A fresh look at Reservations and Quotas – Part II

Dear Shantanu

You have raised an interesting. I would suggest looking at each policy issue from the framework of freedom. Does (a particular policy action) enhance our freedom (and hence our accountability)?

Not many years ago (1998-99) I was struggling in my mind with the kinds of artificial, man-made processes of the sort you have suggested, which involve ‘tapering off’ reservations. But that assumed that reservation is legitimate. I am now convinced, on careful thought, that reservations are illegitimate. The very concept is not compatible with the principles of freedom (and its obverse, accountability).

Reservations are anti-freedom and they diminish all of us. The concept is underpinned on “justice of yesterday” and “social justice”. But these are totally false concepts as I demonstrate at length in my book.

Justice is purely individual. The concept of affirmative action must therefore simply go, if India wishes to be a a free country. The task of a government is to govern; not to undertake social reform. Social reform is for social reformers.

I am providing below a short extract from the current version of chapter 4 of my book, Breaking Free of Nehru (at http://www.sanjeev.sabhlokcity.com/breakingfree.html).This extract is best read in relation to the arguments presented in that chapter and the rest of the book. However, here it goes:

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Our Constitution has institutionalised social inequality through its Part XVI, which recognizes a range of classes of citizens, namely the scheduled castes and tribes; instead of a single class of citizen.

By recognising these alleged distinctions in the Constitution, we have effectively frozen these ‘classes’ for ever. But pouring concrete on the natural evolutionary process of cultural change is not the way of freedom. Our culture should remain free to evolve and change. In particular, it is best that the evolution of a society from tribal (and thus collectivist) modes to a modern (individualist) society takes place sooner rather than later. That would enable each (formerly tribal) individual to achieve his or her highest potential. And therefore, while the use of terms like tribes and castes is fine for sociologists or anthropologists, it is not the language of a social contract amongst equal citizens.

But these Articles of the Constitution went beyond the mere categorisation of people. These are affirmative action clauses, based on the flawed concept of ‘the justice of yesterday’. Eg. Article 335 enables the “relaxation in qualifying marks in any examination or lowering the standards of evaluation”. These Articles perpetrate a grave injustice today, in our times, by punishing people who have not, as individuals, participated in any crime. The most distressing thing about this injustice is that it finds a place in our Constitution itself.

Affirmative action in the form of reservation of seats in medical colleges or government services is based on the argument that the present generation should reliquish its equality of opportunity in order to compensate for the harm allegedly caused by our forefathers. The fact that the present generation was obviously not even born then shows how untenable this argument is.

Such inequality of opportunity, particularly one that is buttressed by government, amounts to coercive discrimination. The entire society therefore loses its freedom, even those who are being discriminated in favour of. It is unacceptable to institutionalise inequality of opportunity and to reduce our freedom by creating reservations that over-ride merit. Setting right past inequalities of opportunity can never be done by institutionalising new inequality of opportunity. Two wrongs never make a right.

Members of the current generation who may be actually bringing about higher standards of freedom and equality for all, including members of the scheduled castes or tribes, or have drifted free of thediscriminatory moorings of their religioun, are now held in law to be less than equal in India. One unintended outcome of this is that people who are treated poorly in Hinduism will not opt out of Hinduism, given that they will then lose these unequal benefits available to them only as Hindus. If anything, reservations will therefore strongly perpetuate the caste system. If the caste system would have disappeared on its own in say, about 50-100 years, in capitalist India, this Nehruvian socialist intervention will sustain it potentially for ever. The more practical problem is that affirmative action does not get rid of the underlying issue of inequality of opportunity it is trying to address, and is the wrong way to do it.

I am not denying that deplorable practices such as caste disadvantage or other forms of social discrimination were rampant in India in the past, or that they continue today (the caste system being one of my initial reasons for dissenting with Hinduism). However, similar discrimination or stereotyping has occurred in every part of the world in the past, and it needs a different strategy to fix it. We know that even as George Washington read out the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, he personally owned hundreds of slaves. Thomas Jefferson, the man to whom we owe the inspiring sentiments of the American Declaration of Independence, owned over 180 slaves as late as in 1824. Similarly, providing equality to women in simple matters such as adult franchise has taken a very long time coming in the USA. So, there has been huge discrimination even in the so-called free societies in the past.

