One of the most classic case studies of penny wise pound foolish can be found in the epic Mahabharata. When Duryodhana was asked to give five villages to the Pandavas, he refused and said I will not give even the amount of land that a needle can point to. Now, we all know what happened after that; not only he lost his entire kingdom but also all of his children. There is a rule in nature, whomsoever puts the effort into planting a seed it will give rewards at some point in time. When it is not known but surely it does. But people take something that doesn’t belong to them or that they have not earned. In fear of getting caught, they do even more crimes to hide actions. As a result, it becomes similar to the fate of Duryodhana, penny-wise pound foolish. Sometimes in life to save a million dollars people end up losing billions or trillions. For example, say a country head is banking on a false sense of pride that it has become Vishwaguru, that false sense of pride has a cascading effect after all. So most will follow the same path of false sense of pride rather than doing quality work. As a result, you will have an inferior and dwindling infrastructure, mismanagement and a lack of accountability. For any system or community to become sustainable, it needs to have three things; accountability, transparency and competency. Every person’s aspirations are different, so when you choose your favourite because they will keep you in your chair, you weaken the institutions. When you weaken the institutions, you do exponential damage to the system. There are no winners in an unsustainable ecosystem. If there were accountability, transparency and competency, then it would have a positive cascading effect. That is why every person’s contribution matters in community and nation building. Once you fix your mind to do and seek quality, things will improve automatically. To appreciate quality is also a quality and a class of its own. Jingoism will give you a boost or a spark, but if quality is not there, it will automatically fizzle out. The mindset with which it is heading — that just because a national tag is attached to a product, people will lap it up, then probably few books of behavioural economics will change your mind. One of the best recent examples is the Digital India initiative, various ministers took the credit for that, which should be partial because 50% of the credit should go to COVID. If Covid were not there, people would have taken cash only. The deeper penetration of digital asset was a blessing in disguise of Covid. Currently, various shops that even I discovered have completely stopped digital payments and moved back to cash. So, it is back to square one in a few years.