winning streak of Indian cricket team- a example of collective action

Yet another victory for Indian cricket team, India is 4-0 ahead in the tournament against Sri-lanka and looking for a clean sweep. This was India’s ninth consecutive win. India is not only winning but winning big. In the last game Dhoni’s army gave Sri lanka its biggest defeat in its history of one-day cricket. Indian side is full of young cricketers like Dhoni, Gambhir, Yuvraj, Ishant Sharma, Ojha, Raina and Rohit Sharma who do no miss a single opportunity to prove themselves. The credit of bringing this sea change of spirit, passion, die-hard attitude and killer instinct surely goes to (agent) captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni who leads from the front. The present Indian cricket team is a perfect example of the difference that can be brought about by a good leader in a group. A good leader derives authority and respect from his followers. Dhoni enjoys same respect and co-operation from his team mates.

Indian team is playing like a unit and the best of the best sides look quite vulnerable in front of it. The winning streak is the result of the consistent performance by all. Indian team which was a one man army in the decade of 90’s can now imagine itself without that big name SACHIN TENDULKAR. Present Indian cricket team is a bunch of young cricketers who back each other up, when batsmen fail, bowlers do the job and vice-versa. Each player tries to complement each other’s performance by his individual contribution. The contemporary Indian side is one of the best examples of collective action where the effort of all eleven men on ground is guided towards one and only one aim i.e. ‘VICTORY’.

Economic crisis and collective action

Friends, we have been learning a lot of new things regarding collective action and cooperation. I hope that all of us appreciate the fact that collective action is not only related to a hamlet, a village, a district or a state. It has the potential to affect the nation or even the globe. It might not be apparently a CPR but it is in other sense "yes". Just having an overview of the current economical crisis, we can identify that this is a result of the collective action of the few capitalist economies or a mere lack of it on a larger scale. This fact is accepted even by the newly elected president of USA.

America's 44th President Barack Obama, at the historic inaugural in Washington DC , blamed America’s economic crisis on an era “of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also the collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.” Addressing hundreds of thousands gathered in Washington’s National Mall to mark the inauguration of the country’s first African-American president, Obama said: “The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.”“What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility ... we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world ... We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things,”he said. He urged Americans to “choose our better history,” to make decisions according to science instead of ideology, to reject a “false choice” between safety and American ideals, to recognize that American military power does not “entitle us to do as we please,” he signaled a commitment to pragmatism not just as a governing strategy but as a basic value.

We have learnt that collective action is a tool primarily for the rich and the poor have a very little incentive for any such action. Now my question is " Can the poor nations afford to stand away from such economic crisis and not participate in the collective action that is being initiated by the rich countries?"

How to manage CPRs?

It becomes difficult to place certain products or structures as common property. Land- waste or forest, water sheds, ponds and rivers are most commonly implied when speaking of CPRs. These restrict the idea of collective ownership. People’s lives depend equally on other, non - income generating factors such as access to certain village roads or religious structures or halls such as those where marriages are held or meetings organised. All of these can be referred to as ‘commonly managed resources’. One example of commonly managed resource could be hand pump.
In the village assigned to me in field work there were many hand pumps constructed by our host organization. After their construction they were handed over to group of people staying in vicinity of hand pump. The only condition was that the group was restricted to ten families at maximum, these families themselves did not have any hand pump and they had to sign a document stating that they would look after maintenance of hand pump. But unfortunately this resource just like any other CPR suffered from same problems, problems of free-rider with people other than ten families also using the hand pumps extensively, poor maintenance of these hand pumps by authorized families which ultimately led to non working of these hand pumps.
But nobody could actually blame any of the stakeholders nor other villagers using the hand pump as neither of them had a choice. People who were making unauthorized use of hand pumps were doing so because they did not have one of their own and that obviously was one of the deterrents for authorized families for avoidance of maintenance of hand pumps as they were not the only one using the pump. The solution to this problem is something which I have been grappling with ever since I came back from the village but the answer has eluded me till now.

