Despite
promising myself that I will let the annual brouhaha – this time it is l’affaire de Ashish Nandy - at the Jaipur
Literature Festival go unnoticed, my reading the book Poor Economics by the economists Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo
(Random House India, 978 81 8400 181 5) made the issue come alive in my mind.
It
is said in the book, “[In] [t]he Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where politics
became increasingly caste-based in the 1980s and 1990s …[o]ver time, there was
a large increase in the level of corruption among winning politicians from the
numerically dominant caste group in all areas. It did not matter whether that
area was dominated by the lower caste or by the upper caste.”
At
Jaipur, Tarun Tejpal is reported to have said that corruption is an equalizer, the
exclusive right of neither the upper nor lower castes. To some extent, in 2013 Tejpal
appears to have echoed the lines from the book published in 2011. Numbers
matter. If you belong to the “numerically dominant caste group”, corruption
becomes your birth right. The caste-equalizer, then, is the governance equivalent
of the Computerized Numerically Controlled (CNC) machines used in steel
fabrication. “It is the numbers in a caste that matter, you dummy!”
But,
as claimed, when Nandy merely added to what Tejpal had said there appears to
have been some loss of nuance. I am not betting my farm on it, but what I read
is that Nandy mentioned only the lower castes in his equation, and that is
obviously no equation. I also think he got himself into more trouble citing
corruption in West Bengal - its absence in the state before the rise of the
lower castes. This sentiment also goes at least partially against the statement
by the economists, leading one to wonder whether UP and West Bengal can be so
different in such a basic matter of human attitudes and behavior.
However,
for whatever reasons and surprisingly, Nandy was not raked over the coals for
this unsubstantiated statement. Indeed, I am surprised that Didi is silent!
Well,
having said all that, I pronounce that Nandy is in the clear, but he surrounded
himself in a fog, not unlike the pea souper we experienced in Delhi recently. Numerically
controlled caste equations are the pollutants that cause such misery.
And,
politicians love to drive through the fog, instead of clearing it.
Raghuram
Ekambaram
3 comments:
Raghuram, more than ruckus over Ashish Nandy statement what hurts me is metro work in bangalore on an important stretch has been stopped because Dr B R Ambedkar's statute comes in its way and Dalit groups wont allow its temporary shifting also. To think of it he never wanted a statute and would be turning in his grave because his statute has become the obstacle for development.
Balu, this is a tough one because I have seen similar stuff happen so very frequently. NH 45C (Trichy to some place nearby; about 50 km) was planned to be four laned. The engineers took the alignment (the Right of Way) right through an old temple. The RoW had to be curtailed because of protests. We do not know whether there are any safety implications. In Kolkata, similar problems with another historic monument along the new East-West Metro. When Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Delhi was being re-designed (new roof) for CWG 2010,another historic monument came in the way and had to be accommodated. I do not know why we never do what we call Project Preparation in a robust manner. This is endemic to our way of working, speeding up the initial work just so a Foundation Stone can be laid, and think about the project much later, when it is usually too late.
RE
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The Equation
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