A level Economics: Are Universal Values a form of Imperialism?

They argue that universal values are the new imperialism, imposed on people who want security and stability instead. Here is why they are wrong argues The Economist

 

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 held out the promise that growing prosperity would foster freedom and tolerance, which in turn would create more prosperity. Unfortunately, that hope disappointed. Our analysis this week, based on the definitive global survey of social attitudes, shows just how naive it turned out to be.

Prosperity certainly rose. In the three decades to 2019, global output increased more than fourfold. Roughly 70% of the 2bn people living in extreme poverty escaped it. But individual freedom and tolerance evolved differently. Many people around the world continue to swear fealty to traditional beliefs, sometimes intolerant ones. And although they are much wealthier these days, they often have an us-and-them contempt for others.

The World Values Survey takes place every five years. The latest results, which go up to 2022, canvassed almost 130,000 people in 90 countries. Some places, such as Russia and Georgia, are not becoming more tolerant as they grow, but more tightly bound to traditional religious values instead. At the same time, young people in Islamic and Orthodox countries are barely more individualistic or secular than their elders. By contrast, the young in northern Europe and America are racing ahead. Countries where burning the Koran is tolerated and those where it is a crime look on each other with growing incomprehension.

On the face of it, all this supports the campaign by China’s Communist Party to dismiss universal values as racist neo-imperialism. It argues that white Western elites are imposing their own version of freedom and democracy on people who want security and stability instead.

In fact, the survey suggests something more subtle. Contrary to the Chinese argument, universal values are more valuable than ever. Start with the subtlety. China is right that people want security. The survey shows that a sense of threat drives people to seek refuge in family and racial or national groups, while tradition and organised religion offer solace.

This is one way to see America’s doomed attempts to establish democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the failure of the Arab spring. Amid lawlessness and upheaval, some people sought safety in their tribe or their sect. Hoping that order would be restored, some welcomed the return of dictators.

The subtlety the Chinese argument misses is the fact that cynical politicians sometimes set out to engineer insecurity because they know that frightened people yearn for strongman rule. That is what Bashar al-Assad did in Syria when he released murderous jihadists from his country’s jails at the start of the Arab spring. He bet that the threat of Sunni violence would cause Syrians from other sects to rally round him.

Something similar happened in Russia. After economic collapse and jarring reforms in the 1990s, Russians thrived in the 2000s. Between 1999 and 2013, gdp per head increased 12-fold in dollar terms. Yet that did not dispel their accumulated dread. President Vladimir Putin consistently played on their ethno-nationalist insecurities, especially when growth later faltered. That has culminated in his disastrous invasion of Ukraine.

Even in established democracies, polarising politicians like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, former presidents of America and Brazil, saw that they could exploit left-behind voters’ anxieties to mobilise support. So they set about warning that their political opponents wanted to destroy their supporters’ way of life and threatened the very survival of their countries. That has, in turn, spread alarm and hostility on the other side.

Even allowing for this, the Chinese claim that universal values are an imposition is upside down. From Chile to Japan, the World Values Survey provides examples where growing security really does seem to lead to tolerance and greater individual expression. Nothing suggests that Western countries are unique in that. The real question is how to help people feel more secure.

China’s answer is based on creating order for a loyal, deferential majority that stays out of politics and avoids defying their rulers. However, within that model lurks deep insecurity. It is a majoritarian system in which lines move, sometimes arbitrarily or without warning—especially when power passes unpredictably from one party chief to another.

A better answer comes from prosperity built on the rule of law. Wealthy countries have more resources to spend on dealing with disasters, such as pandemic disease. Likewise, confident in their savings and the social safety-net, the citizens of rich countries know that they are less vulnerable to the chance events that wreck lives elsewhere.

Universal and valuable

However, the deepest solution to insecurity lies in how countries cope with change, whether from global warming, artificial intelligence or the growing tensions between China and America. The countries that manage change well will be better at making society feel confident in the future. And that is where universal values come into their own. Tolerance, free expression and individual inquiry help harness change through consensus forged by reasoned debate and reform. There is no better way to bring about progress.

Universal values are much more than a Western piety. They are a mechanism that fortifies societies against insecurity. What the World Values Survey shows is that they are also hard-won.

