I dont have much respect for the government interfering with lives of private citizens. Its quite unfortunate that several participants of the government behave as if they are overlord's of common men forgetting that its citizen service and not government service they are employed for.
However, there is one sphere where I think government has a tremendous role to play i.e. in keeping us free. When I say free, I mean ensuring that the rules of the game are such that have-nots are empowered by necessary resources and tools so that they can compete with incumbents without resorting to violence or changing the rules of the game. A revolution, for example, is where the have-nots change the rules of the game to compete with incumbents. A democracy is a great example of a system where have-nots can come together, elect their representatives and change the rules of the game within the system. The reason why banana republics of Africa have one bloody coup after another because the have-nots find no other way to compete against the incumbent president.
That said, I think the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act is a great example of government doing the right thing by disrupting the incumbents. The Act requires all private schools to reserve 25% of seats to children from poor families (to be reimbursed by the state as part of the public-private partnership plan).
I have come to believe that more than the facilities provided by the school for child's development, it is the friends you make at school or rather it is the social circle you get introduced to which plays a bigger role in your success in life. Your teacher's, learning aids, curriculum etc. etc. have a role to play but it dwarfs in comparison to what a child learns from his environment, his friends, his parents.
I do not have any facts to back my claim above and I am basing this opinion on anecdotal evidence:
However, there is one sphere where I think government has a tremendous role to play i.e. in keeping us free. When I say free, I mean ensuring that the rules of the game are such that have-nots are empowered by necessary resources and tools so that they can compete with incumbents without resorting to violence or changing the rules of the game. A revolution, for example, is where the have-nots change the rules of the game to compete with incumbents. A democracy is a great example of a system where have-nots can come together, elect their representatives and change the rules of the game within the system. The reason why banana republics of Africa have one bloody coup after another because the have-nots find no other way to compete against the incumbent president.
That said, I think the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act is a great example of government doing the right thing by disrupting the incumbents. The Act requires all private schools to reserve 25% of seats to children from poor families (to be reimbursed by the state as part of the public-private partnership plan).
I have come to believe that more than the facilities provided by the school for child's development, it is the friends you make at school or rather it is the social circle you get introduced to which plays a bigger role in your success in life. Your teacher's, learning aids, curriculum etc. etc. have a role to play but it dwarfs in comparison to what a child learns from his environment, his friends, his parents.
I do not have any facts to back my claim above and I am basing this opinion on anecdotal evidence:
- Intelligence is equally distributed between rich and poor.
- Kids from poor background do not have enough role models to emulate and make their lives successful.
- It is equally hard to build a large outcome than it is to build a modest outcome. The most powerful ingredient of an outcome is ambition. If you are not a deep thinker, you have a reference from what you have seen possible and generally you benchmark your ambition around that.
(I wrote this post on May 24, 2012 and left it unfinished. Now I have lost the train of thoughts which I was expressing here. I doubt if I would ever finish it - and it does not make sense to keep it as a draft).
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