Outdated bans, policies, data can mean both short-term injustices and long-term harm In fashion, one person’s outdated style can be another’s top style. In etiquette, Baby Boomer rules like ‘speak only when you’re spoken to’ belong to a bygone era but needn’t cause active harm wherever they still prevail. But in so many other spheres, obsoleteness connotes painful wastefulness, or worse.
Mohammed Shami has just reminded everyone that if rules made to combat Covid are unthinkingly preserved, it can be kinda unjust. Continued ban on using saliva to shine the cricket ball, long after the pandemic’s over, isn’t fair to pacers. Think broader: at a public policy level, outdated ideas inflict much more widespread injustices and other hurts.
A delayed Census has left us with a huge outdated data problem, which compromises governance on several counts. Just consider food security. Different experts may stand in different places on how the use of 2011 Census data is shortchanging PDS claimants in 2025, but they all agree on the criticality of updating the national level demographic and economic data.
Our food security policy also remains out of time with our nutritional security needs. For example, whether it is MSP or import duties, pulses still don’t get anything like the support enjoyed by rice, wheat and sugarcane. Sadly, the highest costs of continuing to fall behind on nutritional density will be paid by our children, not us.
Even the master plans for our major .