Gobbledygook economics: Plain English crucified

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.

How I responded to a plane crash and an earthquake?

I

19 October 1988 was like any other morning when I got up and got ready to go to work. It was foggy and cloudy morning with little chill in the air. I commuted from my home in eastern Ahmedabad to Indian Institute of Management in western Ahmedabad. My road journey on scooter was 21 kilometres each way. Part of the road I used runs parallel to wall of Ahmedabad airport runway. On that day as I turned on the bend from east to west on the eastern end of the runway wall, on my right I saw lot of smoke and crowd of people who seemed worried. It was about 8.45 a.m. On stopping and inquiring I found that an Indian Airlines passenger plane had crashed in the morning while approaching the runway to land. IC113 flight had taken off from Mumbai to arrive Ahmedabad about 6.30 a.m. but did not land. Instead it had crashed a few kilometers away from on its approach to Ahmedabad runway.

I was very distressed and did not feel like going to work but carried on. On reaching the institute I found that one of the professors from IIM was also on flight and had died in the crash. The tragedy felt closer. Proximity to events in time or place magnifies their impact. I was disturbed for few days and could not focus on work.  I failed to perform few tasks that I should have finished at my work. The emotional response to the tragic incident had affected my professional performance. After few days my line manager,  a professor for whom I have great regards until this day, asked me about the unfinished task. I told him that I had not completed that work as I was too distressed by the air plane crash. My boss was not happy and rebuked me for having neglected my professional responsibility to complete work on time. It was my first job. I had finished MBA only few months ago and joined as research and teaching assistant to professors in IIM Ahmedabad. I had read a lot about motivation and performance management. But obviously that had not really prepared me. My emotional readiness to deal with the most tragic incident I had witnessed in life until then was tested. 

For many years after the incident I would occasionally wonder why was I not able to stay focused on my work? I have now a probable answer for this question. This requires that I share another extremely tragic experience that I passed through thirteen years later and my contrasting more constructive response to that event.

II

On 26 January 2001 it was about 8.45 a.m. I stood with many students and colleagues on the playground of an institute in Kutch, Gujarat where I worked. The morning was very bright and cold. We were about to commence India's annual republic day flag hoisting ceremony. A strange thundering sound from ground deep under our feet and wild shaking of the building behind us told me in seconds that we were experiencing earthquake. I ran and told everyone else to run away from the building behind us towards cricket ground. Facing us on the left of the cricket ground were hostel and staff quarter buildings. As we ran away from the institute building behind us towards staff quarter buildings we saw those building crushing and going down. Screaming I kept running towards the staff quarters as my eight year old son had gone into that building. He had gone in to meet and to come out with my colleague's son of same age to witness flag hoisting. I saw the two boys walking out of building when the staff quarter building went down behind the boys. The scene has stuck in my memory even after sixteen years. In those milliseconds I had combined feeling of gratitude to see my son coming out and absolute terror of seeing the building, that housed many families, going down. Mother of my son's friend who was also wife of my colleague did not survive the collapse of building even though we tried to pull her out of debris.  Steel and concrete slabs lying on her proved too heavy for few of us to move. Death won the race with life as we cried and tried. Her eyes asked questions, showed fear, exclaimed in disbelief all at same time while looking into complete helplessness in our eyes. Family of my fellow principal colleague perished whose dog survived and would not leave the debris days after the event. We lost 26 precious lives of staff members, their family members and students. The earthquake claimed over 10,000 lives in the region.

Unlike 1988 my response to this tragic calamity was quite different. Within few minutes I realised the potential magnitude of calamity that had struck us, I recovered and worked with others to rescue several people live from debris. For next few days it was chaos but in all that I made sure that we looked after students who had survived, took care of injured, I performed last rites for several deceased staff and their family members and the list of painful experiences goes on. Few of my students were claimed by the earthquake. Mother of one of them arrived two or three days after earthquake as key bridge connecting Kutch region with rest of India was also damaged in earthquake slowing down movement of people and support. The mother was not physically strong so the news had to be broken to her slowly in a way to minimise chance of damaging mother's weak heart. With consent from her other son who accompanied her she was mildly sedated by doctors to get her some rest after long journey she had undertaken. With great care we told her what no mother can ever be prepared to hear.

