Welcome to the seventy-second edition of '3-2-1 by Story Rules'.

A newsletter recommending good examples of storytelling across:

3 tweets
2 articles, and
1 long-form content piece

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Alright, let's dive in.

𝕏 3 Tweets of the week

Fascinating insight and typical hallmarks of lovely data-storytelling by FT. Clear message on top, simple chart, visual highlighting. Top-notch.

Ouch. Great use of contrast though.

Fascinating way to showcase the mind-numbing possibilities yet to be tried.

📄 2 Articles of the week

a. NEET's problems: Look deeper

I loved this dispassionate analysis of the ills with the examination, admission and ultimately, education system in India. It is a great exercise in correct problem definition.

If you ask a layperson, what needs to be done to fix the 2024 NEET paper leakage issue, they are likely to say: stricter controls on managing question paper distribution. finding and punishing rogue examiners, more security etc. Good luck trying to execute that perfectly.

The authors instead pick up the proximate issue - leakage of papers - and ask a bigger question: Why should the exam be on the same day? Why not make it like GRE or GMAT, where the students can take it at any point during the year? An added advantage would be the avoidance of unfortunate issues of candidates falling sick etc. on the main exam day.

Then they widen the perspective further on the problem: Why should all medical colleges have to decide student intake using one standard test? Why not give each college the freedom to choose based on what factors matter to them?

Then they widen the perspective further: Why do we have a shortage of medical college seats in the first place? Why can't we have as many seats as needed to fill the demand for doctors? Sure there are strong considerations of quality, but the current system of government-controlled supply is leading to many inefficiencies. Perhaps some opening up might be in order (and might reduce medical student outflow to countries like Russia, Ukraine and China for medical degrees!).

If you'd like a full image of the article, you can get it from this tweet.

b. 'Smoke and Mirrors' by Nitesh Jain

This personal post by Nitesh is a raw and honest look at what it's like to be in the midst of addiction.

Nitesh picked up smoking when he was young:

Once-in-a-while quickly escalated and stabilized at 5-6 per day. That was all my lungs and wallet could support. Even back then, every day was a study in diminishing returns. The first one in the morning would knock my lights out. My knees would go weak and head would spin. The ones that followed never quite gave that high.

Just when you think he had conquered his addiction, it came back to bite:

One day, I just quit. I’d done this a few times before, but never with this much conviction. I joined a gym, regained my stamina and lung capacity, and stayed on the wagon for a year. But idiot is as idiot does, and I decided to have a celebratory smoke on the one-year anniversary. Just like that, I was hooked again. This time the addiction was worse than ever.

Nitesh finally managed to quit after the birth of his daughter. The story doesn't end here. Nitesh then chronicles how his toddler got hooked to kiddie videos, especially by Cocomelon:

She would refuse to eat unless her rhymes were streaming. And once they were playing, you could feed her anything in any quantity and with any taste, good or bad. It didn’t matter. We tried setting boundaries. This didn’t go down too well. She would be sullen and throw tantrums. There would be violent mood swings.

Ooh boy. We knew this pattern.

Once the realisation hit, Nitesh and his wife corrected course. The resources he shares are useful for parents:

Have we completely stopped her streaming consumption? I don’t think that’s possible, or fair. We’re in the golden age of TV, and she has the right to participate and learn. We’re a lot more mindful of what she consumes. YouTube is an absolute no. Disney+, we’ve found to be a mixed bag. There are good shows, particularly the older IP. Bluey is fantastic. Apple TV+ has been a standout. Their kids’ content is consistently educational, relaxed and empathetic. We love shows like Stillwater and El Deafo.

An important piece, especially for parents.

🎧 1 long-form listen of the week

a. 'Sajith Pai Unpacks the 2024 Indus Valley Annual Report and the Changing Indian Consumer' with Shruti Rajagopalan on the Ideas of India podcast

Fascinating conversation between two deep thinkers. It goes above and beyond the Indus Valley report (on which I have had an episode with two of the other co-authors).