The point I am making is that the solution to social discrimination is not to muddy the crystal clear waters of freedom and to thus diminish our freedom, but for social reformers to initiate community-based voluntary action to educate people, including socially boycotting those who demonstrate bigoted behaviour. If we are concerned that discriminatory practices are not changing fast enough, then we need to take steps to form reformative associations that educate people against these practices. There are many other forms of individual protest that can make a difference. We could use ‘non-caste’ titles, reform the religion, or even abandon Hinduism altogether (to the extent that it refuses toreform). Ensuring what we think is the ideal equality of opportunity is often a matter of social reform and building the appropriate awareness among individual citizens. It is a task for social reformers, not of governments.

Governments can do a lot to offset unfair advantage – but it is best to do so through non-discretionary outcome standards – such as by ensuring that everyone is able to achieve a minimum level of income, and that all children receive education upto year 12. The education will then directly help to reduce social disadvantage. For instance, I would reasonably expect that by now, as a result of my education and experience, I am no longer as bigoted as my ancestors were.

But even education is not enough. For can anyone force me to not be bigoted should I choose to be so, merely by educating me? No. Reform that seeks to change my of this sort must touch my heart. I must internalise the message of equality amongst all people. And that is not a task for government.

The task of removing bigotry cannot be given to a government. For, the opinions of its members – whether of the political class or bureaucracy – merely reflect existing social opinion. They are not reformers. In any event, they are not qualified, as a group, to touch our hearts and make us change.

What the government can do, and should do effectively (which means it needs to build the capacity to enforce such a law) – is to enact an Equal Opportunity Act “to enforce everyone’s right to equality of opportunity; to eliminate, as far as possible, discrimination against people by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of various attributes”. We can control behaviour, even if we can’t change people’s feelings. Such a piece of legislation will clarify, extend, and enforce Articles 15 and 16 of the Constitution. Having prohibited blatant discrimination, and provided avenues for the redress of such discrimination, a government should then focus on enforcing equality of opportunity (as indicated, this will also involve a total revamp of the school education system to allow each child the opportunity to study up to year 12.

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I have more material on this issue in chapter 4 and chapter 7 (eg. ensuring high quality education and the complete elimination of poverty for all – virtually immediately). The key, in my view, is to always look at what enhances individual freedom (and that means, individual accountability). We legitimise illegitimate processes that are found in our country by trying to ‘smooth’ them. Let us look at the fundamentals, in each case. Always start – what should happen in a free society? What will a great India look like?

Happy to discuss.

Regards

Sanjeev Sabhlok

Dear Shri. Shantanu,
The points you have made are very relevant and truthful as they are practical.
The question of caste arises as we are still bedevilled by the thought of mine, yours and ours.
Unless we go back to the roots of our way of life any amount of reservations will lead to more clamouring of further concesions and the added tragedy will be a political rascality!
Unless we, the supposed to be educated, I do not consider myself “Educated” as I know English or that I was educated in a “Macalauy” education.
I consider myself “Educated” to the extent that I am able to appreciate the contribution of every sector of my society which has made me today.
I consider myself “Educated” as I treat my driver, my office ClassIV employee and even my “Barber” as a person who contributes to my living my way of life, as I live today!
I have learnt that reservations has brought in more bitterness than unity amongst us. Today we have Castes/Subcastes/Subsubcastes…………
I find that we end up in more confusion than in solving the problem when we look at this current way dealing with this evil.
Today we have the “Ekal Vidayalayas” run by the “hated VHP” which provide for education in the remotest possible villages. By the way they do not attempt ot convert whoever is there to “This way or that way of life”.
Unless we change our mindset this Caste problem cannot be wished away.
Unless we get away from this “Christian” thinking caste cannot be wished away and the solution will be a horizon and not even a remote possibility.
Unless we “educate” our youth of the hoary culture of what we are this cannot be wished away.
The youth of this country are looking for avenues to have a better way of life and a better India. The only solution is that we should offer them the truth of what the “Truth” is.
They should be “educated” to the fact that there is no sanction for the caste system under the Vedas and Upanishads. They should be “Educated” to the fact that this caste syatem is a formula to divide and rule. They should be educated to understand that the way of life prescribed by our Vedas and Upanishads is that even at that time Dignity of labor was recogonised, and the way of life was designed to fit in a division of labor and not “Division of People”.
They should be “educated” to undersatnd that Lord Krishna in the Bhagwad Gita has spelt out the terms of this way of life. (My explanation may be incomplete but the sum and substanace of it is)-
“He” enters the gurukulam and learns all the initial subjects, just like our “HSC”. “He then given initiation to the subjects in which ‘he” is found to be good- “Graduation”. He then specialises in his favourite subject- “Post Garduation” and finally he attains the ultimate goal of being a possible teacher-“Doctorate”.
The fourth stage is only the “Brahaman” stage when one is called a “Brahmin”.
I have deliberately used “He” as Lord Krishna does not know caste!!
It is an uphill task, but if we “Educate” the current “Educated” your goals can be achieved.
Regards,
vck

Sanjeev, Vck, Prakash: Thank you all for your comments.

