To a libertarian, especially an Indian libertarian, all this talk about “reservations” and quotas, for women, for Muslims, for Dalits and for SCs, STs and OBCs etc. etc. – is just a whole lotta bull.
Take the Barkha Dutt show on women’s reservation I watched last night. The leading women of India on the show - including Madhu Kishwar, Bachi Karkaria, Kiran Bedi etc. – were largely of the opinion that these have been an excellent feature of our “gram panchayats” and so should be extended further. No one seemed to be concerned about the Principle.
At the bottom of the entire issue lies The Economic Principle: For any woman to be really independent, she must have financial independence. Period. And even women have no argument with this.
It therefore follows that Liberty Under Law, a free trading, free markets, free enterprise economy is in the best interests of All Women. And indeed, all Muslims, dalits, tribals, etc. The “reservations” and “quotas” can only help a few, and require the Misuse of State Power – but the free economy will help all.
Take the case of dancers. A poor girl cannot dance and entertain clients in Mumbai – while all the page 3 actresses make their fortunes dancing on screen. There is some Principle of Law being flouted here – and I hope you see it. Where this Principle does not hold, there can never be Liberty. The Law, which is our safeguard, becomes instead a Tyrant: arbitrary, capricious, unjust.
At no time in Indian history has the nautch-girl been banned. The Mughals, the British, all the princely states – they all patronised them. But in socialist India they are banned – while weighty women talk of “reservations for women in politics.”
It was Franz Oppenheimer who said that there were two ways of survival: one, through The State, which he called the “political means”; and the other, through The Market, which he called the “economic means.”
All these quotas and reservations are about the political means to survival. They can never be of any help to the vast majority, who must seek survival in The Market.
Economic Freedom Comes First!
I somehow ended up at a Bengali get together yesterday evening in Toronto- the food was delicious but the intellectual snobbery was unbearable. There was a minor argument around the quota/reservation system and, once again, I saw some highly educated folks coming to its defense. One man, who directs plays, boasted that no one is allowed in their set unless they have read Marx. Marxism is probably the cruelest piece of theory to impact the masses, and yet, here they were, the bourgeois with Scotch in their glasses, living in Canada after having escaped the misery in WB, toasting the very thing. I enjoyed my parting shot, “Good night to all you Marxists, if you ever need some money, we capitalists have it”- heard a mild commotion as I exited the door.
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