|
Marginalism, as economists say, lies at
the core of economics. It is Marginalism, thinking and evaluating at the
margins, which helps in economic decision-making. ‘Don’t take the ‘total’
picture. Think instead in terms of margins’, is one of the most consistent
advice, which one gets in any rudimentary course in or about economics. In fact,
the idea of Marginalism has started altering age-old maxims. As one economist
put it: ‘Anything worth doing is only worth doing as well as is suggested by
comparing its marginal costs and marginal benefits.’ (Gasper: 2000/ Based on
Rhoads: 1999). Well, I, as someone might be thinking, do not intend to disagree.
In fact, I want to strengthen this line of thinking. My argument is that
success, in the case of most respected men of history as well as in the
every-day life comes only at the end -- at the margins.
Probably, everybody who has a slightest
degree of interest in Cricket (the game, in which at any given moment, great
majority of players is standing still) knows Imran Khan. In his biography, he
has related his story of his first test match in 1973. He tried hard for first
three days to get a single wicket but in vain. It was the last session of the
third day, at the margin of the day, when he had lost all hopes, he finally
struck. He succeeded at the margin. A more direct example would be of
presidential elections of the United States in 1968 when the presidential
candidate Herbert Humphery could not make it to the White House as Richard Nixon
got a few hundreds vote winning margin, the narrowest ever in the American
history. Even in developing countries like India, we find examples of losing or
succeeding (it depends which party do you belong to) at the margins. In 1998,
the main opposition party Congress (I), put a no-confidence move against the
incumbent Prime Minister, and the move was defeated with the margin of only a
couple of votes.
In everyday life, we notice that at many
times, we are tired of trying. We try and try again but fail and fail again.
Yet, at most of the occasions, just ‘another’ attempt, just a marginal attempt,
gets us through. I, for example, was trying for a scholarship for last four
years and I had decided that if, for the fifth time, I could not make it, I will
forget about it.
Fortunately, it was at the fifth time,
when I succeeded. I succeeded at the marginal point by doing just an additional
attempt, which in fact was my last attempt. I am sure that the readers of these
lines could cite much more interesting examples from their lives, where they can
see how life is working at the margins. We all remember the famous line:
‘Silver lining at the end (or at the margin) of the clouds’ or often quote:
‘Light at the end of the tunnel’. We are, in fact, thinking in terms of margins
when we are hoping against hope. Even on failures, we often say: Only if I had
attempted for another time, success would have been there. We, as a matter of
daily observation, explain our successes or failures not in terms of the total
effort we had made, but in terms of the last attempt which we did or did not
make. We describe and prescribe, therefore, in terms of margins, without
consciously knowing it.
I understand that the idea of
Marginalism is un-romantic (Rhoads: 1999), but so is life at critical
crossroads. For example, as a whole, life of successful men looks very romantic.
We see these men as ‘he came; he saw; he conquered’, but often overlook the
critical moments of their lives during which they were perplexing, tumbling, and
struggling at the margins. These marginal moments are ignored and a ‘total’ and
perfect picture emerges. This picture, suffice is to say, is incomplete. But
probably, to see a better picture, we need a ‘history of Marginalism in life.’
Practically speaking, however, only a few will bother for such finer and
marginal details and will rather, let me say it finally, marginalize this
Marginalism itself.
(Author is a participant of Masters
Programme 2000-01in Public Policy and Administration at Institute of Social
Studies, the Hague, The Netherlands.) |