Devangshu Datta: All retards are equal

VIEWPOINT

There is a tide in the affairs of nations which taken at the flood, leads to quantities of yokels ceasing to, well, yoke oxen. Some wield wrenches instead; others deliver pizzas instead of wielding scythes.

As manufacturing and services generate larger shares of national income, the workforce must enter those industries. Otherwise, you get huge pockets of poverty, uneven development, unemployment and therefore, wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The shift in sector contribution occurred a long time ago. As of now, services generate close to half of Indian GDP (and more than half of GNP), manufacturing does around 30 per cent and agriculture about 20 per cent.

Agriculture is growing at the low trend rate of perhaps 3 per cent. The services sector is growing at double-digits and manufacturing at 8 per cent plus. Agriculture's share in national income will drop further. This is normal. In many developed countries, agriculture contributes 15 per cent of GDP or less.

But sector-employment ratios are stickier. Agriculture employs perhaps 60 per cent (according to some estimates 70 per cent) of the workforce. Until there is a huge workforce shift out of agriculture, gross inequalities will remain.

In most developed nations, agriculture employs far fewer people""ratios tend to be 15-25 per cent in the EU. The ideal for India would be a shift of, say, 25 per cent of workforce into services and manufacturing in the next decade.

But no nation has accomplished the shift painlessly, and methods that have worked elsewhere might not work in Apna Bharat.

The Americans wiped out the locals. After that, immigrants got into farming, or worked in the slaughterhouses or on the assembly lines of Ford and General Motors, or as clerks and entertainers. By 1900, more people worked in services than in farms or factories.

The Europeans conscripted their farm workers in 1914. The trenches and the Spanish Flu decimated them; starvation led to more deaths. Twenty years later, they repeated the formula with greater enthusiasm. By 1945, Europe did not have an excess agrarian workforce.

China's Cultural Revolution destroyed services and manufacturing. The entire workforce was forcibly employed in agriculture. That led to equality at subsistence level. Then the Great Helmsman tried the effects of famine. Then he invoked conscription and picked fights with the USSR and Vietnam. But everybody cunningly refused to get involved in a serious war with China.

Being unable to reduce its excess agrarian workforces through starvation or battle, the PRC pragmatically went back to encouraging services and manufacturing instead. The state appropriated vast tracts, and ordered workforces into manufacturing. Unrest""and there was plenty""was stamped out by the PLA.

The Khmer Rouge implemented a purer version of the Cultural Revolution. They wiped out services""the US bombers had already taken care of what little manufacturing existed. Then they starved millions. Finally they had an agrarian economy with everybody on the edge of starvation.

Zimbabwe's variation on the Khmer model uses hyper-inflation as the key policy tool rather than genocide. Soon Zimbabwean money will cease to exist and it will no longer be possible to measure inequality. Then it may as well not exist!

India is dabbling in SEZs but we lack the political will of the PRC. Conscription and war isn't an option""the Defence Ministry cannot afford to issue 150 million new paybooks. So, reservation isn't such a bad idea.

In essence, reservation works on a quid pro quo: If you admit you and your ancestors were retarded, the government will give you a dole. Of course "retarded" is politically incorrect so the beneficiaries claim to be "backward" instead. (Look it up""it's a synonym.) "Dole" is also politically incorrect. So it's called a job, even if it's make-work.

Those doles will induce a workforce shift. A generation or two later, maybe people will get tired of claiming to be retarded and stop taking doles. In the short run, the policy leads to outcomes where people fight for the right to be called retarded. In the long run, everybody will lobby his/her way to backward status. Once all of us are certified retarded, India will be a wonderfully equal place to live in.