Should we have reservations?

I can’t believe I have waited so long before expressing an opinion on perhaps the most hot button political issue that is possible in India!

So opportunities  are like  a pie and we would all want the pie to be divided “fairly”. I think this nice fable might be relevant here. I am sure most people know it, although I cannot remember if it is from the Panchatantra:

Two cats found a pie and decided to share it. But the cats could not make up their mind how it should be divided. Should the bigger cat get a bigger piece? Should the cat who saw the pie first get a bigger piece?  Should the cat who grabbed the pie first get a bigger piece? Should the cat that is more hungry get a bigger piece? And if someone has to get a bigger piece, how much bigger should the piece be?

A monkey passing by sniffed the opportunity and offered to “help” by dividing the pie. The monkey cut the pie into two parts and then said: oops, this piece is too big. So he ate a bit of the big piece himself and then said: oops…this piece is now too small. So he ate a bit of the other piece and so on until the whole pie was gone!

If you want to understand reservations in this country and the politics around it, there is no better way than to read this story. There is the alliance of the Commie elite, the Dynasty and the peaceful religion. And then there is the hungry Hindu society out there. The Dynasty promises to divide the pie and give us all “justice”. In the process, the country and its resources get eaten up one by one. In 1947, all of Sind, most of Punjab and Bengal were bitten off. Then, Kashmir was bitten off, now Assam and Kerala and the rest of Bengal are in the process of being eaten up. In between, they ate our coal, our spectrum, our thorium…anything and everything they could eat was eaten up.

As for the elite: they are still working on finding the magic formula of how to divide the pie correctly 😉  Some questions don’t have answers. Some questions merely exist to keep us distracted while we get robbed.

In fact, if you look at the history of India under British rule, you will see that at no point did the British ever deny that Indians “deserve” to have self-government. Indeed, the British openly declared that their policy in India is the “gradual development of self-governing institutions”. Great!! Then why didn’t they grant us self government when they really really wanted to? Because the British were supposedly working long and hard to make sure they could create a framework for a truly fair society where every community would get its due….LOL.

Any time you gather a crowd and ask the Brits: “give us our freedom”, they would say: “Absolutely…we would LOVE to give you your freedom. We are just extremely concerned about community X and wanted to see the details of your proposal to protect them after independence. Why don’t you come back on a later date with a concrete proposal on protection of X”? 🙂 🙂

Or as is often said, “divide and rule”. The Indian elite, starting right at the top with Nehru himself, is a direct descendant of the British aristocracy has held on to this policy. The British usually had only around 10,000 men posted in India, who easily kept 300 million under control. The elite understands that a United Hindu vote will end their rule instantly. As such, dividing Hindus by caste is the only way for Nehruvian colonization of India.

So, do I support reservations? 

One has to understand that this question is ill defined by design. Okay, what do you mean by “reservations”? Do you mean reservations in government schools and government colleges? Do you mean reservations in government jobs? Do you mean reservations in elected offices, such as reserved seats in Parliament, in Vidhan Sabhas and in Panchayats?

Maybe reservations in government jobs are fine. Okay, but then what about reservations at each administrative level within government jobs? Would it be fair if all the Senior Managers were “upper” caste and all the Junior Managers were “lower” caste?  Of course not. But then, why not reservations in promotions?

We already have reservations in entrance to government colleges. But why not reservations in passing exams? If it isn’t fair to have the same minimum threshold for entry of candidates, why have the same threshold for exit? Shouldn’t the pass mark also be different for different sections?

And why should we only reserve seats in Assemblies, in Parliament and Panchayats? Why not reservations within the council of ministers, reservations within the Cabinet and finally a rotating CM or PMship among various groups within the tenure of the legislature? Should the legislature be dissolved prematurely, we will need a complicated formula to work out how the “lost period” can be fairly divided among various groups.

