Curfew has been imposed in Hisar, Haryana, just 250 kms from New Delhi. The reason: The Jats of this state have been violently protesting for "reservations" - what Americans call "affirmative action" - so that they have a quota of government jobs and seats in educational institutions for members of their community. Mobs of Jats have set fire to state-owned buses as well as private vehicles, including an oil tanker. They have attacked banks and ATMs, as well as police stations.
I am opposed to reservations - period.
It was Thomas Sowell's slim book Preferential Policies: An International Perspective that made up my mind for me. Sowell is an African-American scholar - one whose other books also have had a profound influence on me, particularly A Conflict of Visions: The Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. Thomas Sowell deserves to be widely studied by all serious students of Liberty.
In Preferential Policies, Sowell looks at discriminatory policies of all kinds, all over the world, from apartheid in South Africa, to anti-Tamil policies in Sri Lanka, to bumiputra policies in Malaysia favouring native Malays vis-à-vis the ethnic Chinese who possess superior entrepreneurial skills, all the way down to our own "reservations" for Scheduled Castes and Tribes. His penetrating analysis shows how such policies have divided nations and produced enormous strife. Sowell, I emphasise, is a black in America, arguing against "affirmative action." A very rare kind of scholar, indeed. Unfortunately, my copy of the book is not with me right now, or I could have produced some thundering quotes.
How do such policies harm society? Well, what they do is divide society along whatever cleavages already exist. They do not unite society. They tell members of certain targeted groups to organise themselves and take the political road to securing their economic future. Politicians gain; society loses. And we in India well know the harm that caste politics has done to us.
What is the other way?
The other way is The Market. If anyone wants to improve his economic position, then The Market should be the only arena open to him - not politics. There must be no "politicisation of economic life" - a term Peter Bauer often used to describe conditions in socialist India.
As far as government jobs are concerned, they are NOT a means of promoting "welfare." Rather, the government exists to provide specific services, for which it must recruit the best talent available - just as private firms do.
With reservations, we get second-rate civil servants, second-rate doctors, second-rate engineers and so on.
Anyway, the beneficiaries of such policies are always the top layer of these disadvantaged groups - never the really poor. In a free economy, there are greater chances for EVERYONE to improve his lot - as Dalits have found since "liberalisation" began in India in 1991. Reservations in a closed, over-regulated economy are pure poison.
As always, violence of this kind underlines the fact that a free society is best off when legislation is not used on it, when "private law" prevails, and when the government is "policy-less." In such a society, everyone knows that the path to social and economic success lies in hard work - not politics.
In my view, these Jats of Hisar are guilty of arson - and should be prosecuted.
I love Sowell, but he does lean towards the Republican party -- which waxes eloquent about, "The market," but as much an enemy to the actual market economics as is it's competitor.
ReplyDeleteI am too a member of a lower caste in India and benefited from the reservations but now firmly opposed to it. First, I was just a kid when I made use of the reservation and did not know better. Second, I would have gotten the admission that I got anyway, had there been no reservations at all ( I had a middling reservation, --it's just people who were slightly ranked better than me but upper caste did didn't get into the college that I got but people who were far far below my rank got in because they had better reservation) -- so it's a wash. But the point is, you are right: it's always the top layer of the disadvantaged groups that got in. My dad was educated had a great job but since my grandfather did work that many considered beneath them in his era, I got into a better seat than I would have gotten in. If this were today, I absolutely refuse it.