Thread by @SudsG5

Not a "bhosad piller"and I firmly believe reservations should stay. Infact I believe existing reservations reduced a bit and a full 5-10% given to children of inter caste marriages. Incl maybe full sponsorship of children born to such parents. The numbers are negligible rn

https://twitter.com/Me_Predictor/status/1642186652536934401

1/n that said. These are very vague and tenuous arguments. Correlation is not equal to causation.

Take a foundational metric, both Kerala and TN (to name the few key South Indian states one associates with higher standards of living) had much higher literacy rates

2/n as opposed to the "backward" states. Kerala was @ 56%, TN @ 36%, Pondy 46%, compare this with the erstwhile "Bimaru" states that ranged from 18-20% in the 61 census. This was much before when the 69% reservations were rolled out. Clearly the social infra in edu

3/n to begin with was far more rooted in what are the advanced states today even back in 1947.

Let's dive deeper into colonial history to see why there was this divergence to begin with.

In this paper (available online) Lakshmi Iyer (2008) makes a very clear case

3/n that social infrastructure, schools, healthcare, access to input measures like fertilizer, irrigation infrastructure all were higher in indirectly ruled states / provinces vs direct Raj controlled territory. Colonial extraction was also far more intense in

4/n Raj controlled states. Tax rates were higher but per capita tax extraction was lower (efficiency measure here).

There is a cruel historical irony at play here. The Raj annexed and directly governed regions that had the highest agricultural productivity in the

5/n 1790-1850 period but then conversely neglected to invest in social infrastructure and limiting itself to capex that helped further resource extraction.

It goes further than just the Raj period. In "Lives of Indian Princes" (Allen & Dwidevi 08) they make the case

6/n that these elite princes had a much higher rate of participation in electoral politics in independent India. This in turn lead to greater voter participation and active pressure from the electorate for better governance.

There are other social pressures that have ailed

7/n these benighted areas including much higher levels of communal or casteist violence (The Colonial origins of violence, Ajay Varghese).

Combine all this and states like Kerala, Large swathes of TN, Maharashtra etc simply had a much better(relative to the poorer states)

8/n social infrastructure. A more engaged and vibrant electorate.

These were natural advantages in 1947 these states had and it reflected in pretty much every metric.

Besides, if "reservation" is an auto win ggwp, then United Provinces saw the Raj impose a 33%

9/n reservation in favour of Muslims in the administration. Yet even to this day Muslims in UP are poorer than in the advanced states like TN, Gujarat etc.

I am consciously keeping this post short and only touching it from 30,000 feet to provide context but the discerning

10/n reader can do their own research from just the citations I have provided as a starting point.

And then we get the gigantic cluster fuck that was the FEP.

So you have these resource rich hinterland states that were in 1947 already poor and lacking social infrastructure

11/n but had the resource advantage. Which the richer (mostly coastal) states that are the supercharged engines of today lacked. They had all other advantages including access to ports. Rather than a sustained investment in infrastructure Negruji (literally every Ill in

12/n India today can be traced to this ahole clan...#cmv) in his eternal wisdom took a 10 feet thick pole, minus the lube to these states. By implementing fep, he eliminated the resource advantage also and capital fled to the coastal states.

13/n we now have a perfect shit storm of epic proportions. The lack of an engaged electorate then lead to the Congress playing horrible politics creating and maintaining instability in these states.

Take Bihar for instance. After Krishna Sinha who saw a 11 year tenure

14/n had 27 CM's in the period 1961-1990. That's 27 in 29 years! All of them from the Congress. This excludes the 5 times President's rule was imposed over a 2 year period.

There is not a chance in hell of a stable administration providing basic governance.

15/15 so it's far far far more complex than saying "reservations = better social outcomes".