As I said, “reservations” are ill-defined and the important thing is that this has been done BY DESIGN. The Nehruvian elite is not stupid. They did it fully knowing that we would NEVER be able to come up with the FINAL MAGIC FORMULA that fairly divides the country’s resources among all sections. And so, caste is always brought up aggressively whenever the elite is faced with the resurgent Hindu. This happened in the 90s when Hindus wanted to take back Ram Janmabhoomi from under the boot of Babri Masjid. And, of course, it is happening again now. After elections in Bihar,  someone I know within the elite told me that he is greatly thankful to caste divisions that have checked “Hindutva”.  It is no surprise that his family used to be super rich before independence, that his ancestors worked in the top echelons of the British Indian government and the Nehruvian administration that followed: but as India democratized, the fortunes of his family also declined. Guess who he has pathological hatred for? The Chaiwala who became PM!

So, what is the way forward? The solution lies in the two things that have ALWAYS created prosperity. In fact, one could argue that these are the ONLY two things that have created prosperity anywhere: CAPITALISM and LIMITED GOVERNMENT.

How do we solve the problem of reservations? We grow the private economy. A dash for reservations will exist only as long as government jobs are the most lucrative. Centuries of British and Nehruvian rule have created a system where all power is concentrated in the hands of the government, a mai-baap sarkar where the only people who have anything are those who are in bed with the government. The same works for education: we push for privately owned institutions that become centers of excellence. Not one of Princeton, Stanford, Harvard, MIT or Caltech is owned by the government, yet they have beaten out everyone else in the world when it comes to excellence.

Okay…but there is a risk here. What prevents some slimeball secular from demanding reservations in the private sector? In fact, with RTE pushing into private schools, this is *exactly* what’s happening. The only possible solution I see here is actually one that Modi seems to have focused on: MUDRA and Dalit capitalism. I give him 100/100 on this. A Dalit capitalist has the same incentives as a capitalist from any other section of society. A Dalit capitalist wants to make money. For this, a Dalit capitalist would want to hire based on merit and merit alone. A Dalit capitalist wants not only to choose the best worker, but also to have the best possible pool of workers to choose from. And who trains people to create skilled workers? Schools and colleges. If colleges admit kids based on non-merit considerations, Dalit capitalists lose out on a better trained workforce. Money is the great equalizer, because money doesn’t care what the color of your skin, your gotra or your nationality is.

And capitalists make the money. And money sets the discourse. Dalit capitalists will be the key to setting up a counter discourse within the Dalit community. Right now, the people with the loudest voice on Dalit issues are people like Kancha Ilaiah. These Commies have a vested interest in keeping Dalits as poor and deprived as possible. As Dalit lives improve, their star is setting, which is why you are seeing these people getting desperate. But the knockout punch can only come from a powerful class of Dalit capitalists who have a vested interest not in continued poverty, but in forthcoming prosperity. 

Of course when I said “Dalit” in the last couple of paragraphs, I also meant every other possible backward community: tribals, OBCs and perhaps even women.

If there is one thing that I would call Modi’s “BIG IDEA” of 2014, it was seizing the moment on Dalit youth who are hungry for a new aspirational politics. His next BIG IDEA could be promoting Dalit capitalism. And there is no doubt that he has pursued it aggressively. Secular vultures are praying for Dalit youth to choose death, I am cheering for them to embrace life and prosperity.

There is such a thing as being on the wrong side of history and idea of India liberals are currently on that side. Let me put it straight to you in the most politically incorrect fashion possible: Dalits are not Muslims. If you are hoping for Dalits to come out and say something like: “we love death more than the (other) Hindus love life”, you Commies should prepare to be sorely disappointed. We Hindus choose life and there can be no Hindu life without Dalits. Dalits have broken free of your Commie shackles and are choosing opportunity, life, autonomy and capitalism.

Oh and we promise to liberate Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar too. Forget Rohith Vemula, you Nehruvian colonizers reduced even a brilliant economist like Dr. Ambedkar to votes. Some day, take a moment to read his views on economy, on society, on Islam, on partition.

Not for the last time, Jai Bheem!