we are getting screwed, we will be told, it is because we did not march down the straight and narrow path of our kartavya.
Money Value of Time
Imagine it’s a lazy Sunday morning, and you’re not even one of those guys who spends Sunday mornings banging out a newsletter in the fond hope that some people are going to waste a Sunday afternoon reading you.
On one such lazy morning in our mountain home, well before Gimme Mo (it wasn’t technically a Sunday morning, but all mornings in a holiday home should be declared Sunday mornings), my wife reminded me that we needed make a trip to Almora, to wind up our bank account, unused for several years.
“Naah”, I said, “hardly worth the hassle”.
“There’s at least a couple of thousand rupees in the account. Why waste it?”
“Too much of an effort….”, I tailed off, as I turned to admire our lily pond, thus averting whatever look I evoked - hopefully one no worse than a look of resignation. When I did turn back, it was to find a savings bank passbook lying pointedly on top of my Kindle.
If she reads this, my wife will doubtless be heartened by the fact that her effort was not entirely in vain. No, I didn’t jump into the car and roar off to Almora, but I launched a serious enquiry into the value of my time.
The technical part was quite simple. I had a copy of my Income Tax Return on my computer, which spelled out my professional earnings for the previous year. These are scant - hence those EveryDaySunday hill mornings - so I turned to figuring the value of the time I put into managing my investments.
If my money were in a passive equity fund tracking the Nifty, I would have earned roughly 11% per annum since the turn of the century. This would have required practically no management time on my part. However, since 2003, I had spent several hours a day researching businesses, tracking markets, and managing my portfolio. Since 2015, I had extended my interest to start-ups, which required me to look at new business ideas, meet founders, and take a call on whether to back them. By 2021, I could quite accurately estimate the annual return on my investments. Fortunately, it has been substantially in excess of the 11% market return.
I multiplied this extra return by the value of my portfolio, added my miscellaneous income, and could state how much money I generate each year. One question remained - how many hours do I work in a year? On his next trip home, I consulted my son, who is very objective about most matters.
“A typical work-year is reckoned at 2000 hours. For you, anything between 1000 and 1500.”
Back to that savings account in Almora - which is where this enquiry began. It would take at least two hours to get to the bank and back, and when I divided the annual value of my time by 1500 hours of work, I was most relieved to learn that I wasn’t being lazy about getting into my car - encashing the balance in my bank account was not worth two hours of my time.
If you’ve been married, then you know that “I told you so” is not a great phrase to deploy, even if you can substantiate it with two decades of spreadsheets. Instead, I buried the passbook into the depths of my backpack, where it remains out of sight.
In all honesty, though, I don’t think I have fully answered the question I asked myself, about the value of my time. The math of earnings divided by hours spent is accurate, but it does not address the question a combative interlocutor (and please note, I don’t mean my wife) could ask -
“Yes, yes, I know you’re very smart, and your time is worth a lot, but it’s not as if you are making any money lounging about in the porch.”
True that, but what’s the point of making money if you have to put a price on the joy of celebrating yet another make-believe Sunday.
Sir, we are definitely not wasting our time reading this.
And I am also not sure, if we can ever repay you for the time you are spending writing this newsletter. I really enjoy reading your newsletter. Thank you very much 😄
" let’s not lose sight of the fact that two-wheelers account for 88% of vehicular traffic on Indian roads, and they have seat belts, neither in the back seats, nor in the front. Few of the buses operated by our state transport corporations are kitted out with seatbelts, nor are the trucks and tractor trollies that often double as people movers, on highways, or off. None of these road users will be protected by a seatbelt laws for cars, which account for only 15% of deaths on Indian roads."
Sums up everything one needs to know about how the Indian government (of any party) values Indian lives.