Abhijeet Banerjee and Esther Duflo (henceforth AE) have
written an opinion piece about CAA and NRC in Indian Express on 1st
January 2020. The core argument is ‘since NRC cannot be done with accuracy, it
should be avoided’. The argument has been made by even by many sympathizers of
government.
If government cannot do something with accuracy, then it
should not attempt it – is a very problematic argument. There are lot of things
government does with limited accuracy, for example, many of the welfare
schemes. Can we argue the same for such schemes? The answer is affirmative,
provided exclusion error, of not able to help deserving beneficiaries, is very
large. AE are arguing the same. Using their (anecdotal or representative?) experience
of observing poor households, they argue that many households, who are Indian
by all criteria of citizenship, are likely to be left out of stringent NRC due
to want of documents or their inability to make babus work for them.
The fear is justified. I hope AE will provide a primary data
based evidence of what is the lower bound on likely exclusion from NRC if
households have to prove ‘Indianness’ using birth certificates or legacy
documents. If exclusion error is even 1% in some of the southern states, which
score high on governance and are more urban, then exclusion error is likely to
be higher at pan-India level. The point is, if exclusion does not turn out to
be alarmingly high, which is an event of small but non-zero probability, then
AE has no objection to NRC. They are fine with NRC in principal, but not in
empirics.
NRC is wrong in principal in my opinion. It perverts the
principal of justice – innocent till proven guilty. And the perversion is done
without sound justification. Principal of justice is perverted where it is warranted
– when it comes to protection of vulnerable groups. Apart from Assam and some parts
of north-eastern states, no state is having any agitation against non-Indian illegal
migrants. The lack of agitation doesn’t mean that there are no illegal migrants,
it simply means so far, these migrants are not perceived as harm by middle-class
Indians. (Though soon, it will start seeing the harms, thanks to IT cell which
is chief source of information for Indian middle class.)
AE make this point, of migrants being harmless in terms of employment,
but they do not take it to principled objection. Strangely, they veer into a
strange direction, of internal migrants in India.
‘Are Tamil-speaking children of Bengali Hindu migrants to Chennai entitled to jobs in the state government? How about the Marathi-speaking children from Bihar, who grew up in Maharashtra?’
So far, states erect barriers to reduce the competition from
out of state migrants in government jobs. But children of migrants are
generally treated at par, though in actual selection process, they might be
screened out. (One can look at state police or transport and see how many employees
children of migrants are.) Migrants alter the local cultural fabric and it can
be upsetting to those who are at equilibrium with previous one. It happens
everywhere and I don’t think there is something wrong with it. Most individuals
are tied up to their roots, like to have homogeneous neighborhoods and a predictable
consistency to their lives. They do not get it when there is huge influx of
migrants. That’s how most of us are, and this paranoia or suspicion is driven
by simple need of self-preservation. Ghettoization is what natural to human
beings and transnational metropolitan fluid melting pots are anecdotes maintained
by first world cities. It so happens that despite the extensive fieldwork, AE
subscribe to the anecdotes. Otherwise they would have known that Tamil speaking
children of Bengali Hindu migrants or Marathi speaking children of Bihari migrants
is exception than rule.
Their want of positive model of individuals might be evident
in very first para of their piece. They argue that one of the many Modi
slogans, ‘minimum government maximal governance’ have resonated with voters. I
always thought this slogan was towards industry, signaling retreat of government
from markets. For voters, Modi is someone who has proven record of delivery and
clean career, unlike the precursor who were perceived as incapable and corrupt.
No further nuance was needed for these voters to give Modi a chance in 2014 and
so far, there is no strong evidence to change the mandate.
Core of this support is indifferent Hindu voters. They are indifferent
between assertive Hindutva and de-facto Hindu Rashtra (1947 to 2014). Unless
economic opportunities dry up, the indifference will be continuing the support
of BJP. Compared to unorganized opposition to CAA and NRC, the indifference is huge,
and it is on this huge resting chuck BJP has anchored itself.
Will this block of indifference accept NRC? (They have
accepted CAA as much I see.) Core of indifferent block is middle-class, which has
near meticulous formal documentation of their lives. They do not see NRC as a
problem. But I believe there is still large fraction in indifferent block,
which will have documentation deficit. They should be made aware of it. That
should be the fulcrum of principled opposition to NRC.
NRC is not primarily anti-Muslim, the point even AE concede by not
mentioning anything about it. It is anti to Indian without documents and
Muslims are likely to form large part of it due to their low socioeconomic status,
with large number of Hindus as well. But primary point is not religion, but
lack of documentation. NRC is fine as per the constitution morality. The
opposition should rest on perversion of justice without sound evidence of need
to do so and estimate of potential exclusion. None of the points are made strongly
enough by AE.
In the end, AE take this surprising route of invoking India
as ‘mother lodes of civilization’. This is very strange argument. Any argument
in old history of India underlines the Hindu civilizational nature of India and
strengthen the BJP argument. If one is going to embrace it, then much of the right-wing
arguments fall in place. Or one can argue for post-1947 India as a new dawn, as
Nehru argued, with past being there but not having any role. Ultimately, it is
debate in these two views: India as de-facto Hindu rashtra trying to be Hindu
Israel or India as country of Indians with majority Hindu population. Sooner we
reach to this core, better we will be. AE argument of invoking past puts them
in former category, which is not something they see themselves as.
Some references
1. ‘Divided’by Tim Marshall has elaborated quite well on nativist arguments towards
migrants.
2. Amit
Varma in his podcasts ‘Seen and Unseen’ has dealt with intellectual position of
Hindu right. But so far, he hasn’t interviewed Hindu right intellectual
himself. The discussion so far is from liberals examining Hindu right, but with
seriousness. His episode with Srinath Raghavan on CAA and NRC is interesting.
Both of them assume that CAA automatically qualifies Hindus disqualified under
NRC, which is very strange.