Ten days that shook the world: The latest Taliban takeover of Afghanistan

Najam Sethi in The Friday Times

The Afghan Taliban talked and fought. They won. The Americans talked and ran. They lost. The end was foretold in 2020 when President Donald Trump announced an exit from Afghanistan without installing a broad-based, inclusive interim government in Kabul. But few – certainly not President Biden who actually gave an unconditional cut-off date in September for full withdrawal but believed that the Afghan National Army could fight on for another year at least — expected the ANA to fold and President Ashraf Ghani to flee in ten days. This followed the last round of talks among the internal and external stakeholders in Doha, August 10-11.

​The Taliban’s brilliant strategy was based on the basic principles of guerilla warfare — gain Time to capture Space and use Space to erode the Will of the enemy to fight. This theory was first successfully enunciated by Mao Tse Tung in China in the 1930s and then by Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam in the 1960s. For a decade after their rout in 2001, the Taliban regrouped and reorganized on both sides of the Pakistan border, becoming bolder and more aggressive after 2010. But after signing the Agreement with the US in 2020, they dragged Time to forestall any US-selected “inclusive” government in Kabul while focusing on capturing Space in north Afghanistan – ethnically hostile regions led by warlords who had challenged and undermined their power in 1997-2001. Their tactics of talking and fighting on the front lines – “the Americans are leaving, lay down your weapons, surrender and go home, we won’t exact revenge or hurt you” – paid huge dividends. In the last stage, when the Americans began to progressively pull air support, commanders, trainers, contractors, and air supply lines to distant front lines were severely disrupted, the ANA lost critical elements of the war machine manufactured by the Americans, and crumbled. It didn’t help that massive corruption in the Ghani regime, including in the ANA, was a core demotivating factor, no less than the frequent shuffling of military commanders from the Presidency. The Taliban encirclement of Kabul was complete after the provincial garrison towns surrendered one after another and American soldiers caught their last flights home. 

​The biggest strategic mistake Ashraf Ghani made was fighting with Pakistan, a key stakeholder, and flirting with India, a distant spoiler. Pakistan’s stake in Afghanistan, for various reasons right or wrong, is forty years old. If Kabul couldn’t be overtly friendly with Islamabad, it should not have been overly hostile to it. Thus Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban became natural covert allies. The Americans, too, lost sight of the ball when they signed the 2020 Agreement by rejecting the Taliban’s demand to replace Ghani with an acceptable transitional option. What next?

​In America, President Biden – who was banking on popular goodwill for “bringing the boys home” by ending “America’s longest war” – is besieged with a popular backlash at another “Saigon moment”. Approval for his exit strategy has fallen radically among Democrats and Republicans from over 70% to under 50%. This implies that America might scapegoat Pakistan for its defeat. The anti-Pakistan narrative of “safe havens”, “Haqqani network is a veritable arm of the ISI”, “double-crossing”, etc, is already well established. If pushed, it could estrange Islamabad and derail international efforts to stabilize Afghanistan under an inclusive regime with regard for core human rights.

​In Afghanistan, the Taliban 2.0 can be expected to establish only a minimally acceptable inclusive regime with substantive levers of policy and power in their own hands. Initially they will try and run the country with an Amir ul Momineen or Supreme Leader at the helm of a handpicked Council of Ministers along the lines of Iran immediately after the Islamic Revolution. They will also crave international recognition and legitimacy by assuaging the fears of the regional powers – Russia, China, Iran, Central Asian States and Pakistan – by pledging economic cooperation and ending safe havens for regional militants, insurgents and separatists based in Afghanistan. For the international community, they will try to square their idea of human rights in an Islamic regime with Western notions of freedom and democracy.

​These factors are going to make or break the Taliban 2.0 regime. Al-Qaeda, TTP, ETM, IS, Daesh, Baloch separatists, etc., will not be easy to knock out or neutralize quickly. Their ranks have been swelled by the thousands of prisoners who have been released. If they continue to spill over across borders, tensions with neighbours will arise. If any Al-Qaeda attack on US soil is uncovered with footsteps going back to Afghanistan, America will come under pressure to exact revenge again.

​There is also the factor of Afghanistan 2.0. In the last two decades a new generation of Afghans has grown up in the light of secularism, media freedoms, women’s rights and information revolution. If the Taliban try to scuttle these in any brutal or swift manner, there will be a definite reaction at home and abroad with blowback consequences. Afghanistan 2.0’s economy — its financial system, education, administration and infrastructure , forex reserves, etc — are totally dependent on American largesse and aid.

