What amazes me is how markets are completely ignoring the deterioration in economic fundamentals – a current account surplus has been turned into a large and increasing deficit, partly driven by this government’s obdurate refusal to hike fuel prices and bring down consumption; the complete end to all kinds of reforms; attempts to destroy the very institutions (IITs, IIMs, AIIMS) that have created the perception of India as a source of quality talent and most pernicious of all, the plan to introduce reservations in higher education. Undoubtedly markets will wake up one day, funds will flow out and the Reds will cite that as a reason to close our economy even further.

More on this will appear shortly at my blog.

it’s perfectly possible to make the moral point that capitalism emerges dripping with blood and gore (as Marx does ‘das ist der doux commerce’..’there are your gentle arts of commerce’) without collapsing capitalism into a night were all cows are grey. I don’t want to be pedantic about it, but I really think it’s crucial that capital is in the later marxist sense a social relation, and therefore a fundamental alteration in the class structure had to occur before capitalists could come to exist. This means that capitalism couldn’t have been developing in the ‘interstices’ without such a transformation.

I don’t believe that most people on this board are “anti-reservation”. “Anti-Reservation” catched a variety of positions- from the castist “Those OBC s are dumb” to the “We need AA, but this policy is stupid”.

Go read Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s letter.

The despair is in the state of the polity: that a very sensitive piece of policy was thrust down our throats without even the pretense of a dialog

Shiv

I invite you all to read through that link. I believe that I went to that link through reddit, but I am not sure.

Briefly, that article argues that meritocracy in the US is complete fiction.

I notice almost all people here have argued against reservation in India (affirmative action in US). I see very few dissenting voices.

How much of India’s population is (really and) negatively affected by this removal of meritocracy? Is it a normal distribution i.e more than 90% are negatively affected?

No

A lot less will be affected.

How do you get into IIT and IIM? I am talking of IIT JEE, IIT GATE, IIM CAT.

With money to send for preparation classes, with foresight from your family who know that these particular institutions are amongst the best, with financial/emotional support (beta, dont worry just study, we will take care of feeding you).

Most of us here are anomalies, the top 10% of India’s population.

Meritocracy doesn’t always work.

Of course, it is class warfare. But the reality is that the middle-class doesn’t vote, and the overall impression is that the boom is not reaching the poor. Most (insert your description here) people in India don’t know what is what, except for the middle class and the rich, who at least talk and can find out.

How do the poor people in the city slums/small towns/villages without the knowledge access going to know how to prepare for IIT or IIM or whatever? The entrance exams are skewed against them anyway.

My brainwashed-from-childhood mind revolts at this futile gesture, but my trying-to-think-impartial mind is what made me post here at such a late hour.

Shiv

Atanu: What you say about Indian Character is a conclusion I too had reached quite recently; but one need not be as disheartened.

The problems we are facing is because we think of liberal democracy as a “natural” political structure while giving nary a thought as to what is the moral character that is required of the peoples as a prerequisite.

With democracy, you’re also going to have populism and pandering-based supply side politics that would myopically grasp for short term benefits of one section of society at the expense of the other, in a way that harms all sections, both materially and spiritually. Rich vs Poor. Business vs Consumer. Forward vs Backward Castes. Etcetera. Economy, Society, Religion: all are torn apart.

The only thing that can guard against this are suitable moral values: an ethic that values self-respect over dependency; an ethic that values enterprisingness over inertia, an ethic that respects, most important of all, classical liberal values.

We Indians do not have that. So the democracy instead of being liberal, shall lead to a further degradation of moral character.

The question we should ask is not how come our democracy is so bad; we should ask how come it is so good!
Look at Africa, look at South Asian nations other than India: none of these have properly functioning democracies.
Their moral character does not allow democratic self-government, and yet they’re grappling with it, with sad consequences.

Once we realize the reversal of the causality between moral character and civilizational political structures, the solutions also become visible.

First is to shore up our social institutions, those of religion, those of education: that shall indoctrinate our children with the appropriate moral values.

Second, is to look for socio-political solutions tha reflect our character but that shall also nudge it towards classical liberalism and towards being fit for democracy.

For instance, suppose you have an unenterprising, morally depraved set of people who lack strength of character. How do you lead them to overthrow an enslaving empire? Mahatma Gandhi did just that, by using “non-violence” which requires fairly minimal co-ordination and enterprisingness, but which was still successful. We need to look for such socio-political solutions that’ll be suited to our character.

Yes, easy for us NRI types to shed tears and urge action from a distance- but please go ahead and add your voice to the protestors. Be one of that crowd- that is the minimum that and perhaps the maximum that most of us can do. It is the least you can do for your children. “Main to Akhela Hi Ja Ra Tha Jaani-be-Manzil” etc.

An no I don’t think it is too late to migrate. I have seem people as old as 50 migrate- and after a period of struggle- go on to lead stable lives. It helps if your spouse works too-a kind of a backup. And yes, I have seen it backfire too when people arrive in the new country very late. But you will have friends and moral support…

Sometimes I think it was a curse to be born Indian, or even in any large country. I think people from large countries look at the world with a “country-identity” in a way people from small countries do not. How oddly liberating it must be to live in the world without the burden of an “Indian” identity. But I can only wish that. For this life, NRI or not, that bitch India will keep plauging my thoughts, and I will be forever worried about the future of a billion people

Shiv Sharan

I graduated from one of the premier institutes. I remained in India, more for family reasons than out of a sense of patriotic duty. There was a time when I was free to emigrate and seriously considered the H1B option, but that moment somehow passed.

My children are growing up. And I am worried. Emigrating at this point in my career means to lose all that I have built, and to start it all over again. It’s my career vs my kids’ future.