Policy is Important

I have wake up today to a realization that, policy intervention is necessary to bring in positive changes. Old saying, but new realization..after reading a news piece of a newspaper from India (www.anandabazar.com). The news is that in members of Bihar Police (Bihar is one of the states of Federal India) cook and dine in a highly segregated environment. Each racial/religious and ethnic group maintains their own kitchen and cook. This tradition has been sustaining in the state police barracks from god knows how many hundred years (at least from the Moghul period..when the organized state police froces were formed). As there was and is no policy intervention available (not until today) to change this segregating culture, this is perpetuating. So, one can argue, people have different tastes and preferences about many things, democracy should provide that diversity in the menu. But, having seperate menu and having seperate kitchen and dining place are not same and the later creates more negative externalities than positive utility maximizations as suggested by typical neoclassical economics.