Collins dictionary explains the word gobbledygook as,
if you describe a speech or piece of writing as gobbledygook, you are
criticizing it for seeming like nonsense and being very technical or
complicated. In this article I criticise the language and the arguments used in a piece titled
When cooks get
paid more than engineers that was published online Indian Express on 5
th
October 2017. The purpose is twofold. First is to appeal to experts to write in
plain English when they write for general readers. Second purpose is to show that poor
writing defeats the purpose for which it is written. The writer of above article
is Chairman of Economic Advisory Council to the prime minister of India and is
held in high regard by thousands of readers including myself. By writing an incoherent
piece he has not added to public discussion of unemployment in India beyond repeating simplistic text book answer.
Before you read further I urge you
to read the article by Dr Bibek Debroy first. Welcome back if you have
returned after reading the article.
Here is part of first paragraph of the article.
We have been
repeatedly warned against blindly believing everything we read or are
forwarded. With that dash of sodium chloride, here is the gist of a message ….
A restaurant ….requires a full-time porotta maker, at a monthly salary of Rs
18,000 to Rs 20,000. A concern … requires a full-time “civil engineering B.Tech
or diploma holder, at a monthly salary of Rs 6,000 to Rs 7,000”.
In the first sentence writer warns us against blindly
believing everything we read. Good advice. I take it seriously and continue
reading the article carefully. Second sentence says that first sentence was ‘dash
of sodium chloride’. I am not a chemist so I did not realise immediately ‘sodium
chloride’ means salt. I paused and wanted to make sense of what has common salt
to do with risk of ‘blindly believing’. Salt is used in most Indian food as flavour
enhancing ingredient but that does not seem to be purpose of writer to
introduce sodium chloride. Perhaps it is meant as a health warning as too much
salt is harmful for health. Or the
purpose is to refer to medical use of salt for replacing loss of fluids in
body. Or is to refer to gargle with lukewarm salty water, as my granny would
advise, to clear bacterial infection in throat. Or more probably the writer wants us to take what we get forwarded with a pinch of salt. This well known English idiom is better option to dash of sodium chloride. The inspiration for the article appears to be on going public discussion about unemployment in India. A forwarded message about disparity between salaries advertised for a
cook and an engineer provides a good way to start but then the writer assaults common language in the following
couple of sentences.
These are two isolated
advertisements from Kerala and don’t constitute a proper sample. However, some
sample survey data is available on the internet, though sample sizes are small.
If you are not an academic researcher, who observes things
and tries to identify patterns, you are unlikely to know what ‘proper sample’
means. Data is a representation of actual situation. Number of words in this
article is data which indicates size of the article. Data thus helps understand
the magnitude and or patterns of an issue such as unemployment. To understand
any patterns in unemployment economists face difficult task of observing millions
of people. Since it is generally not possible to collect data on all population
in any large country data is collected on a small number of people as representation
for whole population. That small number of people is sample. ‘Proper sample’
means the selected sample represents the characteristics of the population. Let
us continue with the article.
For instance, the
salary of a cook (not a chef) is Rs 12,000 per month in Delhi and that of an
engineering diploma (not degree) holder between Rs 10,000 and Rs 12,000 per
month. That of a driver is Rs 14,000 per month.
Writer carefully notes cook is
not same as chef and engineer with diploma is not same as engineer with degree.
But what about driver? Does writer mean driver of a car or of a truck or of a
passenger bus in city or of an interstate passenger bus? Even within driver of
car ‘segment’, a word we will encounter later, driver of billionaire
industrialist Mukesh Ambani’s car and driver of a trader with shop will be
different. Now writer wants us to tackle following.
Therefore, the
correlation between education and salary isn’t quite what we might expect a
priori.
