After giving so many stupid and moronic ideas, we have come up with one more first-class "moronism" - we call it the ECC = The Economic Cost Concept.
ECC is nothing but the financial cost (both present as well as future) that is required for execution of any plan or policy or decision. Man is a very greedy animal by core. Most of the times whatever we do is linked to the benefit that we are getting - majority of the times, the benefit is in the form of economic or monetary gains and sometimes it is in the form of social gains, which ultimately lead to economic and monetary gains. And there is nothing wrong in it. In fact, had someone not looked at the gains, we would not be having so many inventions like mobile, TV, car, trains, etc. It is fair enough for the person who is bringing these products and services to eat the fruits of his labour and ideas. This will only encourage more people to come out with better ideas, products, and services.
Hence, when we look at every situation with an economic angle, we can find the most suitable solution to any solution that will benefit the entire society because economics deals with nothing but optimum utilization of limited resources in order to fulfill unlimited wants & desires. Let us just illustrate our views by an example. Suppose you were going in a bus and your purse is stolen by some pickpocket. Your purse was having only Rs. 100/- and nothing else. Now for reasons known solely to you, the purse was of very high emotional value to you since it has been passed down through generations since your great great great grandfather. Hence, you decide to teach that stupid pickpocket a lesson and go to the nearest police station to lodge an FIR. But you are amused to find that the police is not very co-operative in lodging the FIR. Reason: - They think that it is not worth to go after a Rs. 100-carrying purse and waste their time and resources. In this scenario, morally and ethically the victim, i.e. YOU, are correct - you have got every right to get justice and get your items back and the police should have helped you out. But economically speaking, the police is indeed correct. Lodging an FIR takes time to document the evidence, man hours need to be given to collect evidence and again loads of documentation needs to be done, the evidence needs to be produced before a magistrate, etc. etc. Now consider the total costs involved regarding the stationery (paper, pen, etc.), the fuel cost for travelling across the city and finding the culprit, the cost of keeping the culprit in custody, etc. etc. Even if they are successful in recovering your Rs. 100/- and your vintage purse, the economic cost involved will be too high to offset the emotional gains. This is the gist of the Economic Cost Concept or the ECC that we are proposing.
Every activity has an economic cost - the activity should be pursued ONLY if the economic benefits outweigh the economic costs, i.e. Economic Benefits > Economic Costs. Now how to calculate the ECC. Now that's a really tough job and it has to be done on a case to case basis since economic costs are involved in virtually all situations and one single entity may not be competent enough to calculate the same. Hence, we propose a broad organization which we may call the ECC Commission, which should propose broad guidelines for calculation of the economic cost of any action on which all the public sector employees and staff need to be trained in. Any and we repeat, any decision, whether on policy, administrative, or operational matters need to be analyzed keeping in mind the economic costs in mind and then and then only, the final decision need to be taken.
A classic example of economic wastage is the transfer policies in the public sector which are more or less done based on the whims and fancies of the higher ups in the concerned departments rather than actual economic or business need of the organization/department. There have been many instances wherein employees have been given transfers every year rather than the stipulated period of 2 to 3 years leading to very heavy cost of transfer incurred on the exchequer. Many a times, employees are sanctioned LTC/LFC/HTC (leave concession for visiting native place or any place in Bharat) and suddenly their leaves are cancelled or shortened and the employee is called back due to so-called "exigent" artificially-created situations leading to heavy cost on the organization in the form of travel bills just for reimbursement of cancelled air tickets. All this may sound trivial and small to anybody reading this, but when you consider the same for a huge number of employees working in various government bodies throughout the year, you may understand that the cost incurred may be more than enough to make schools or hospitals in many remote areas.
Economic Cost audit should also be conducted in every department in order to understand the ways in which economic cost can be optimized. There is a system of expenditure audit in many departments but the expenditure audit just looks at the aspect of the requirement and the correctness of the expenditure incurred rather than the actual economic benefits that have been arisen out of the incurred expense. Another classic example of ECC requirement is nothing but our own Tejas Light Combat Aircraft wherein we wasted huge resources in re-inventing the wheel and ultimately purchased the wheel from developed nations and renamed the wheel with Sanskrit jargons. The total cost is estimated to be more than Rs. 200 Crores but that is just the money factor, what about the "time-wasted" factor?
The ECC will be useful in various decision-making situations like recovery of land dues, bank loan recovery, release of grants/aids, infrastructure development, etc. and sky is the limit for the application of this concept.
Happy Ethmos to all!
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