Here are some of my interesting takeaways:

There has been growth in 'India2':

Just to get our listeners caught up, you sort of bifurcate India into India1, India2, India3. Each of these segments has a further bifurcation. India1 is still about the same size, about 120 million people. You call it a Mexico within India because it’s about that GDP per capital level, and that kind of spending.

India2, which last year, you had characterized at about 100 million people, has now grown to 300 million people. The description has changed from a Philippines within India to an Indonesia within India, though, of course, this Indonesia is at a per capita level of about Nigeria, but that’s where we’re at.

While India1 is the segment which pays for apps, savvy entrepreneurs are also finding ways to monetise from India2:

Especially the India2 customer is now used to paying cash for microtransactions, as they call it. One of the trends we’re seeing is, for example, ShareChat thought they could monetize India2 via advertising and they failed, because fundamentally, those eyeballs aren’t as lucrative as our (India1) eyeballs, but they’re willing to pay. They’re willing to pay two rupees.

The big finding for me was when Harsh Jain of Dream11 said that, “Hey, we can’t get India2 to pay 300 rupees a month. We can get them to pay 10 rupees every day for 30 days.” Apps, which are able to unlock this behavior pattern, this spending pattern, will become the new winners

Sajith feels that we are at the bottom of the trough in the private investment cycle:

Rajagopalan: Do you see private borrowing, corporate borrowing increasing over the next few years and contributing to this capital formation? Or do you think still they’re waiting for something to happen before they invest further?

Pai: I’m not an expert on this. I only read a lot of reports and try and put it together, but all of the reports that we looked at for Indus Valley 2024 say that we’ve sort of hit the bottom of the lack of borrowing. We are going to see an uptick in borrowing. Keep in mind that these are sell-side reports, so they have to sell a story.

Manufacturing employment growth is being hindered by lack of skilling (sigh*) and... market distortions like NREGA?

We are investors in a company called Smartstaff, which is in the business of staffing textile workers. That’s a big category.

Tremendous offtake, trespassers will be recruited kind of offtake, but the big challenge is skilling. Skilling is a fundamental challenge. The challenge they say is employers won’t pay for skilling. Okay, employers won’t pay for skilling. There are multiple reasons for that, again, chicken and egg, employers pay for skilling because workers quit immediately, and so on and so forth.

One of the big challenges that these folks have is that come Eid, come farming season, workers just head home. They’ve actually done a lot of research that finally got to a series of hacks through which they persuade people to come home, one of which is that tickets are given, et cetera. They even paid some of the workers, say, give them money saying, “Why are you going home for farming? Take the money, give it to your brother or uncle or father, and tell him to hire a worker.”

They’re saying they can’t hire workers because NREGA means the average wage level has gone up and social consciousness, backbreaking work farming, some of it is backbreaking work.

Genetic differences around lactose intolerance impact present-day migration patterns - across the 'milk line'!

One very interesting pattern I heard from Smartstaff, again, that what drives migration within India, and why Kerala and Tamil Nadu get a lot of people from Odisha to the northeast, is the rice and predominant animal protein diet here. Like, for example, they like to eat meat or fish.

Whereas in the north, dairy is the predominant protein, and wheat is the predominant carbohydrate. Call it the milk line (which divides) the north and the west, where you don’t have lactoseintolerance, and the south and the east, historically, there’s predominant—that is really the map of India which explains India. North and the west is where the BJP, for instance, rules. So much can be explained by that one map, really.

Many more a-ha insights in the conversation.

* I worked for a skill development firm for 3 years...

That's all from this week's edition.

Ravi

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Ravishankar Iyer

Sajith Pai on the Indian Economy (3-2-1 by Story Rules #72)

𝕏 3 Tweets of the week

📄 2 Articles of the week

🎧 1 long-form listen of the week

India's best-known fact-checkers (3-2-1 by Story Rules 80)

A life-saving CPR story (3-2-1 by Story Rules #79)

When trying too hard can backfire (3-2-1 by Story Rules #78)