The credibility problem of governments

Many govts think they can recover from serious reverses. In fact, however, they almost never do. In such situations, the most important national task becomes to restore their credibility and authority

A few days ago the economist Ajit Ranade and I were talking about disasters and the responses of the governments to them,  as also the critics’ responses to those responses. 

He described the current global situation in terms of a concept in mathematics, namely, as a ‘convex combination’. 

Such a combination arises in something called ‘affine spaces’. In such spaces, there is no fixed point that can serve as the origin from which you can draw lines. 

Now, very, very roughly, what happens is that every point, or line, in that space has a positive value. Nothing is negative or