The NEET paper-leak controversy raised a disturbing question. Not for the first time though.
Why do people cheat and game public systems?
Take the example of the botched NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) test. For millions of students, NEET was supposed to offer a level playing field—one exam, one common standard, equal opportunity.
But when access to a question paper can potentially be worth huge financial gain, the incentives to exploit weaknesses in the system become enormous.
This alternate view, puts the spotlight on the skewed set of incentives which encourage people to indulge in malicious activities.
What if some of India’s governance problems—from corruption and bureaucratic delays to judicial backlogs and poor civic services—are not simply about bad people or inadequate capacity, but about badly designed incentives?
This is the central question of public choice theory: how politicians, bureaucrats, judges, contractors and citizens respond to the incentives created by institutions?
In this episode of Capital Calculus, StratNewsGlobal.Tech spoke to Apurva Kumar about why people behave the way they do—and whether better-designed incentives can produce better governance.
