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Mumbai: Michael J. Sandel, an American political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University who runs a hugely popular course called Rs.Justice’, in an interview on Wednesday raised concerns about the existing procedures for selecting students at elite institutes in India. He also said that reservations and quotas help create a more inclusive society by lifting up groups that are truly disadvantaged. Edited excerpts:
Can you please tell us about your course ‘Justice’ in Harvard University?
It is a course which I have been teaching since I came to Harvard in 1980. It is also the basis of my book Justice. The course exposes the students to what famous philosophers from past have thought about what makes for just society.
Are your thoughts universal?
The basic questions of justice -- across societies, different ways of thinking about justice informed by different cultural and spiritual traditions -- is a fascinating subject to explore. But basic questions—such as what is a just way of organizing society, how much of inequality is consistent with justice, what do we owe one another as citizens—all societies debate.
What do you think about the yawning gap between the rich and poor across the globe?
This is a tendency which we have seen throughout the world, especially in the last few decades. It seems to be a general feature of capitalism in the growing world of markets. Markets might bring rising economic growth and prosperity but they do not deliver or distribute benefits of that growth equally. On the contrary, there is typically a growing gap between rich and poor. This raises one of the biggest questions of justice today around the world—what should be done about the growing gap between rich and poor?
How do we narrow this gap?
The first thing to do is find ways to use the benefits or fruits of economic growth to make sure that every one has access to basic necessities of decent human life. This is, of course, an enormous challenge, especially in a country like India.
You might even say it is the greatest challenge of our times. We know how to make economies grow but we have not always been as successful at distributing the benefits of this growth to lift those at the very bottom.
What do you think about India’s political parties unleashing populist measures just before elections?
I do not think market alone should set the price of basic goods and necessities without any regulation or correction whatsoever because market forces do not distribute goods, especially human goods, evenly or fairly, and some people are left in desperate poverty. The alternative is not necessarily to simply distribute favours at election time. The better alternative is to try and create an institution that provides for basic infrastructure and access to fundamental human needs such as toilets, clean water, basic healthcare and education.
Providing those essential human goods is not the same as populist favours that are given out during elections; it involves creating social policies and institutions over time to lift people out of poverty.
Is there a room for reservation or quotas in just society?
I am aware that the practice of reservation goes all the way back to the constitution; minorities and disadvantaged minorities benefit from reservation has grown over time. In some respect, this is the debate and idea in the book Justice. This is a debate about quotas and reservation to help the disadvantaged we have had in US in different form largely to do with race, ethnicity, and to some extent gender.
This is also going on across the world. For example, Brazil is also debating on quotas and reservations. From what I have read and heard, in India the number of places in jobs and universities that have been reserved for disadvantaged castes or minority groups has grown and become quite large. How exactly to strike the balance is something that every society has to decide for itself but I do think the principle of trying to create a more inclusive society by lifting up groups that have truly being disadvantaged is an important one.
Sometimes definition of those disadvantaged groups becomes so broad that even quite affluent and privileged people are benefiting in the name of reservation. That’s a matter of implementation.
Should not merit instead of reservation play a role in admission in educational institutes?
Merit should clearly play a role. It can be controversial what exactly counts as merit ... We measure merit typically by exams. For IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) in India, there is all-India rank that stands for principle of merit. Questions can always be asked as in debates in US… Questions can always be asked whether performance in exams are a good measure of academic potential. This is because people who come from disadvantage background may not score that well on tests but they may have great intellectual potential given the opportunity.
Of course, merit should play an important role but we have to be alive to whether the existing tests are the truest and fullest tests of academic potential. We must also balance the principle of merit with inclusiveness in helping those who have been disadvantaged to have true educational opportunity.
What is the role of merit in a just society?
The philosophical question is why does merit matter? Does it matter because those (who) rank highest deserve to be admitted or does it matter because those who are ranked highest if admitted will ultimately contribute most to common good? Is merit an individual principle or is it a principle of a way of trying to promote the common good? One can ask the same question about reservation: Are reservations for the sake of fairness to individuals who have been disadvantaged in the past or are reservations for the sake of promoting the common good? Trying to get at those principles is really at the heart of the debate.
Graduates of elite institutes in India tend to move abroad.
This raises a serious question. This is why it is important to try to identify principle of any criterion of selection because why after all do we care so much about principle of merit? Why should merit and all-India rank matter and carry so much weight in admission? If the reason is that those who score highest is likely to contribute most to their society but if it turns out that they are the one leaving the country most we should use other principle. It is important to find out whether the system of admission really is for the sake of common good or for the sake of admitting students who will contribute the most to the welfare of fellow citizens.
What can India do to encourage such students to contribute to the society?
This is the general problem of brain drain that occurs when there might be subsidized education, especially in developing countries. Will those students exercise their talent for the benefits of education they received to help their fellow citizens or go elsewhere? It would be very unjust to have restrictions on freedom of movement on the right to immigrate. But there may be other ways of trying to encourage beneficiaries of the educational resources of the country to make sure that at least for some time those skills or talents are put to the benefits of society.
There could be certain terms of service or perhaps an upheld system where if a person wants to move abroad he should be allowed to move after making him repay over a period of time the investment made in them. We should do this in a way that is compatible with free movement of people across boundaries.
There is a proposal by a leading political party to scrap income tax in India. What is your view?
As a matter of principle, it is a good thing; the tax policy somehow reflects the ability to pay. Now there are many different ways of measuring the ability to pay. Income is one, which most countries in the world employ. Wealth is another. There have been proposals to tax wealth rather than income with the thought that might be less burdensome on labour but I think that it would be a mistake to abandon it all together. We should follow a principle which allows taxation in proportion to one’s ability to pay.
In recent times Indian middle class has taken to streets and has been protesting against various social issues.
In an interactive session I had with around 1,000 people in Jaipur as a part of a BBC programme it struck me that the protest movement and outrage that followed after the horrific Delhi rape incident could be a beginning of a new kind of democratic and civic movement in India with serious public debate about hardest questions this society faces. I thought that possibility was very encouraging and I still think so. It is a healthy response to an outrage where people engage in peaceful and non-violent civic protest, developing a kind of movement trying to see if not only system and laws but also the attitudes and norms can be changed.
Was the 2008 financial crisis about greed?
I think financial crisis was only partly of greed. It was about something deeper. It was a certain kind of faith which I call market triumphalist faith -- an idea that markets are the primary instrument for achieving the public good, a faith that when markets are left to their own devices they can define just society. I think there is a mistake in this belief. But that’s the belief that gathered force and influence from the 1980s to early 2000s.
I think the financial crisis showed us the falling of that faith and the need to question what should be the role of markets in our society. When the financial crisis came, most believed -- and I certainly did -- that this would mark the end of the age of unquestioned market faith that we have just lived through. Though we should have had a serious public debate about whether market serves the public good what strikes me is that the financial crisis came and went and we still have not had that debate.
One of the goals of writing my book What Money Can’t Buy is to encourage and provoke and inspire that kind of debate to take up the question in public what should be the role of money in markets in our society.
