heh: agree

cat: Yes, but then we’d have a perfectly functioning primary education system. At that point, reservations may be a lot less relevant – since presumably a substantial portion of admissions into top institutes will be from less priviliged classes anyway.

And frankly, it’s hard to imagine a world where reservations are the most salient issue for an objective educated voter. You say “it would still be in the best interests of the underpriviliged masses to support reservation”. My point is that it’s not in their best interest now.

obc voice: I’m not sure I know why, but okay.

?!: *modestly* ah, well. Great minds and all that. Though to be fair, while I’ve never read political theory per se, I’ve read enough of the literature on corporate governance, much of which, I suspect is influenced by that literature. At any rate, the point wasn’t that I’d come up with some dramatic theoretical insight, more that most people don’t think about it that way.

As for what my views ’sound’ like, maybe it’s the listener? .

machiavelli / marx, both seem to agree that in the presence of a state, a benevolent dictator may be the best form of governance. reactionaries to these two thinkers argue that since such does not exist (on account of selfishness), democracy is the best option around. (of course, this summation is fraught with inaccuracies that generalizations normally command !!)

very impressive. particularly, if you did it without reading political theory.

your views on reservation, i must say, still smacks of an upper middle class, well educated, dharavi and tanjore exist only in books, kinda philospohy. but then, you already knew i thought so.

agree with you on most of that. wish you were around when the iits were started.

So much for utiopianism. We are reduced to hoping that the non-democratic Courts will step in…

I agree with Naveen Mandava, that only under the rule of law can we prevent a majority from usurping the interests of other groups.

Given that the current issue has no basis in facts and that the government has not taken due diligence to evaluate the true position of beneficiaries – one would expect the supreme court to strike down this law (once it passes parliament).

At that point, it is a foregone conclusion that the government will bring in another constitutional amendment.

The Supreme Court is the arm of the government that can and must put its foot down when it detects large scale transgressions of peoples freedoms without taking into account facts and statistics.

I agree with you that we must focus on hilighting to the downtrodden the true beneficiaries of the quota system. This unfortunately is complicated by the politicians, who do not want the system to be monitored or measured in any way.

Thus we have one of the largest preferential treatment social justice programs in human history with absolutely no statistics about its beneficiaries. This must be highlighted.

Also we must highlight that SC/ST quotas ARE monitored and we have statistics for SC/STs as late as 2001.

cyberswami: I don’t know. The government clearly thinks it can get more votes by doing this. They may be wrong about that, in which case we need to make sure they realise that. But again, that’s going to take a message from the masses.

madhat: Not really. I’m talking about an issue with the nature of governance in general. And I’m not sure I see why participatory democracies would be more efficient or effective. If anything, I’d expect them to be even less so. The point is that you’re trying to strike a balance between the self-interest of the leaders and the inefficiences of decision making by public consent – participatory democracy would probably overcompensate

anon: thanks for the link

Perhaps, participatory democracy is a better idea…