PolicyWTFs—A Hall of Shame

Jul 27, 2024
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Last updated: 20 July 2024

This is our policyWTF Long List. Over four years of writing this thought-letter, we have compiled nearly a hundred boondoggles. We love despise each one of these policyWTFs, but the particularly egregious ones have been marked in bold. For your ease of reading, we’ve divided them into categories.

‘One Nation One X’ PolicyWTFs

  1. One Nation, One Election

  2. One Person, One Handbag

  3. One Nation One Fertiliser

  4. One Nation One Election Take 3

  5. NEET and Neeti

  6. What Broke the Constitution’s Seventh Schedule?

Unease of Doing Business PolicyWTFs

  1. The PolicyWTF that made India’s businesses uncompetitive — items reserved for manufacture exclusively by the small-scale sector

  2. Mutually Assured Decline — The Downsides of Subsidizing Chipmakers

  3. State PSUs — A Divestment Less Discussed

  4. Auto-debit Cancel Culture

  5. Credit Culture-Vulture

  6. Compulsory Philanthropy

  7. Compulsory Philanthropy—I Told You So

  8. The Shape-shifting Nature of PLIs

  9. What Policies Made Maruti a Success Story?

  10. Freight Equalisation Scheme

  11. Cattle Pass Permit System

Tax and Public Finance PolicyWTFs

  1. Progressive Taxation is Not Always Progressive

  2. Creative Accounting

  3. Finance Commission Is Not Family-planning Commission

  4. Of Complex Laws & Impossible Taxes

  5. Ulta-Pulta Tax

  6. GST Complications and AAR Clarifications

  7. GST Compensation Logjam

  8. Tax Base Problem

  9. The Indefensibility of Defence Financing

  10. Punjab’s Economic Downfall

BanWTF

  1. Discriminatory Emigration Clearance Policies in India

  2. Legal Restrictions in the Legal Profession

  3. Alcohol, Morality, and the State

  4. Our Never-ending Love Affair with Freebies and Bans

  5. The Pesticide Ban

  6. Emigration Embargoes

  7. Ban on Water Purifiers

  8. Prohibition and Morality

  9. Casually Banning Films Committee

  10. Casually Banning Films Committee, Reprise

  11. Bihar Prohibition Saga

  12. The Wheat Ban Photo Op

  13. Billboard Bans

  14. Generic Medicines by Fiat

Trade PolicyWTFs

  1. How Pro-Business Protectionism Hurts Indian Women

  2. Economic Nationalism

  3. Aatm-Nirbharta via Manoj Kumar

  4. Cheeni Kum in the Indian Economy

  5. India’s Counterproductive Stance on Digital Trade and Transfers

  6. Tariffs on Mosquito Racquets

  7. Import Tariffs on Whey Protein Powders

  8. The Laptop Import License Raj

  9. The Tyranny of Import Duties

  10. Rice and Wheat Export Bans

  11. Restricting Imports of Screws from China

  12. The Never-ending Saga of Laptop Import Restrictions

  13. No Exports Without Imports

  14. The Aatmanirbhar Way to Become An Economic Superpower

Price and Quantity ControlWTFs

  1. The Food Control Orders of the 1960s

  2. Paddy Minimum Support Prices Cause Delhi Smog

  3. Daastaan-e-Sandalwood

  4. Mandating Free COVID-19 Tests

  5. Rent Control in Mumbai via Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho

  6. License Permit Raj via Govinda

  7. Price Caps, SF Style

  8. Milking Consumers and Producers, All at Once

  9. Price Caps that Defy Logic

  10. Zero Merchant Discount Rates for Digital Payments

  11. Price caps on Film Tickets

  12. Cement Price Controls

  13. Price Controlling the Pandemic

  14. Price Floors, Ceilings, and Capacity Caps on Airline Tickets

  15. “Market” Pricing in Pharmaceuticals

  16. Price Caps on Broadcasters

  17. Tanker Water Price Controls

Public Administration WTFs

  1. Defence Pension Tension

  2. Trishul: Ek 'Tender' Prem Katha

  3. State Assemblies as Glorified Rubber Stamps

  4. ‘Everyone Wants Decentralisation, But Only Up to Their Own Level’

  5. The Fault in Central Planning for Skill Development

  6. Pension Troubles

Social PolicyWTFs

  1. China’s one-child policy (一孩政策) and its unintended consequences

  2. The Citizenship Amendment Act 2019

  3. Sedition in our Parampara

  4. Will Sons of Soil Do Tons of Toil? — Reservations for Locals

  5. Why India’s Medical Colleges Produce So Few Doctors

  6. Another Medical Education policyWTF

Tech PolicyWTFs

  1. AI as a PSU

MiscellaneousWTFs

  1. Our Democracy in Wave 2

  2. The Russia Trip PolicyWTF

  3. A Misfired Unarmed Missile Lands in Pakistan

  4. Confucianism or Confusionism? — the restrictions on Confucius Institutes

  5. Global PolicyWTF—Turkey for Thanksgiving

  6. Exporting Indian Faultlines—Film Poster Edition

  7. Number Mirages

  8. Winging the Pandemic

  9. On COVID-19 Second Wave

  10. The Aatmnirbhar Way to Cure COVID-19

Wait, there’s more. We don’t just criticise everything governments do. We also acknowledge policies that make us better off. Here’s our list.

Not(PolicyWTFs)—The Hall of Fame

  1. When the PM Acknowledged State Failures

  2. Delhi Government Sets Itself Measurable Outcomes

  3. Jab Two Taxes Met

  4. Better Textbooks via the National Curriculum Framework

  5. Chinese Companies Can Make in India - Conditions Apply

  6. MeitY realises that there are no exports without imports

  7. National Research Foundation Bill

  8. Supreme Court Resists the Urge to Intervene

  9. Making Education Legitimately Profitable (somewhat)

  10. Trade Deals are Good

  11. Let There Be Service Charges

  12. Reforming Procurement (A Work in Progress)

  13. Scrapping Retrospective Taxes

  14. A Perfect Takeoff for Space Liberalisation

  15. The Art of Letting Go

P.S.: Of course, we have also discussed frameworks for identifying policy successes.