Our college buildings were damaged and could not be used until everything was checked, repaired and certified as fit for use. Students from outside who stayed in hostel were not keen to return to the area that was devastated by earthquake. This should give a sense of crisis that we faced. Personally I had to motivate not only my shocked and traumatised staff but also convince the parents and students. Despair had to die in me and in others. It would take long talks, sessions and patient sharing of pain and hopes for future to resume classes. By mid-March we resumed classes in tents as buildings were not fit for purpose until then. We slowly recovered and came to normalcy over next two years. 

On reflection I find my emotional response to this terrible tragedy was different. I did not stop working but actually played whatever role I could to share the pain and suffering of affected people. I resumed teaching and management of the institute to help students cope with that tragedy.  Almost all students returned and resumed studies and completed their qualification. It is absolute sense of satisfaction to know that they are happily prospering and flourishing in their life. Their persistence with studies and determination to reconstruct a community of learners after loss of several class mates and teachers is testimony to resilience of the young people. They saw meaning in life. Meaning is most powerful inspiration to overcome odds be that emotional or physical.

What had happened to me between 1988 and 2001 that prepared me to stay motivated, resilient and deal with challenges of life?

III

Emotions can be great source of constructive energy. They can also be great bottlenecks to applying energy. Extreme sense of sadness was common in both the above experiences. My response was different. In one situation I withdrew from whatever I was supposed to do in another I reacted in more constructive manner. Why? There are perhaps theories that explain why in one case we are resilient and in another not so. I believe over time, in this case about 13 years after 1988, I had matured as a person. The growing maturity had come from various sources. On reflection I feel these sources for me were reading, responsibility, and  leadership.

Through reading I know that human societies are time and again struck by tragedies including those frequently caused by humans. Reading opens up a view of vast expanse of time. It lays before reader an ocean of human history in which tides of tragic events and waves of wellbeing rise and fall. Lived experience moderates youthful passions and shows limits of reason. Many years after the earthquake I would read German writer Viktor E Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning. Victor survived Nazi concentration camps and wrote this master piece which is an antidote to despair. He wrote, "in a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible."

Being responsible showed me that just like responsibility in family matters, responsibility at work also makes huge difference to other people, in this case to my colleagues and students. I felt responsible to do something for them in time of tragedy even though some of it had very little to do with professional responsibility as head of college.

The skills of leadership and management that I had learnt over the years and practised at work were equally relevant in rescue, rehabilitation and crisis management. I applied many of those skills in the situation. So the experience had given me confidence and ability to make a difference. My personal position within the institution as head who enjoyed credibility, trust and respect not only from colleagues, superiors and students but also from wider community in the town, allowed me to be more influential and make things better. Within two years of the crisis we not only restored the normal functioning of the institute I worked for but also for the whole collegiate campus where we had incurred huge damage due to earthquake. We were able to mobilise millions of rupees from donors for reconstruction of buildings and make them better than they were before the earthquake. The students and teachers were more confident and the whole campus was rejuvenated. I worked with some of the best teams to make it happen. It was and remains privilege to have been part of those teams. Purpose united us, shared grief energised us and hope made everything possible.

Emotional resilience is not a magical capacity that one is born with. It develops, with conscious efforts and reflection and also unconsciously by unplanned unintended experiences that life presents. Consciously we can develop this by being interested in wider life (reading has been great contributor in this regard for me), by taking responsibility, by noting that individual effort and small efforts are important and by valuing one's own and others life. Doing small things well is important. It gives confidence and boosts morale.  Emotional scars left by tragedy of earthquake have not disappeared. They are like flowers growing on the grave of sad memories. I visit them again today on 26th January. These remind me of the difference I can make in difficult times and hence stay motivated. In love, respect, and memory of all those who were once with me and still live in my memories.