AshokaX Newsletter
March 20, 2026
The AshokaX Newsletter
Learning That
Keeps Pace
with Change.
Rigorous. Reflective. Relevant — because the world doesn't wait for you to catch up.
As we move deeper into 2026, the pace of change in how we work, learn, and lead shows no sign of slowing. This month, we go deep on two fields that matter more than ever: behavioural science and the craft of writing.
— Team AshokaX
Field focus Behavioural Science
The Hidden Architecture of Human Choice
For most of the twentieth century, economics and public policy assumed a common premise: people are rational. They weigh options, calculate consequences, and act in their own best interest. The problem is that this is almost never true.
Behavioural science — drawing on psychology, economics, and cognitive neuroscience — has spent the last five decades dismantling this assumption. The result is a richer, more honest picture of how we actually decide: quickly, emotionally, socially, and often against our stated intentions.
"The standard assumption is that people make decisions by carefully weighing costs and benefits. But most decisions are made on autopilot — fast, associative, and shaped by context."
— Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate in Economic SciencesThis is not merely an academic observation. It has reshaped how governments design welfare programmes, how hospitals increase organ donation, how cities reduce energy consumption — and how companies build products that people actually use.
Core ideas worth understanding
01
System 1 vs System 2 Thinking
Kahneman's foundational distinction: our fast, intuitive, emotional system (System 1) runs almost all of our daily decisions. Our slow, deliberate, logical system (System 2) is expensive to use — and we avoid it whenever we can. Most policy and product design ignores this completely.
02
Loss Aversion & the Endowment Effect
Losing ₹500 feels roughly twice as bad as gaining ₹500 feels good. This asymmetry explains why people hold on to bad investments, resist insurance decisions, and respond far better to "don't lose this benefit" messaging than "you could gain this benefit."
03
Nudge Theory & Default Effects
People overwhelmingly stick with defaults. Switching pension auto-enrollment from opt-in to opt-out increased participation from 49% to 86% in the UK — with no change in policy, only in structure. This is the core insight of Thaler and Sunstein's nudge framework: choice architecture shapes behaviour without restricting freedom.
04
Social Norms as Behaviour Change
One of the most reliable behavioural levers is telling people what others like them are doing. "92% of your neighbours have already paid their taxes" consistently outperforms threat-based messaging. Social proof operates below conscious reasoning — and it works across cultures.
05
Present Bias & Temporal Discounting
We systematically overvalue the present and undervalue the future. This explains why we skip exercise today despite wanting to be healthy next year, why we procrastinate on savings, and why long-term climate commitments are so politically fragile. Designing for present bias — rather than ignoring it — is one of the most important challenges in public policy today.
Behavioural Science in India
India is increasingly applying behavioural insights at scale — from NITI Aayog's nudge-informed policy design to SEWA's work on financial decision-making among informal workers. The challenge is adapting frameworks developed in Western contexts to Indian social structures, where caste, family, and community norms operate as powerful default environments of their own.
Essential reading & listening
Book
Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
The definitive account of how two modes of thought govern our decisions. Dense, rewarding, and genuinely life-changing.
Book
Nudge — Thaler & Sunstein (revised 2021 edition)
The foundational text on choice architecture. Updated with new case studies on digital nudges, climate, and financial decisions.
Book
Misbehaving — Richard Thaler
Thaler's memoir of how behavioural economics was built — engaging, funny, and full of examples from real policy battles.
Podcast
Hidden Brain — Shankar Vedantam
Weekly episodes on the unconscious patterns driving human behaviour. Start with: "You 2.0: Decide Already" and "The Ostrich Effect."
Report · Free
World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society, and Behaviour — World Bank
How behavioural science is reshaping global development policy. India-relevant case studies on sanitation, tax compliance, and financial inclusion.
Field focus Creative Writing
Why Writing Is Still the Most Human Skill
In a moment when AI can produce grammatical, fluent text on almost any topic in seconds, an obvious question presents itself: why bother learning to write? The answer reveals what writing actually is — and what it isn't.
Writing is not the transfer of information from one mind to another. It is the act of thinking made visible. The discipline of forming a sentence, sustaining an argument across paragraphs, or finding the exact word for an emotion — these are not packaging tasks. They are cognitive ones. They change what you think, not just how you express it.
"Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard."
— David McCullough, biographer and historianThe craft, broken down
I
Voice: The Most Misunderstood Element
Voice is not style or tone — it is the accumulated effect of all the choices a writer makes: which details to include, which words to reach for, where to pause, what to leave unsaid. It cannot be taught directly. It emerges from reading widely, writing often, and resisting the urge to sound like someone else.
II
The First Draft Is Not Writing — It's Excavation
Anne Lamott calls it the "shitty first draft." Hemingway was blunter: the first draft of anything is garbage. This is liberation, not discouragement. The job of a first draft is to exist, not to be good. The writing happens in revision: the patient, honest work of cutting what is false and keeping what is true.
III
Specificity Over Abstraction
"She was sad" tells us nothing. "She folded the letter and put it in the wrong drawer" shows us everything. Abstraction is where writing goes to die. The specific detail — the exact object, gesture, or sensory fact — carries emotional weight that no adjective can manufacture.
IV
The Indian Short Story Tradition
India has one of the richest short fiction traditions in the world — too often overlooked in formal writing education. From Saadat Hasan Manto's unflinching moral precision to Ismat Chughtai's domestic claustrophobia to Premchand's social realism, these writers understood that the small, particular story is almost always the most universal one.
V
Writing for Public Life: Where Clarity Becomes Power
Policy memos, op-eds, grant applications — the world runs on prose that almost nobody reads, because almost nobody writes it well. The ability to make a complex argument clear and a dry subject interesting is among the rarest professional skills. The gap between an idea and its impact is often just a sentence.
A daily practice, not a talent
Most great writers are not gifted — they are consistent. The habit of writing daily, even briefly, is the single most reliable predictor of craft development over time
Reading as apprenticeship
Every writer you admire is teaching you something. Reading slowly — annotating, noticing structure, asking "how did they do that?" — is the oldest form of writing education
Essential reading & tools
Book
Bird by Bird — Anne Lamott
On the writing life: why first drafts are meant to be bad, how to handle the fear of the blank page, and the discipline behind the finished piece.
Book
On Writing — Stephen King
Part memoir, part craft manual. Remarkably practical on habit, revision, and the ruthless cutting that separates good writing from great writing.
Book · Indian Tradition
Manto: Selected Stories — translated by Aatish Taseer
The essential introduction to Urdu fiction's most important voice. A masterclass in economy, moral seriousness, and the short story as moral argument.
Book · Style
The Elements of Style — Strunk & White
Still the clearest, most ruthless guide to clean prose. Omit needless words. Read it once a year. The original 1918 edition is also freely available online.
Free Tool
Hemingway Editor — hemingwayapp.com
Paste your writing in and it highlights passive voice, complex sentences, and unnecessary adverbs. Brutally useful for tightening prose.
Free Online Course
Creative Writing Specialisation — Wesleyan University, Coursera
Four-course sequence covering short story, memoir, poetry, and creative non-fiction. Strong peer workshop component.
Programme spotlight
Worth Revisiting This Month
One programme that bridges both fields explored today — the science of how we think and the art of how we express it.
AshokaX on Coursera · Self-Paced
Personality and Its Impact on Everyday Life
Explore how personality shapes decision-making, relationships, and life outcomes — drawing on research in psychology and behavioural science.
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Alumni
I gained a solid understanding of the data science workflow, including data acquisition, cleaning, exploration, analysis, modeling, and communication of results.
Chandanapriya Dhanraj,
Research Manager
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