Most readers know the fable of the rice grains and the chessboard; the emperor asks a wise man who is also a mathematician what he would like. The answer, a grain of rice on the first square of a chessboard, doubled to two for the second, doubled again for the third and so on until all 64 squares had been used. The request seemed reasonable to the mathematically challenged emperor but things collapsed long before the 64th square was reached. That square would have required 18 million trillion grains of rice — more than the entire world production, even today.
Whatever the origins of the fable, it is now being brought bang up-to-date in Jeddah. Mindful perhaps of the financial pain the agreement caused the emperor and the lessons he certainly learned, the water authorities in the city by the Red Sea have devised a similar scheme to deter owners of buildings who have installed illegal pumping systems to ensure extra water supplies. First-time offenders are to be fined SR1,000; for a second offence the fine will be doubled to SR2,000 and so on. There is something delightful in such a seemingly simple solution. The financial pain after being caught five or six times may not deter some developers, but eight times and the fine is a thumping SR128,000; 18 times it is over SR131 million — enough for a medium-sized desalination plant. Twenty-seven times, at SR67 billion, it is enough to build the 16 major water desalination units planned over the next 17 years and meet the country’s entire water needs. But, readers protest, no developer is going to allow himself to be caught 27 times. Probably not, but what happens to developers who have 27 buildings, all of them with illegal pumping systems? At the very least this ingenious move is going to make them toe the line.
This could be the start of something new. It could be used for driving offences; the first fine for speeding would be SR 300 and it would double to SR 600 and so on. The SR900 fine for running a red light would double to SR1,800 for a second offense and so on. That could make Saudi roads a lot safer — and if not, it would certainly provide a new source of revenue for the Kingdom, away from dependence on oil. And not just driving offences, all fines could be put on the same system — for overcharging, for poor service, for malpractice, for any form of wrongdoing. It gives an entire new meaning to double jeopardy. If it works, other countries will be queuing up to copy Saudi Arabia.
But it may not be without its problems. In most of the versions of the rice-on-the-chessboard fable, the emperor executes the mathematician, solving at a stoke the problem of finding all that rice — an outcome that, incidentally, suggests the man was not as wise as his scheme initially suggested; he should have foreseen that particular difficulty.
Fining errant drivers or developers or anyone else to the point of bankruptcy is no recipe for prosperity, let alone for public contentment. It may be that dependence on oil will have to remain in place for some time yet.