YUVA a movie with a difference

I did not watch the movie in recent past but it just came back from the memory lanes (Flashback). It would be interesting (at least worth) to think about a movement started by the students aimed at changing the handful of population governing us. Watch movie YUVA and one can not help but think that it is possible and perhaps necessary. What is education aiming at if not creating a better environment for the people in general. If it does not address the questions that it is supposed to address, it is not different from the otherwise monotonous way of living i.e. trying to make external environment suitable for oneself. Everybody from a labor to a CEO does that. Then why study and why call all the people the intellectual capital of nation. In a way education system might be purposefully taking us away from these fundamental questions and landing us in a situation where all the options open to us are such that none addresses the core issue. For me there were options of going in research, continuing as a vet and practice medicine or come in a management school but joining any association (not essentially a political party) was not even a fisible option for me. For many others this would hold true. WHY?

It is like forgetting the basics

Two days ago, I happened to come across an article in the Indian express titled “innovation gridlock”. The article was originally taken from a book called, "The gridlock economy". It talks about the gridlock which has been created by the patent system. It has been explained with the example of drug industry that the patent system supposed to spur innovation is in effect stifling that. There are here and there bits of startling advances in drug industry. These bits united together can enable development of many life-saving drugs but they are stopped from coming up by this gridlock. So, the intellectual property regime is in fact hindering intellectual progress. The same applies to innovations in many fields such as nanotechnology, semiconductors, software and telecom etc that demand assembly of many intellectual properties. The humanity has managed to advance from the stone age to the modern civilised world of miraculous technologies due to the single human virtue of cooperation. We as human beings could manage to survive by now only because of cooperation. Cooperation is basic to our existence in every aspect. Most or in a way all of the technological progress are results of cooperation within human minds. Not allowing the minds from cooperating due to narrow economic interest and still expecting more and more useful and advanced innovations is simply like forgetting the basics.

Collective Protest is ON here….

In Nov 14, 1992 more than a lakh villager came together in Magod, small place in Western Ghats region of Karnataka, to oppose construction of dam by Karnataka Power Corporation Limited (KPCL). Proposed dam, across the river ‘bedti’, was expected to submerge 10,000ha of forest and agricultural land. The history of anti-Bedti project movement can be traced back to 1980- 1981. A prolonged agitation followed by a seminar on ‘Bedti dam and ecological assessment’ forced the government to give up implementation of the project. When KPCL revived its earlier proposal to build the dam in 1992, Sri Gangadharendra Saraswati Swamiji, a religious leader, organized massive rally of the villagers in November 1992.

It is because of charismatic leader who did not represent any political party or any caste (though he represented Hindu religion) more than a lakh villager came together, irrespective of which political party and the area/village they belong to, to protest the government action. Some of the villagers were directly or indirectly going to get the brunt of the dam and hence self interest was involved in them. But there were thousands of other villagers who were living far away from the projected catchment and command area. Swamiji himself had no self interest in protesting the dam. His motive was to protect the environment and the affecting people who belong not only to Hindu religion. Probably this factor must have attracted many people from far away.

Government has not given up the project entirely. Every now and then it comes with new mask and people oppose the project. Collective protest is on here…….

Few more reasons.....why people could not carry the protest against retailing industry to national scale...

I am very closely associated to the city where protests against retailing industry had taken a very violent form one year back. I have seen some of the part of 'bell shaped' life of this protest. Extending views of Anand, I feel there are few more reasons for the inability of people to carry the baton to national scale.
The section of people who were protesting was mainly constituted of small retailers, hawkers, mobile vendors etc and is largely unorganised. Since there were no any institutional channels for free flow of messages, rumour became one of the major processes in defining collective action. As retailing industry had affected the livelihoods, the people had a strong incentive to protest together so it added to the process of rumour. The people came together for the first time to protest, all having their own reason to come forward. Probably this was one of the important reason for the failure. They were not knowing each other so the collective action, generated by rumours, was for a very short period.
Also the protests were not followed by establishment of any institution which could incite a feeling of cooperation among them, which could establish communication networks linking populations whose interests were at stake.