Finally, much will depend on the experience and wisdom of the three top Taliban leaders who will guide Afghanistan into a new age. Their reputations and credentials precede them. The Supreme Leader, Haibatullah Akhunzada, was “an enthusiastic proponent of suicide bombings” who ordered his own son to blow himself up in an attack in Helmand province. He is also the strategist who fashioned the “talk talk, fight fight” strategy which proved so successful in the end. Sirajuddin Haqqani, number two, has been the “most dogged opponent” of the US who concentrated on “complex suicide attacks and targeted assassinations”. Abdul Ghani Baradar, who is the leading Presidential candidate, has served a decade in Pakistani prison on the say-so of the Americans.

​Pakistan is poised to win or lose big time. If Taliban 2.0 neutralize anti-Pakistan elements based in Afghanistan and facilitate the Pak-China CPEC corridor to Central Asia and the Central Asian rail, road, gas and oil corridor to South Asia, it will reap enormous dividends. But if the Taliban victory and American defeat raise the spectre of Islamic radicalism inside Pakistan either by emboldening disgruntled religious elements like the TLP or TTP or by triggering an anti-American populist wave that isolates Pakistan in the international community, the outlook will be bleak. Pakistan’s economy is totally dependent on the goodwill of the West and its civil society is sufficiently developed to resist any radical “Islamist” encroachments on their democratic freedoms.

​If the road to a Taliban victory in Afghanistan has been long and hard and bloody, the road ahead is neither secure nor assured. The predominantly Pashtun Taliban constitute only a small percentage of the 45-50% Pashtuns of Afghanistan. The other Pashtuns and ethnic regions may have surrendered to the Taliban military juggernaut but if they are not made real stakeholders in an inclusive broad based political and administrative state system, tribal revolts and foreign interventionists will start brewing once again in the bowels of Afghanistan.

Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds - Lessons for Persuaders

By James Clear


The economist J.K. Galbraith once wrote, “Faced with a choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with the proof.”

Leo Tolstoy was even bolder: “The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”

What's going on here? Why don't facts change our minds? And why would someone continue to believe a false or inaccurate idea anyway? How do such behaviors serve us?

The Logic of False Beliefs

Humans need a reasonably accurate view of the world in order to survive. If your model of reality is wildly different from the actual world, then you struggle to take effective actions each day.

However, truth and accuracy are not the only things that matter to the human mind. Humans also seem to have a deep desire to belong.

In Atomic Habits, I wrote, “Humans are herd animals. We want to fit in, to bond with others, and to earn the respect and approval of our peers. Such inclinations are essential to our survival. For most of our evolutionary history, our ancestors lived in tribes. Becoming separated from the tribe—or worse, being cast out—was a death sentence.”

Understanding the truth of a situation is important, but so is remaining part of a tribe. While these two desires often work well together, they occasionally come into conflict.
In many circumstances, social connection is actually more helpful to your daily life than understanding the truth of a particular fact or idea. The Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker put it this way, “People are embraced or condemned according to their beliefs, so one function of the mind may be to hold beliefs that bring the belief-holder the greatest number of allies, protectors, or disciples, rather than beliefs that are most likely to be true.”

We don't always believe things because they are correct. Sometimes we believe things because they make us look good to the people we care about.

I thought Kevin Simler put it well when he wrote, “If a brain anticipates that it will be rewarded for adopting a particular belief, it's perfectly happy to do so, and doesn't much care where the reward comes from — whether it's pragmatic (better outcomes resulting from better decisions), social (better treatment from one's peers), or some mix of the two.”

False beliefs can be useful in a social sense even if they are not useful in a factual sense. For lack of a better phrase, we might call this approach “factually false, but socially accurate.” When we have to choose between the two, people often select friends and family over facts.

This insight not only explains why we might hold our tongue at a dinner party or look the other way when our parents say something offensive, but also reveals a better way to change the minds of others.

Facts Don't Change Our Minds. Friendship Does.

Convincing someone to change their mind is really the process of convincing them to change their tribe. If they abandon their beliefs, they run the risk of losing social ties. You can’t expect someone to change their mind if you take away their community too. You have to give them somewhere to go. Nobody wants their worldview torn apart if loneliness is the outcome.

The way to change people’s minds is to become friends with them, to integrate them into your tribe, to bring them into your circle. Now, they can change their beliefs without the risk of being abandoned socially.

