I unlocked my cycle and on my way out of the parking lot at Dwarka Sec-9 Metro Station, I handed the guy the parking receipt. He glimpsed it and said 5 rupees - that's the maximum you can charge a cycle for a day.
I said, "are you sure it's 5? I parked the cycle yesterday, not today." He fumbled with the ticket once again and scanned it with caution this time while smiling apologetically and thankfully at the same time.
He peered at the dark sky for few seconds, did some mental calculations and said, "13 rupees."
Why 13, I wondered. If he added Rs.5 for the previous day and Rs. 5 as night charges to the number he quoted the first time, he should have asked for Rs 15.
Under the assumption that it was a current day ticket, he wanted to maximize his profit by charging me the maximum (Rs 5) instead of minimum (Rs 3) but when he realized that I was willing to be chopped a bit more as per rules, he gave up his temptation to chop me illegally!
After this quid pro quo of honesty, I asked myself whether I would have done the same if the parking rates were, say, Rs 30/day along with night charges to the tunes of Rs 50?
Probably not.
As Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner write in the introduction to their book Freakonomics, "incentives are the cornerstone of modern life." And although most of the people would strive to be honest even when nobody's watching over (at least 87% of the times, as one brilliant study illustrates in the book), you cannot slap tons of -ve incentives on people and yet expect them to be honest.
Exorbitant rate of tax, for instance, is one such -ve incentive. Have you checked the list of items attracting 28% GST? It’s mindbogglingly long. That being the case when around two dozen items have been recently shifted to 18% slab! With stuffs like Cement, Shampoo, commode, washbasin, Plastic and wooden furniture attracting the so called 'sin tax', who wouldn't like to cheat if opportunity exists?
In fact, it’s debatable that not paying this ridiculous tax would fall under tax evasion or civil disobedience. There’s a very thin line separating the two. A tax or for that matter any law or policy should respect the inherent desire in every human being to be reasonably honest most of the times rather than challenging him/her at every step - “let’s see if you can still be honest.”
Make no mistake, and here I quote another beautiful line from the book, "for every clever person (Arun Jaitley deludes himself to be one) who goes to the trouble of creating an incentive scheme, there is an army of people, clever or otherwise, who will inevitably spend even more time trying to beat it."
I said, "are you sure it's 5? I parked the cycle yesterday, not today." He fumbled with the ticket once again and scanned it with caution this time while smiling apologetically and thankfully at the same time.
He peered at the dark sky for few seconds, did some mental calculations and said, "13 rupees."
Why 13, I wondered. If he added Rs.5 for the previous day and Rs. 5 as night charges to the number he quoted the first time, he should have asked for Rs 15.
Under the assumption that it was a current day ticket, he wanted to maximize his profit by charging me the maximum (Rs 5) instead of minimum (Rs 3) but when he realized that I was willing to be chopped a bit more as per rules, he gave up his temptation to chop me illegally!
After this quid pro quo of honesty, I asked myself whether I would have done the same if the parking rates were, say, Rs 30/day along with night charges to the tunes of Rs 50?
Probably not.
As Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner write in the introduction to their book Freakonomics, "incentives are the cornerstone of modern life." And although most of the people would strive to be honest even when nobody's watching over (at least 87% of the times, as one brilliant study illustrates in the book), you cannot slap tons of -ve incentives on people and yet expect them to be honest.
Exorbitant rate of tax, for instance, is one such -ve incentive. Have you checked the list of items attracting 28% GST? It’s mindbogglingly long. That being the case when around two dozen items have been recently shifted to 18% slab! With stuffs like Cement, Shampoo, commode, washbasin, Plastic and wooden furniture attracting the so called 'sin tax', who wouldn't like to cheat if opportunity exists?
In fact, it’s debatable that not paying this ridiculous tax would fall under tax evasion or civil disobedience. There’s a very thin line separating the two. A tax or for that matter any law or policy should respect the inherent desire in every human being to be reasonably honest most of the times rather than challenging him/her at every step - “let’s see if you can still be honest.”
Make no mistake, and here I quote another beautiful line from the book, "for every clever person (Arun Jaitley deludes himself to be one) who goes to the trouble of creating an incentive scheme, there is an army of people, clever or otherwise, who will inevitably spend even more time trying to beat it."