This is a fourteen word long
sentence. If you are reading attentively you would have noticed that there are
fifteen words in sentence. Good, but note Latin word
a priori is single term. The sentence uses two technical words
which will not make sense unless you are academically tuned to statistics and
theoretical arguments. Of the two technical words
correlation and
a priori, ‘correlation’
is perhaps easier to grasp for general readers
. Statistically though it has specific connotation. In this article
what writer means is level of education and amount of salary do not always
co-move in same direction. In other words if you spent 17 years in school and
college you are not likely to earn more than someone who did not to go to school and
college.
Oxford English dictionary defines
a priori
as, “relating to or denoting reasoning or knowledge which proceeds from
theoretical deduction rather than from observation or experience.” In plain English
that fourteen word sentence states two things. First, according to theoretical
claim of economics acquiring educational qualification should enhance your
earning. Second, higher salary offered for a cook compared to salary offered
for diploma holding engineer contradicts this economic theory claim. After that
difficult and loaded fourteen word sentence there is some relief below.
Let me thrown in an
anecdote from a colleague. His maid/cook is around 45 and has two sons, aged 18
and 20. These two have finished school and sit at home, subsisting on their
mother’s salary. When my colleague asked them, “Why don’t you work as a cook?”
the response was, “That is work meant for girls.”
There is typing error with
spelling of ‘throw’ with ‘n’ left unedited. Through the anecdote the writer is
essentially arguing that men in India consider some jobs suitable for only
women and hence would not consider doing those jobs, cooking being one of them.
Few men applying for cook’s job means remaining men who are able to cook and
are willing to take up that job command higher salaries. The above anecdote
helps but note that social scientists use the word ‘anecdote’ when they know
that the evidence (views of boys in this case) they use in argument does not meet
academic standards of ‘proper sample’. Let us consider another anecdote that
the writer delights us with.
There is an anecdote
that features in jokes about economists. In many versions of the account,
economists in general take the place of Kenneth Arrow. The only authentic
source of this account I know is attributed to Curt Monash, who studied in Harvard.
This account goes: “I was standing with Ken Arrow by a bank of elevators on the
ground floor of William James Hall at Harvard. Three elevators passed us on our
way to the basement. I foolishly said ‘I wonder why everybody in the basement
wants to go upstairs.’ He responded, almost instantly: ‘You’re confusing supply
with demand.’ The labour market is segmented, sectorally and geographically.
However, regardless of sector and geography, principles of economics —
supply-demand relations — do apply.
Late professor Kenneth Arrow was the youngest economist at age of
fifty one to win the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of
Alfred Nobel (popularly known as Nobel Prize for Economics) in 1972 along
with John Hicks. So we have two intelligent men in the anecdote discussing why
everybody in the basement wants to go upstairs. Professor Arrow seems to
suggest more ‘demand’ upstairs explains people going upstairs and not people
wanting to go upstairs without any reason. The paragraph assumes all readers
understand principles of economics – supply-demand relations and can read
through cryptic economic reasoning implied in six word reply of a Nobel Prize
winning theoretical economist to another intelligent mathematical economist
(Curt Monash got his PhD from Harvard University in Mathematics (Game Theory)).
In plain English our writer is arguing that wages for different jobs are determined
by need for labour for which employer is willing to pay (demand) in different
industries/different places and people with appropriate skills willing to provide
that labour for wages (supply). We have more to deal with in following
paragraphs.
