Pavan Srinath

Pavan Srinath is the head of strategy and programmes at the Takshashila Institution. He is also Fellow at the Centre for Smart City Governance at Takshashila.

Quebec is getting TASMACs for Marijuana

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Quebec is pulling a leaf out of Tamil Nadu’s playbook for legalising marijuana. Quebec will be procuring marijuana in bulk from six suppliers and then operating the entire supply chain. Quebec will not only levy an ‘excise’ tax, but also sell marijuana out of government-owned dispensaries. In other words, Canadians will be buying their weed from a Canadian style TASMAC!

Hydropothecary Corp, Canopy Growth and Aphria Inc are among six companies that have signed agreements with Quebec’s liquor board to supply the province with marijuana when Canada legalizes its recreational use this year, the companies said in separate statements on Wednesday.
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Canada’s senate is set for a final vote on legalizing marijuana on June 7, with sales expected to start in the fall. Provinces, including Quebec and Ontario, plan to open government-run stores, while others such as Alberta and Saskatchewan will allow private ones. British Columbia plans to have both.

[The Globe and Mail, April 11, 2018]

Back in India, this is what a government dispensary of marijuana looks like. Canada must do better.

Government authorised Bhang shop, Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India.

Three Dollars a Mind

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Turns out that armchair activists like yours truly, who sit and analyse issues and write op-eds, are not completely useless!

A new study by David Kirby, Emily Ekins and Alexander Coppock finds that op-eds (opinion pieces in newspapers) actually do end up persuading their readers. General readers are apparently persuaded in a larger number compared to ‘elites’, from a sample of US readers with different political leanings. While the observed effect of persuasion drops by half after 10 days of reading an op-ed, that effect lingered and lasted for much longer.

Analysing the costs of persuading a single reader, Kirby et al find that:

Based on the cost of producing an op-ed, the number of people likely to read it, and its ability to sway a reader’s opinion, the researchers estimated that an op-ed costs from about 50 cents to $3 per mind changed.

[Science Daily, April 24, 2018]

The key to this is to figure out how many people even read op-eds. Even in the United States, a New York Times op-ed can only hope to get 500,000 readers, and a Newsweek op-ed can get only about 50,000 readers. The numbers in India would be drastically smaller.

Ping me on twitter if you want to take a look at the full text of the paper.

Hat-tip to Raju Narisetti for sharing the paper on Twitter.

Déjà vu

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India’s Aadhar is often compared to the Social Security Number system of the United States. Most of these comparisons are about how they are in use today.

The US SSN is necessary for you to draw a salary, open a bank account, it’s linked to your credit history, it’s linked to your taxes, tax waivers and a lot more. In India, it’s a similar set of linkages that is up for question at the Supreme court today.

But how did the SSN come into being in the first place?

The story is fascinating. NPR’s Planet Money podcast has an excellent episode on the Social Security Number:

A few things that jumped out:

The Social Security Number came into play in 1935, with the Social Security Act getting signed into law by Franklin Roosevelt. The original aim of the number was to track workers’ earnings through their career, such that they could receive appropriate social security benefits on retirement.

Europe said that it couldn’t be done. (Europe’s current extreme stances on data protection today are eerily reflective of similar sentiments)

The Americans decided to not use a fingerprint, because fingerprints had a criminal connotation, and the optics of hauling all workers in to get their fingerprints taken were… bad, to say the least.

The Number 666 is never used in the SSN!

Initially, people did not fully understand the need for secrecy with the SSN. Giant printed versions of social security cards, with the numbers intact, would be used in TV shows.

The SSN’s ambit gets expanded, starting 1943. The US Federal government started telling its other departments to not invent a new ID for any purpose, but use the SSN instead.

  • In 1962, it starts getting used for people to pay taxes.
  • Around the same time, it starts getting used for enrollment into Medicaid, a large healthcare programme.
  • In 1977, it’s used for distributing food stamps, or food subsidy.
  • In parallel, the number is being used by the Federal government and the military as personnel ID numbers.
  • In 1982, for loans from the federal government… and the list goes on. Driving license, Marriage registration, everywhere. And eventually, credit ratings.

The Social Security Administation did not have the legal authority to stop people from using the number for other purposes.

…and then these numbers got hacked.

History, it seems, often repeats itself.