mar 9th, 2011 CE
i may not fully agree with professor sen that reservations are totally without merit, but the way entitlements are growing in india, it seems that reservations -- for totally undeserving groups -- is becoming the norm. competitive backwardness is not the right way to uplift anybody.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: sri Written 5 years ago, all the more relevant today. India unraveling
By: Dr.Gautam Sen, June 13, 2006 http://www.ivarta.com/columns/OL_060613.htm
(Prof Gautam Sen has formerly taught political economy at the London
School of Economics for more than two decades.) Secularists and communists may imagine they somehow control India’s
future, but this belief is a chimera. Perhaps they are smart enough to
know the truth, but too cynical to care. India is spinning out of
control and the spoils of political office are likely to evaporate
suddenly. How exactly this will come about is not entirely clear, but
there are historical precedents that provide pointers. The decisive antecedent pre-condition is the inability of the ruling
order to retain domestic control and ward off external predators
militarily. This is how Mogul primacy ended for India in devastating
chaos during the eighteenth century, after the grand rewards of
imperial conquest. But such a grim scenario is inevitably preceded by
a collapse of political authority and the credibility of the ruling
order. India is now in this perilous phase as the public standing of
its ruling order ebbs. There is now real prospect of accident and
design unfolding in combination to disable state power and curtail its
political reach significantly. Various regional political factions across India are engaged in savage
competition for the spoils of office. Very little else motivates their
endeavors except corrupt enrichment, chicanery and criminality to
seize power, however temporarily, and crass bribery to hold on to it,
no matter how briefly. After each abysmal episode the ruling groups,
barely distinguishable from each other, emerge shamelessly enriched.
What these regional political parties also share with each other,
beyond the desire for rule by themselves and their families, is a
singular lack of any conception of India’s nationhood. Yet they are a
critical influence on policy at the federal Centre and vying for the
ultimate crown of dominating national government itself. The Congress party in power at the federal Centre today is remarkably
similar to the regional political parties seeking to replace it. In
fact, they run the country jointly as partners in crime. The nominally
national Congress only differs from them in the inconsequential detail
of having its constituents less geographically concentrated than the
largely regional political parties, be it the malevolent communists,
the unspeakable celluloid Tamil monstrosities or indeed the cartoon
strip nationalists of the Hindu fold. Shorn of pomp and symbolic
pretensions, the name of the game in New Delhi for the incumbent
ruling combine is to create the conditions for Rahul Gandhi’s
anointment as the next celestial authority in India. The second
preoccupation is to manage foreign affairs with sufficient
sleight-of-hand to stop the national apple cart from being
embarrassingly overturned. It is possible that India’s diabolical international predicament will
not turn into immediate rout and Rahul Gandhi may claim his rightful
place in India’s embryonic monarchy. The prime minister himself may
not be interested in cash or sexual conquest, but he suffers terribly
from the third affliction of humanity, which is to be in the public
eye. This is the equivalent of the fifteen minutes of sordid fame that
the country is paying for so very dearly. He wields no political power
and a sort of Page Three fame apparently suffices. In the pursuit of
such dishonorable ambitions, the meaning of secularism been twisted
beyond recognition. A supine media connives, eager for crumbs from the
table of the ruling family and its shameless minions. However, neither
India’s faltering durability, for the present, nor the new Sun King’s
impending accession are likely to stop the rot as far as its long-term
future is concerned. The indefensible OBC reservations that do nothing
for the many underprivileged of India, and inflict grievous injury on
many who are also underprivileged, but capable, will be remembered as
the critical moment when India’s endgame began. It is a tragic final denouement for India’s future as a polity and
economy when the only persevering social structure was delivered a
mortal blow. In a country in which few things work properly (from
domestic plug points to road lights, to pick two things randomly) and
virtually nothing in the public sector functions effectively the
resilient Indian family’s deepest aspiration has just been criminally
decapitated. The ruling elites cannot provide adequate electricity at
any price nor an airport in the national capital that does not fill
one with despair, nor schools that have toilets or even teachers. Yet
they allegedly occupy the moral high ground and spew arrant nonsense
about secularism and communal harmony. Despite its many faults, the Indian family alone has overcome the
formidable obstacles placed in its path by a dysfunctional State and
vicious ruling order to educate their children. Modest middle and
lower middle class family incomes and awe-inspiring parental efforts,
often against overwhelming odds, have lovingly nurtured human capital
and turned around an economy with dim prospects. Even a driver on
five-thousand rupees a month is prepared to send his two little girls
to a school that teaches only in English by allocating a fifth of his
monthly income. If there were no goddess of learning she would have to
be contrived and imagined in gratitude, for infusing such a noble
thirst for learning in ordinary Indians. This is why the possibilities
of applied science are infinite like the skies above our bowed human
heads. The grotesque policy of swingeing reservations that does nothing for
the majority, which does not receive basic schooling, can only have
been undertaken by people of very low intelligence. But these are the
same people whose village cunning led to the office-for-profit debacle
that continues to haunt their very own hold on political power. The
insane reservation policy, based on rank political opportunism and
illiterate conjecture, will trigger socio-economic mechanisms that may
well kill the goose currently laying golden eggs despite the
brigandage under the garb of socialism and humanity. Such a policy
measure is also likely to provoke dangerous disaffection among the
many that cannot escape to foreign universities, unlike the children
of politicians, who themselves go abroad for medical care too. A hard
look at the origins of the brutal civil war in Sri Lanka is a salutary
reminder of how one reaps as ye sows when a sense of injustice burns
in the hearts of those who understand it and have the wherewithal to
respond. A vast swathe of Indian citizens has been effectively disenfranchised
and no longer owes any loyalty to the Indian State and its overseers.
