India’s reservation system is the world’s largest illusion, a mass delusion. Every unemployed person from the general category thinks he is unemployed only because of reservation.
Those from reserved castes who have got government jobs believe that their children’s future lies only in reservation. Those from reserved castes who have not got jobs think that if not them, then at least their children will surely get jobs, and only through reservation.
No one ever thinks about the total number of government jobs that come out every year versus the number of young people who reach working age every year. It is hard to find a greater mathematical dissonance (mathematical thumb-pressing/ wilful ignorance of numbers) than this. Even the sum of all government jobs and all private jobs that open up every year is nothing compared to the number of young people who enter the job-seeking age every year.
India’s future, and the future of India’s youth, lies only in industrialisation.
But because in India “job” means government job, and there is the illusion that reservation gets you a government job, we burn plenty of buses and trains for that. But never for economic freedom.
Even the educated in India do not know what wealth is, why some countries are rich and some are poor, what a job is, why jobs exist, how wages can be higher in a job, and why they are low in India.
Every Indian tells the government: “Give us jobs,” and socialist leaders promise to give them, win elections, then destroy jobs and make everyone poor.
And the result of poverty is that people demand even more reservation. Even those who have not got it so far start demanding reservation.
Think of it in this way. Suppose there is one roti (loaf of bread). Many people in the world have said: divide the roti equally among everyone and the problem will be solved. But when this was actually done, the roti itself disappeared, and even those who were getting it stopped getting it. Nearly 4 crore (40 million) people were killed, yet the roti could not be produced.
In America and many European countries, it was said: everyone make your own roti and eat it. But to make roti you need neither a government permit nor a licence. As a result, today, so many rotis are produced that they have to be thrown away.
That man needs nothing from the government. Only this much: the freedom to make roti, and once the roti is made, the government should neither snatch it and distribute it itself, nor allow anyone else to snatch it. If only this happens, so many rotis are produced that some are left over.
Yes, everyone’s rotis are not equal — some get more, some less; some get good ones, some get burnt ones.
The problem in India is this: everyone says that the government should get the roti made by us, and then give us our rightful share.
The result is that the roti is always insufficient, and then everyone starts snatching and grabbing, and demands reservation or tries to get it removed.
This is because the government can never make roti.
It is not a matter of intentions or corruption or the absence of good leaders or good bureaucrats. The government simply cannot make roti.
Just as monkeys cannot make computers, no matter how good their intentions or how hardworking they are. Even in a country like America, when the government started saying that the quality of the roti would be decided by asking us, and that some roti would have to be given to the poor through us, difficulties began in making rotis.
The concern for the poor who have no roti should be kept by society, by the family and kin — and until now they did keep it.
In India, there is a need for a movement for complete economic freedom.
And until complete economic freedom, the security of private property, and a culture of the sanctity of contracts arrive, movements for taking or removing reservations will continue, people will keep dying of hunger, and young people will keep wandering frustrated and unemployed, ready to fall into the clutches of any revolutionary.
Study and teach Arthashastra. Do not break the promise. Do not cast a greedy eye on another’s property.