The British philosopher Alain de Botton suggests that we simply share meals with those who disagree with us:

“Sitting down at a table with a group of strangers has the incomparable and odd benefit of making it a little more difficult to hate them with impunity. Prejudice and ethnic strife feed off abstraction. However, the proximity required by a meal – something about handing dishes around, unfurling napkins at the same moment, even asking a stranger to pass the salt – disrupts our ability to cling to the belief that the outsiders who wear unusual clothes and speak in distinctive accents deserve to be sent home or assaulted. For all the large-scale political solutions which have been proposed to salve ethnic conflict, there are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force them to eat supper together.”

Perhaps it is not difference, but distance that breeds tribalism and hostility. As proximity increases, so does understanding. I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln's quote, “I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.”

Facts don't change our minds. Friendship does.

The Spectrum of Beliefs

Years ago, Ben Casnocha mentioned an idea to me that I haven't been able to shake: The people who are most likely to change our minds are the ones we agree with on 98 percent of topics.

If someone you know, like, and trust believes a radical idea, you are more likely to give it merit, weight, or consideration. You already agree with them in most areas of life. Maybe you should change your mind on this one too. But if someone wildly different than you proposes the same radical idea, well, it's easy to dismiss them as a crackpot.

One way to visualize this distinction is by mapping beliefs on a spectrum. If you divide this spectrum into 10 units and you find yourself at Position 7, then there is little sense in trying to convince someone at Position 1. The gap is too wide. When you're at Position 7, your time is better spent connecting with people who are at Positions 6 and 8, gradually pulling them in your direction.

The most heated arguments often occur between people on opposite ends of the spectrum, but the most frequent learning occurs from people who are nearby. The closer you are to someone, the more likely it becomes that the one or two beliefs you don't share will bleed over into your own mind and shape your thinking. The further away an idea is from your current position, the more likely you are to reject it outright.

When it comes to changing people's minds, it is very difficult to jump from one side to another. You can't jump down the spectrum. You have to slide down it.

Any idea that is sufficiently different from your current worldview will feel threatening. And the best place to ponder a threatening idea is in a non-threatening environment. As a result, books are often a better vehicle for transforming beliefs than conversations or debates.

In conversation, people have to carefully consider their status and appearance. They want to save face and avoid looking stupid. When confronted with an uncomfortable set of facts, the tendency is often to double down on their current position rather than publicly admit to being wrong.

Books resolve this tension. With a book, the conversation takes place inside someone's head and without the risk of being judged by others. It's easier to be open-minded when you aren't feeling defensive.

Arguments are like a full frontal attack on a person's identity. Reading a book is like slipping the seed of an idea into a person's brain and letting it grow on their own terms. There's enough wrestling going on in someone's head when they are overcoming a pre-existing belief. They don't need to wrestle with you too.

Why False Ideas Persist

There is another reason bad ideas continue to live on, which is that people continue to talk about them.

Silence is death for any idea. An idea that is never spoken or written down dies with the person who conceived it. Ideas can only be remembered when they are repeated. They can only be believed when they are repeated.

I have already pointed out that people repeat ideas to signal they are part of the same social group. But here's a crucial point most people miss:

People also repeat bad ideas when they complain about them. Before you can criticize an idea, you have to reference that idea. You end up repeating the ideas you’re hoping people will forget—but, of course, people can’t forget them because you keep talking about them. The more you repeat a bad idea, the more likely people are to believe it.

Let's call this phenomenon Clear's Law of Recurrence: The number of people who believe an idea is directly proportional to the number of times it has been repeated during the last year—even if the idea is false.

Each time you attack a bad idea, you are feeding the very monster you are trying to destroy. As one Twitter employee wrote, “Every time you retweet or quote tweet someone you’re angry with, it helps them. It disseminates their BS. Hell for the ideas you deplore is silence. Have the discipline to give it to them.”

Your time is better spent championing good ideas than tearing down bad ones. Don't waste time explaining why bad ideas are bad. You are simply fanning the flame of ignorance and stupidity.

The best thing that can happen to a bad idea is that it is forgotten. The best thing that can happen to a good idea is that it is shared. It makes me think of Tyler Cowen's quote, “Spend as little time as possible talking about how other people are wrong.”

Feed the good ideas and let bad ideas die of starvation.

The Intellectual Soldier

I know what you might be thinking. “James, are you serious right now? I'm just supposed to let these idiots get away with this?”

Let me be clear. I'm not saying it's never useful to point out an error or criticize a bad idea. But you have to ask yourself, “What is the goal?”

Why do you want to criticize bad ideas in the first place? Presumably, you want to criticize bad ideas because you think the world would be better off if fewer people believed them. In other words, you think the world would improve if people changed their minds on a few important topics.