A fundamental right of paramount importance has been taken away from
them. The right to education and the recognition of fair criteria,
which must mean that merit remains pre-eminent, has been erased. The
rightness of reservations at the margin has been replaced by complete
marginalization of merit. No matter what social class and economic
circumstances, the accident of birth will deny the children of many of
the poor their basic rights on grounds of Caste alone. Such a policy
echoes the exclusion of Jews from German higher education in the
mid-1930s merely because of their religious identity. Why should these
young people feel any commitment to a society that has in unison,
across the political spectrum, declared outright war on them? For a start, they would be justified in refusing to join the armed
forces since those being granted extraordinary unmerited privileges
should now defend the country they are vindictively making exclusively
their own. Nor should any of the excluded Castes join the police or
indeed the bureaucracy. In this free for all dog eats dog world that
their fellow citizens and their venal representatives are determined
to bring about, something will give. In all likelihood economic growth
will falter and India’s defense will be in the supposedly competent
hands of affirmative action candidates alone, including the so-called
minorities, already imperiously demanding special privileges, eager to
displace all semblance of fair play. Which foreign predator will soon
find irresistible the prospect of re-uniting with their
co-religionists and an army of the reserved ready for monotheism, free
of the burdens of Caste? Such demands for reservations have an old history, from government
jobs for Muslims in late nineteenth century Bengal to separate
electorates, followed by partition itself. The young and talented of
all Castes should begin a long march towards any Indian state that
promises them elementary justice in exchange for their prodigious
intellectual skills and the economic success that will cascade as a
result of it. They will also have the last laugh when the children of
politicians in the forefront of casteism are displaced themselves by
those for whom nothing but reservation matters. Their India will
surely prosper without the presence of so-called upper Caste
oppressors, some cleaning public toilets in Delhi while harassing rich
OBC ministers and successful entrepreneurs part-time. The resulting
weakened federal India may eventually find its individual parts going
their separate ways. Those who strive primarily on the basis of merit
need have no inclination to pay taxes to the rest of the country,
denying their basic human rights simply because of their Caste. Dr.Gautam Sen
From: sri Written 5 years ago, all the more relevant today. India unraveling
By: Dr.Gautam Sen, June 13, 2006 http://www.ivarta.com/columns/OL_060613.htm
(Prof Gautam Sen has formerly taught political economy at the London
School of Economics for more than two decades.) Secularists and communists may imagine they somehow control India’s
future, but this belief is a chimera. Perhaps they are smart enough to
know the truth, but too cynical to care. India is spinning out of
control and the spoils of political office are likely to evaporate
suddenly. How exactly this will come about is not entirely clear, but
there are historical precedents that provide pointers. The decisive antecedent pre-condition is the inability of the ruling
order to retain domestic control and ward off external predators
militarily. This is how Mogul primacy ended for India in devastating
chaos during the eighteenth century, after the grand rewards of
imperial conquest. But such a grim scenario is inevitably preceded by
a collapse of political authority and the credibility of the ruling
order. India is now in this perilous phase as the public standing of
its ruling order ebbs. There is now real prospect of accident and
design unfolding in combination to disable state power and curtail its
political reach significantly. Various regional political factions across India are engaged in savage
competition for the spoils of office. Very little else motivates their
endeavors except corrupt enrichment, chicanery and criminality to
seize power, however temporarily, and crass bribery to hold on to it,
no matter how briefly. After each abysmal episode the ruling groups,
barely distinguishable from each other, emerge shamelessly enriched.
