Kerala Rising: From Exporting People to Exporting Ideas · Page 303 of 353

KERALA RISING · FROM EXPORTING PEOPLE TO EXPORTING IDEAS

KERALA RISING · FROM EXPORTING PEOPLE TO EXPORTING IDEAS
planting drives keep failing quietly. The cost of
doing nothing is invisible precisely because it is the
baseline, but it is the largest cost of all; the
continued gap between what is spent and what is
achieved, year after year.
Alternative two: spend more on the existing approach
The second alternative is to do more of what is
already done, more collection capacity, more
enforcement cameras, more planting, more
screening camps. This is the instinctive response,
and it is not wrong so much as incomplete. More
collection without a citizen-level segregation loop
still leaves mixed waste; more enforcement without
recognition still changes behaviour only at the
camera; more planting without a survival check still
dies in the dry season. Additional spend on the
supply side cannot manufacture the demand-side
behaviour change that the feedback loop produces.
The framework is not an argument against this
spend; it is the small increment that finally converts
it into an outcome.
Alternative three: procure an app from a vendor
The third alternative is to procure a civic app, or
several, from technology vendors on fixed-term
contracts. This is the most common path and the one
the framework most directly argues against. A
procured app is owned by the vendor, ends with the
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