Freakonomics

It will be amazing, if it is true. I do not have any data to support my argument; still I will put forth my idea. My idea stems from the book I am reading and the name of the book is Freakonomics. According to the author, the Roe vs. Wade case had a very drastic impact on the sudden drop in the crime rate in mid-90. That seems either too naive to liberals or offensive to conservatives. The argument is that the children born to single or poor or teenager mother have more probability of having un-happy life. These children are more prone to crime and uneducated life. Now, as these children were not born, the whole new generation of underprivileged children did not come to existence. As the generation born in mid-70’s entered late teens in 90’s, the crime rate fell as this generation was born to more educated, responsible and well to do parents.

The debate here is not whether abortion should be legalized or not, but it is a factual academic research.

I am trying to apply same logic to the effect of aggressive affirmative or reservation policies that were enforced in 1990’s in India. These affirmative policies irrevocably altered the landscape of Indian politics. The society stand divided as the genie of affirmative action became tool for politicians to create vote banks. I am completely anti-affirmative policies. I do believe that the backward communities need a help to come with rest of the society but when the quota system crosses the 50% or 60% limit then it defeats the very purpose of its inaction and becomes crutches.

But, there is silver lining to this policy. Intelligent people, who couldn’t get admissions in good colleges, only because they are upper caste, started working harder. The admission benchmark went up and best started coming out of the students. Plus, students started in different states where there is either less stringent affirmative policy or there are more colleges. Most importantly students started migrating to US for higher education. The boom in Indian economy, that made middle class to afford higher education abroad came hand in hand with computer boom in US, that created insatiable appetite for computer educated and English speaking engineers. Result; sudden spurt in Indian software industry.

There are host of other reasons for growth in software industry, like complete non-interference of Indian government. But this negatively positive impact of affirmative action should not be overlooked. May be the number of people by their caste will be good statistics to prove or disapprove this theory.