This is a topical issue and I am glad that it has generated some debate…We need to duscuss this even more widely.

Pl. give me some time to mull over your various thoughts this weekend and I will respond subsequently.

This is an article that I just read in the latest Economist. As usual, the Economist “cuts to the chase” and “minces no words” in its analysis:
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9909319

This is a very interesting topic and I hope to contribute later this week or next.

cheers

The elephant in the room that I have hardly seen discussed is what if there are “real” differences in group distributions and the impact that findings in population genetics will have on this debate? It is nice to hope that all of us are equal in ability, as individuals and groups but is this based on the facts?

Although present day Indians trace their ancestors through waves of migrations across millenia and there’s been plenty of inter-marriage as groups moved across regions and even caste boundaries changed, the fact remains that there are thousands (as many as 30 to 50 thousand, according to Cavalli-Sforza) of endogamous groups (jatis or microraces) in India. That is, these groups, in the time frame of (say) 1000 years, have almost exclusively married within their clan. This fact, together with the effects of natural selection (e.g., famine, assured food supply to a certain person by virtue of his/her talents) may have made these groups diverge.

We have pretty good evidence (a recent paper by Cochran and Harpending) that the highly intelligent Ashkenazi Jews may have, in fact, increased their intelligence over the past 1000 years due to such considerations (because they were banned from most work in european cities and discriminated against, they got into money lending a profession that made a lot of use of higher cognitive abilities.. and a Jew who was clever by random genetic variation was more likely to survive and produce children in these years when life was pretty nasty and short).

The surprising conclusion is that traits such as general cognitive ability aka intelligence can have accelerated selection (as opposed to the idea that these things take tens of thousands of years as in the case of skin color.. the white skin of europeans is a mutation that arose 7000 years ago)

Add to this that our current technological, knowledge based economy puts a premium on general intelligence (verbal and mathematical ability), then these facts, taken together lead us to certain conclusions that people may not want to admit. Namely, it is highly unlikely (actually mathematically impossible) that there wont be significant variation on traits like mean intelligence across the thousands of endogamous groups. Thus the key form of discrimination (occuring over a thousand or more years) is probably marriage within clan.

Imagine the distribution of mean IQ (not individual IQ) across these thousands of groups (no one has bothered, as far as I know , to make some estimate.. but its not hard to do based on data that various govt agencies already have). The difference in the mean difference between the top 10% and the bottom 10% (of groups) is very very likely to be at least a couple of standard deviations or more. But the details of this distribution will have clear implications for policy making (such as identifying environmental causes for depressed intelligence like nutritional deficiencies that may be affecting certain groups but not others). Its a mystery as to why our govt agencies who collate various statistics havent bothered to create something like this (one doesnt actually need to measure IQ, one could use a combination of various proxy measures). It should not be more than a few months worth of data collection and analysis (if various agencies are forthcoming). One likely conclusion would be that reservations at elite institutions is pointless and a waste of efforts.. its much more efficient to have reservations at non-elite institutions and earlier (primary education) via school vouchers etc as some NGOs are advocating. Another would be the isolation of environmental factors and relevant interventions that could actually make a difference to certain groups.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s recent article in the IE is nothing more than a demonstration of his grasp of English knowledge. Much of the article is meaningless and based on acceptance as absolute truths, of the lies and falsehoods peddled by the Social Justice dispensers of India. Consider this statement “the texture of social relations between marginalised communities and others is deeply debilitating for marginalised groups, in ways we cannot even imagine”. This is absolute trash. If ‘we’ cannot imagine, why think about it? The important issue is, who is marginalised? Take the case of TN, where 69% of all Govt jobs, seats in colleges, 100% of scholarships is reserved for an overwhelming majority of population shockingly and absurdly categorised as “backward”. The result, more than 99% of State jobs are with the reserved, year after year 100% of Medical seats are taken by the ‘reserved’. And these people are called ‘marginalised’ by the terrorised media. Karnataka falls in the same league.