What these regional political parties also share with each other,
beyond the desire for rule by themselves and their families, is a
singular lack of any conception of India’s nationhood. Yet they are a
critical influence on policy at the federal Centre and vying for the
ultimate crown of dominating national government itself. The Congress party in power at the federal Centre today is remarkably
similar to the regional political parties seeking to replace it. In
fact, they run the country jointly as partners in crime. The nominally
national Congress only differs from them in the inconsequential detail
of having its constituents less geographically concentrated than the
largely regional political parties, be it the malevolent communists,
the unspeakable celluloid Tamil monstrosities or indeed the cartoon
strip nationalists of the Hindu fold. Shorn of pomp and symbolic
pretensions, the name of the game in New Delhi for the incumbent
ruling combine is to create the conditions for Rahul Gandhi’s
anointment as the next celestial authority in India. The second
preoccupation is to manage foreign affairs with sufficient
sleight-of-hand to stop the national apple cart from being
embarrassingly overturned. It is possible that India’s diabolical international predicament will
not turn into immediate rout and Rahul Gandhi may claim his rightful
place in India’s embryonic monarchy. The prime minister himself may
not be interested in cash or sexual conquest, but he suffers terribly
from the third affliction of humanity, which is to be in the public
eye. This is the equivalent of the fifteen minutes of sordid fame that
the country is paying for so very dearly. He wields no political power
and a sort of Page Three fame apparently suffices. In the pursuit of
such dishonorable ambitions, the meaning of secularism been twisted
beyond recognition. A supine media connives, eager for crumbs from the
table of the ruling family and its shameless minions. However, neither
India’s faltering durability, for the present, nor the new Sun King’s
impending accession are likely to stop the rot as far as its long-term
future is concerned. The indefensible OBC reservations that do nothing
for the many underprivileged of India, and inflict grievous injury on
many who are also underprivileged, but capable, will be remembered as
the critical moment when India’s endgame began. It is a tragic final denouement for India’s future as a polity and
economy when the only persevering social structure was delivered a
mortal blow. In a country in which few things work properly (from
domestic plug points to road lights, to pick two things randomly) and
virtually nothing in the public sector functions effectively the
resilient Indian family’s deepest aspiration has just been criminally
decapitated. The ruling elites cannot provide adequate electricity at
any price nor an airport in the national capital that does not fill
one with despair, nor schools that have toilets or even teachers. Yet
they allegedly occupy the moral high ground and spew arrant nonsense
about secularism and communal harmony. Despite its many faults, the Indian family alone has overcome the
formidable obstacles placed in its path by a dysfunctional State and
vicious ruling order to educate their children. Modest middle and
lower middle class family incomes and awe-inspiring parental efforts,
often against overwhelming odds, have lovingly nurtured human capital
and turned around an economy with dim prospects. Even a driver on
five-thousand rupees a month is prepared to send his two little girls
to a school that teaches only in English by allocating a fifth of his
monthly income. If there were no goddess of learning she would have to
be contrived and imagined in gratitude, for infusing such a noble
thirst for learning in ordinary Indians. This is why the possibilities
of applied science are infinite like the skies above our bowed human
heads. The grotesque policy of swingeing reservations that does nothing for
the majority, which does not receive basic schooling, can only have
been undertaken by people of very low intelligence. But these are the
same people whose village cunning led to the office-for-profit debacle
that continues to haunt their very own hold on political power. The
insane reservation policy, based on rank political opportunism and
illiterate conjecture, will trigger socio-economic mechanisms that may
well kill the goose currently laying golden eggs despite the
brigandage under the garb of socialism and humanity. Such a policy
measure is also likely to provoke dangerous disaffection among the
many that cannot escape to foreign universities, unlike the children
of politicians, who themselves go abroad for medical care too. A hard
look at the origins of the brutal civil war in Sri Lanka is a salutary
reminder of how one reaps as ye sows when a sense of injustice burns
in the hearts of those who understand it and have the wherewithal to
respond. A vast swathe of Indian citizens has been effectively disenfranchised
and no longer owes any loyalty to the Indian State and its overseers.
A fundamental right of paramount importance has been taken away from
them. The right to education and the recognition of fair criteria,
which must mean that merit remains pre-eminent, has been erased. The
rightness of reservations at the margin has been replaced by complete
marginalization of merit. No matter what social class and economic
circumstances, the accident of birth will deny the children of many of
the poor their basic rights on grounds of Caste alone. Such a policy
echoes the exclusion of Jews from German higher education in the
mid-1930s merely because of their religious identity. Why should these
young people feel any commitment to a society that has in unison,
across the political spectrum, declared outright war on them? For a start, they would be justified in refusing to join the armed
forces since those being granted extraordinary unmerited privileges
should now defend the country they are vindictively making exclusively
their own. Nor should any of the excluded Castes join the police or
indeed the bureaucracy. In this free for all dog eats dog world that
their fellow citizens and their venal representatives are determined
to bring about, something will give. In all likelihood economic growth
will falter and India’s defense will be in the supposedly competent
hands of affirmative action candidates alone, including the so-called
minorities, already imperiously demanding special privileges, eager to
displace all semblance of fair play. Which foreign predator will soon
find irresistible the prospect of re-uniting with their
co-religionists and an army of the reserved ready for monotheism, free
of the burdens of Caste? Such demands for reservations have an old history, from government
jobs for Muslims in late nineteenth century Bengal to separate
electorates, followed by partition itself. The young and talented of
all Castes should begin a long march towards any Indian state that
promises them elementary justice in exchange for their prodigious
intellectual skills and the economic success that will cascade as a
result of it. They will also have the last laugh when the children of
politicians in the forefront of casteism are displaced themselves by
those for whom nothing but reservation matters. Their India will
surely prosper without the presence of so-called upper Caste
oppressors, some cleaning public toilets in Delhi while harassing rich
OBC ministers and successful entrepreneurs part-time. The resulting
weakened federal India may eventually find its individual parts going
their separate ways. Those who strive primarily on the basis of merit
need have no inclination to pay taxes to the rest of the country,
denying their basic human rights simply because of their Caste. Dr.Gautam Sen
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