If the goal is to actually change minds, then I don't believe criticizing the other side is the best approach.

Most people argue to win, not to learn. As Julia Galef so aptly puts it: people often act like soldiers rather than scouts. Soldiers are on the intellectual attack, looking to defeat the people who differ from them. Victory is the operative emotion. Scouts, meanwhile, are like intellectual explorers, slowly trying to map the terrain with others. Curiosity is the driving force.

If you want people to adopt your beliefs, you need to act more like a scout and less like a soldier. At the center of this approach is a question Tiago Forte poses beautifully, “Are you willing to not win in order to keep the conversation going?”

Be Kind First, Be Right Later

The brilliant Japanese writer Haruki Murakami once wrote, “Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.”

When we are in the moment, we can easily forget that the goal is to connect with the other side, collaborate with them, befriend them, and integrate them into our tribe. We are so caught up in winning that we forget about connecting. It's easy to spend your energy labeling people rather than working with them.

The word “kind” originated from the word “kin.” When you are kind to someone it means you are treating them like family. This, I think, is a good method for actually changing someone's mind. Develop a friendship. Share a meal. Gift a book.

Be kind first, be right later.

The Life of Muhammad

Courtesy BBC

Part 1

 Part 2

Part 3

The politics of quota and merit

Suhrith Parthasarathy in The Hindu

There is unquestionable value in a general policy of reservation because it attacks caste-based inequities that have proved so damaging to our society; but through an ever-expanding scheme of reservation, we have lost sight of what our aims were in the first place

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s election manifesto, released on April 7, 2014, and its opponents’ reaction to the proposal, exemplifies the level of political debate in India today. In spite of an element of truth in claims that the manifesto is an impressionist’s version, the document nonetheless departs on certain crucial, philosophical issues. But, such is our reluctance to engage on matters of first principle that these departures are rarely, if ever, contested with anything resembling an intellectual vigour. Take, for instance, the issue of reservation. While the Indian National Congress and most other political parties have proposed detailed policy measures, including the prospect of reservation for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) in the private sector, the BJP’s manifesto is curiously silent on the issue. Even the promise contained in its 2009 declaration to introduce reservation for the economically weaker general class finds no mention in this term’s version. It is likely that this decision is a product of electoral strategy. But its failure to clarify its vision is nonetheless symptomatic of a larger malaise in the Indian political sphere: a mistrust of debate subsumed by core issues of moral concern.

Arguments on reservation

The Congress’ response is also familiar: the manifesto’s silence on reservation, according to the Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has been designed to “poison” voters with a majoritarian approach. If pressed further, Mr. Chidambaram ordinarily would tell us that affirmative action is not necessarily irreconcilable with merit. Yet, what he will not tell us is why the Congress’ approach to reservation is, in the party’s belief, the only means to fulfil the fundamental right to equality. And, he will also not tell us what the Congress intends to achieve through its reservation policies: are they aimed at ensuring more than mere formal equality (which would ensure that all castes achieve equal status) or are they a means to one day achieve a society that is completely rid of the caste system?

The BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s answer to questions of whether there ought to be reservation along caste lines is similarly devious. He sings the same tune/s that he uses to counter any issue of economic inequality. According to him, the development and growth of the economy will bring with it a concomitant rise in both educational and employment opportunities, making the question of any community seeking reservation moot. But both Mr. Chidambaram’s claims about merit and Mr. Modi’s arguments about development skirt the real issue.

It is a matter of well-chronicled fact that the social and economic inequities prevalent in Indian society transcend ordinary conception. Any reasonable thinker would tell us that, as a matter of duty, our country’s resources ought to be dispersed evenly across all classes. But the argument on reservation, today, as evinced by Mr. Chidambaram and Mr. Modi’s public statements, is no longer about such considerations. The questions, therefore, are: how did we get here, and what do we do now?

Expanding reservation policy

At its inception, the Constitution envisaged very limited reservation. Articles 15 and 16, which today occupy the bedrock on which our entire policy of affirmative action rests, were meant to entrench a system where no discrimination was permissible on grounds of race, religion, caste, etc. Even clause 4 to Article 16, which permitted reservation in public employment for any backward class of citizens, was viewed as subservient to larger goals contained in clauses 1 and 2. Any such programme for reservation justified under Article 16(4) had to be shown to further the objective of ensuring equality of opportunity to all citizens. But over time, the original philosophical outlook toward affirmative action has waned.

