The other day I had this interesting conversation with a friend. She told me about a girl she knew back in Mumbai. Many years ago, the girl was taking the train home late at night, and it so happened that this girl was alone in her compartment (the likelihood of being alone in a Mumbai train compartment is so small as to be practically zero, so this story may in fact have been about another city, but anyway let's say Mumbai for convenience)
Three men got on at one of the stations. When they saw a woman sitting alone, they spied an opportunity for mischief, and began to catcall and harass her. They ran away at the next station.
But here was their mistake: the girl in question happened to be the daughter of a government official. She complained to her father, who lodged a personal complaint with the police. The commissioner in charge at the time realized he had to produce results, but he also knew that the girl's description of the offenders - "thin, dark, baggy gray pants" - could apply to half the city's male population. So instead of pursuing the miscreants, the commissioner turned to his lieutenant and said "were these your guys?" The lieutenant said no. Further stymied, the commissioner did the next best thing. "Round up the usual suspects," he told his lieutenant, "and give them a thorough thrashing."
How true is this story? To be honest, I don't really know. It's entirely hearsay, which means it certainy doesn't pass muster as fact. When I expressed my surprise - "surely, this isn't remotely effective?" - my friend vigorously disagreed. According to him, the very fact that someone, somewhere was getting thrashed for sexual harassment would force would-be harassers everywhere to think twice. To a certain extent, this principle of deterrence underlies most legal systems that focus on punishment, but in this case there's also an Indian twist. Despite its size, Mumbai (like any Indian city) is made up of networks of closely interlinked communities, and these communities are bound together by their point of origin, their current residence and their ambitions. Which is why a city of 20 million people can sometimes feel like a village.
The sort of young, probably jobless young men who hang around train stations late at night in hopes of harassing women traveling alone are, in fact, a community. Many of these men might hail from the same village, they may have brothers and fathers employed in neighboring businesses or they might drink at the same bars. When the police "thrash" one member of this community, they send a strong message to all the members: "police your own, or we'll do it for you." Thus, every member of the community has an incentive to force the others to conform to the rules of civilized society. And in India, like in any intensely hierarchical, agrarian society, the censure of the community can be more cruel and more intense than any sentence handed down by a court.
Unfortunately! The members of the community then become like a cartel, upholding an artificially high price. And the moment one member defects, the others have less incentive to behave morally. And the moment an individual's probability of getting thrashed outweighs the probability that he won't get thrashed, his incentives swap places. Now, it's in his interest to harass as many women as possible, since he'll probably get beaten up by the cops anyway.
This entire idea reminded me of the microfinance crisis that recently played out in India. For those who weren't following, several prominent microlenders were recently shut down because it was discovered that they were charging usurious interest rates and sending violent thugs to track down debtors who didn't pay. Obviously, these collection methods didn't jibe with microcredit's stated intention of uplifting the world's poorest.
Part of the problem was the principle of "community responsibility." In its early days, the first microcredit institution (Grameen Bank) pioneered the model of "community responsibility" for loans, thus allowing people with no collateral to still quality for loans. Community responsibility works like this: if one member of a village defaults on a payment, the entire community is denied access to loans in the future. The idea was to harness the powerful social bonds that link Indians together to encourage communities to hold each other to a higher standard. And it seemed to work: Grameen's repayment rates were in the high 90s, far ahead of traditional banks.
Granted, even in those days there were some who felt uncomfortable with the principle of "community responsibility." In recent years the ranks of the skeptics have grown. And then, recently, it came to light that the community model had failed in several parts of southern India, and lenders had resorted to strong-arm techniques. The government stepped in to regulate the growing industry, and several microfinance institutions (both the good and the bad!) were forced into near-bankruptcy.
It doesn't bother me that community responsibility didn't pan out the way people hoped. What bothers me is how easily we all accepted that community responsibility was a good idea, both on a practical and a philosophical level.
Most Americans would balk at the idea of punishing an innocent man for his neighbor's crimes. In fact, criminal justice is meant to guard against this possibility. But we saw nothing wrong in denying financial access - a supposed human right - to one man because his neighbor defaulted. (To be fair, most institutions have abandoned this principle by now, or at least practice it in very different forms)
Why were we so willing to accept this idea in the first place? Does it say something about the way we approach development that we're willing to say that the end might justify the means? To what extent is this true? To what extent should it be true? (After all, an idea like "community responsibility" would never be possible in the United States. Shouldn't sauce for the goose be sauce for the gander? Yes, yes, cultural differences matter - but still...)
Also, it doesn't take a genius to see how the system could quickly go sour and people's incentives could end up the opposite of what the creators of the system intended. (Although that's another question.)