There is a quote wrongly attributed to Thomas
Carlyle. “Teach a parrot the terms ‘supply and demand’ and you’ve got an
economist.” There is no evidence that Carlyle ever said or wrote anything like
this. Parrot or not, the price of everything, labour included, is determined by
the intersection of supply and demand, unless institutional constraints get in
the way of that clearing function. Let’s take the example of a cook’s wages
being more than that of an engineering diploma
The first two sentences could be
challenged on grounds of logical reasoning. The writer says that Thomas Carlyle
did not say something because there is no evidence that he ever said or wrote
that statement. Philosophical objection is that absence of evidence is not
evidence of absence. Yes the writer could have said that quote is ‘very likely wrongly attributed’. However, the steepest step of technical
jargon that writer challenges general reader to climb is in following
statement. The writer offers economic law that the price of everything including labour is determined where supply
and demand meet. The rule holds true when there are no institutional constraints. What does institutional constraints mean? What is clearing function? Clearing
function of labour markets refers to process whereby suppliers of labour
and those who want labour services come to an agreeable wage rate. I shy away
from explaining institutional
constraints. The last sentence of the paragraph is grammatically wrong. It
compares cook to an engineering diploma. This appears to be another example of
poor editing. It appears word ‘holder’ is missing after diploma which would
have allowed comparing cook’s wages to that of an engineering diploma holder’s.
The writer then moves to explain the disparity
between wages of cook and engineer in theoretical language.
What we have observed
is a market clearing wage. Purely on this basis, it is impossible to ascribe it
to either purely supply or demand, since the outcome happens to be a
combination of both.
The writer says that this disparity in wages (
the outcome) is result of a combination
of demand and supply forces. The writer then takes us on bumpy intellectual
ride across India that explains differences in unemployment rates in urban and
rural areas and complex definition of unemployment. We find that a
survey
done by Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy puts an individual in one of the
following four statuses:
1.
Is currently employed.
2.
Is not employed but is willing to work and is
actively looking for a job.
3.
Is not employed, is willing to work but is not
actively looking for a job.
4.
Is not employed, is not willing to work and is
not looking for a job.
Adding number of people in 1 and 2 provides total labour
force. People with status 2 as percentage of total labour force (1+2) is
unemployment rate. Read following paragraph.
We should certainly
have a discussion on the unemployment rate. However, given the example I
started with, there is an aspect that is missing from the customary discussion.
This is highlighted in the document, “Unemployment in India, A Statistical
Profile” — a separate product from the same survey. This has the standard
unemployment rate, but also has something known as greater unemployment rate,
that is, including those who are unemployed and willing to work, but inactive
in seeking jobs.
Here author introduces us to greater unemployment rate which he then compares for different age
groups and males and female as following.
The gap between the
two rates is highest in the 15-19 age-group, followed by the 20-24 age-group
for males, while it is uniform across all age-groups for females.
This dense statement says that the gap between standard unemployment rate and greater unemployment rate is highest in
15-19 age group but does not tell how much that gap is. I also cannot fathom from
the statement what the gap is among female groups even if it is uniform across
the groups. So we are left wondering what to make of this information.
Generally writers provide information to support some conclusion. But read what conclusion is drawn below and look for any evidence provided to
support it.
Going back to supply
and demand curves for labour and their intersection, everything else remaining
the same, wages drop/increase when either supply or demand curves, or both,
shift. I think there is an issue of correlation between education and skills,
or its lack. Some educational attainment may help acquisition of skills, but
the correlation isn’t strong. For females, the gap is uniform across age.
However, for younger males, the job-seeker’s perception may be of a stronger
correlation than warranted.
Again the first
sentence fires technical bullets to puncture our common sense about labour
market. Assuming your brain survives wordy googly of intersecting curves of supply
and demand while everything else remains
the same we read ‘Wages drop/increase
when either supply or demand curves, or both, shift.’ Wages change rather than ‘drop/increase’ would
be simpler. Anyway why do wages changes. Because of shift in supply curve or
shift in demand curve or because of both. Are we any wiser after reading this?
Suddenly from this school text book explanation of law of supply and demand,
author draws conclusion based on ‘I
think..’ that correlation between educational attainment and acquisition of
skills is weak. Nowhere in the whole article the writer has provided any data
to suggest that educational attainment, which I think means qualifications here,
do not lead to development of skills. How this conclusion drawn is beyond my
understanding. Then we have final two sentences. I simply cannot understand
what writer is trying to say by for
females, the gap is uniform across age. Final sentence mentions job seeker’s perception. Perception
about what? Please help.