Now, as a matter of a very specific policy of the state, not only are backward classes of citizens often identified solely on the basis of their castes, but reservation has also stretched well beyond the realm of public employment, at its first instance. These actions of the State have been brought forth either in response to particular, contrarian judgments of the Supreme Court, or in furtherance of judgments supporting the state’s larger outlook, according these programmes a constitutional sanction.

When the Supreme Court in State of Madras v. Champakam Dorairajan (1951) struck down a government policy seeking to arrange admission to engineering and medical colleges based on divisions of caste and religion, the government’s response was to amend the Constitution. Article 15(4) was introduced to allow the State to make special provisions for the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the SCs and STs. Yet, this amendment did not produce an immediate change in the Supreme Court’s thinking. The court continued to hold, as it did for example in M.R. Balaji v. State of Mysore (1963), that policies of reservation are exceptional measures, requiring strict constitutional defence. It also ruled that classification of backward classes of citizens could not be based solely on the caste of the citizen; such policies, wrote Justice Gajendragadkar, might “contain the vice of perpetuating the caste themselves.”

However, in 1975, the Supreme Court finally acquiesced to the state’s ever-expanding reservation policy. In a judgment that would have widespread consequences, the court ruled that Article 16(4) wasn’t as much an exception to the general rule contained in clause 1, as it was an integral component of the right to equality, properly understood (State of Kerala v. N.M. Thomas). In other words, Article 16(1), it was held, permitted classification on the basis of caste to achieve its broad goal: equality of opportunity for each citizen, as an individual. This was further validated in Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992), by a nine-judge bench, which ruled that the Constitution permitted backward classes to be identified on the basis of caste. In so holding, the court provided the government the jurisprudential basis for formulating sweeping policies on reservation.

Through a series of constitutional amendments, beginning in 1995, Parliament allowed the state to make provisions for reservation in matters of promotion to SCs and STs, to carry forward any vacancies created through a failure to fill-up the reserved category from one year to the following year, and to provide specially for Other Backward Classes or SCs and STs in matters of admission to educational institutions, including in private institutions. Each of these amendments and the laws made to enforce their aims (including reservation in favour of the so-called “other backward classes”) was challenged at various stages before the Supreme Court. But, the Supreme Court, after providing Parliament the legal justification for its general policy on reservation, could not now strike down the laws that emanated as a consequence.

Political discourse vs. debate

Apart from holding these amendments to be in consonance with the Constitution’s basic structure, the court also ruled in these cases that the laws made in furtherance of these amendments, including the identification of Other Backward Classes on the basis of caste, were valid. What’s more, it found the doctrine of creamy layer, which, in principle, disallowed benefits applicable to certain groups based on their economic status, which they would have otherwise been entitled to as members of a certain caste, as inapplicable to SCs and STs. These decisions, in M. Nagraj v. Union of India and Ashoka Kumar Thakur v. Union of India, are a product of a sustained change in the court’s jurisprudential thinking on the subject. But it ought to be asked: how does the exclusion of SCs and STs from the doctrine of creamy layer fit with the purported objectives?

Unfortunately, neither the Supreme Court nor our Parliamentarians are willing to engage with these fundamental issues. There is unquestionable value in a general policy of reservation because it attacks caste-based inequities that have proved so damaging to our society; but through an ever-expanding scheme of reservation, we have lost sight of what our aims were in the first place. We, therefore, need to address the debate at a more basic level.

We need to ask ourselves, once again, whether it is equality of opportunity that we strive for, or whether we want to rid our society of the caste system. If indeed the reservation policies are aimed at achieving both these ideals, we ought to be shown proof of how the present policies are working. If Other Backward Classes have to be equated with SCs and STs, the state ought to empirically prove why the doctrine of creamy layer should be applicable to the former and not to the latter, and how such thinking links to the larger goal of ensuring a supposed equality of opportunity. We also need to ask ourselves whether these policies, as Justice Gajendragadkar suggested in 1963, have the effect of perpetuating the caste system.

Regrettably, our political discourse appears unsuited for genuine debate on such questions. If the BJP supports a change in policy, it is its bounden duty to tell us what such new policy would be, and why it would work. If the Congress believes its present policy is effective, it ought to show us how the policy fulfils the Constitution’s ideals. Instead, we are left meandering in the politics of quota and merit. Our most ingrained social inequities are, in the process, further entrenched. And as a result, the abstract ideal of equality, which the Constitution guarantees, continues to wither toward insignificance.

(Suhrith Parthasarathy is an advocate in the Madras High Court.)