Note: I'm not suggesting that all microlenders operate using "community responsibility". In fact, most don't, not anymore. And micocredit is a growing industry, with a variety of revenue models and structures. This post isn't meant to reflect on the current status of the microfinance industry, which is a promising industry full of many good people who truly want to do good by the world.
Three men got on at one of the stations. When they saw a woman sitting alone, they spied an opportunity for mischief, and began to catcall and harass her. They ran away at the next station.
But here was their mistake: the girl in question happened to be the daughter of a government official. She complained to her father, who lodged a personal complaint with the police. The commissioner in charge at the time realized he had to produce results, but he also knew that the girl's description of the offenders - "thin, dark, baggy gray pants" - could apply to half the city's male population. So instead of pursuing the miscreants, the commissioner turned to his lieutenant and said "were these your guys?" The lieutenant said no. Further stymied, the commissioner did the next best thing. "Round up the usual suspects," he told his lieutenant, "and give them a thorough thrashing."
How true is this story? To be honest, I don't really know. It's entirely hearsay, which means it certainy doesn't pass muster as fact. When I expressed my surprise - "surely, this isn't remotely effective?" - my friend vigorously disagreed. According to him, the very fact that someone, somewhere was getting thrashed for sexual harassment would force would-be harassers everywhere to think twice. To a certain extent, this principle of deterrence underlies most legal systems that focus on punishment, but in this case there's also an Indian twist. Despite its size, Mumbai (like any Indian city) is made up of networks of closely interlinked communities, and these communities are bound together by their point of origin, their current residence and their ambitions. Which is why a city of 20 million people can sometimes feel like a village.
The sort of young, probably jobless young men who hang around train stations late at night in hopes of harassing women traveling alone are, in fact, a community. Many of these men might hail from the same village, they may have brothers and fathers employed in neighboring businesses or they might drink at the same bars. When the police "thrash" one member of this community, they send a strong message to all the members: "police your own, or we'll do it for you." Thus, every member of the community has an incentive to force the others to conform to the rules of civilized society. And in India, like in any intensely hierarchical, agrarian society, the censure of the community can be more cruel and more intense than any sentence handed down by a court.
Unfortunately! The members of the community then become like a cartel, upholding an artificially high price. And the moment one member defects, the others have less incentive to behave morally. And the moment an individual's probability of getting thrashed outweighs the probability that he won't get thrashed, his incentives swap places. Now, it's in his interest to harass as many women as possible, since he'll probably get beaten up by the cops anyway.
This entire idea reminded me of the microfinance crisis that recently played out in India. For those who weren't following, several prominent microlenders were recently shut down because it was discovered that they were charging usurious interest rates and sending violent thugs to track down debtors who didn't pay. Obviously, these collection methods didn't jibe with microcredit's stated intention of uplifting the world's poorest.
Part of the problem was the principle of "community responsibility." In its early days, the first microcredit institution (Grameen Bank) pioneered the model of "community responsibility" for loans, thus allowing people with no collateral to still quality for loans. Community responsibility works like this: if one member of a village defaults on a payment, the entire community is denied access to loans in the future. The idea was to harness the powerful social bonds that link Indians together to encourage communities to hold each other to a higher standard. And it seemed to work: Grameen's repayment rates were in the high 90s, far ahead of traditional banks.
Granted, even in those days there were some who felt uncomfortable with the principle of "community responsibility." In recent years the ranks of the skeptics have grown. And then, recently, it came to light that the community model had failed in several parts of southern India, and lenders had resorted to strong-arm techniques. The government stepped in to regulate the growing industry, and several microfinance institutions (both the good and the bad!) were forced into near-bankruptcy.
It doesn't bother me that community responsibility didn't pan out the way people hoped. What bothers me is how easily we all accepted that community responsibility was a good idea, both on a practical and a philosophical level.
Most Americans would balk at the idea of punishing an innocent man for his neighbor's crimes. In fact, criminal justice is meant to guard against this possibility. But we saw nothing wrong in denying financial access - a supposed human right - to one man because his neighbor defaulted. (To be fair, most institutions have abandoned this principle by now, or at least practice it in very different forms)
Why were we so willing to accept this idea in the first place? Does it say something about the way we approach development that we're willing to say that the end might justify the means? To what extent is this true? To what extent should it be true? (After all, an idea like "community responsibility" would never be possible in the United States. Shouldn't sauce for the goose be sauce for the gander? Yes, yes, cultural differences matter - but still...)
Also, it doesn't take a genius to see how the system could quickly go sour and people's incentives could end up the opposite of what the creators of the system intended. (Although that's another question.)
Note: I'm not suggesting that all microlenders operate using "community responsibility". In fact, most don't, not anymore. And micocredit is a growing industry, with a variety of revenue models and structures. This post isn't meant to reflect on the current status of the microfinance industry, which is a promising industry full of many good people who truly want to do good by the world.
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