KERALA RISING · FROM EXPORTING PEOPLE TO EXPORTING IDEAS 24. Measured against the alternatives No proposal should be judged in isolation, only against what else the state could do with the same money and attention. This chapter sets the framework beside its real alternatives and asks which best closes the gap. A decision-maker never chooses between a proposal and nothing; the choice is always against the other things that could be done instead. So it bears setting this framework honestly beside its genuine alternatives for closing the civic-outcome gap, and asking, for each, what it costs, what it delivers, and where it falls short. The alternatives are real options that serious people advocate, not strawmen, and each has merits the framework should be measured against rather than dismissed. Alternative one: do nothing differently The first alternative is to keep spending the existing budgets in the existing way and accept the existing results. This has the virtue of requiring no new decision, no new institution, and no new risk. Its defect is that it guarantees the status quo: the waste budget keeps producing streets everyone agrees are not clean enough, enforcement keeps suppressing the worst driving without propagating the best, 302