Peace, but also deeply ethnicised

Not quite Model Malaysia Ashutosh Varshney Indian Express: Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s critique (‘Malaysian straitjacket for India’, IE, June 17) of my article (‘Be affirmative’, June 16) mixes up the difference between an empirical and a normative argument. An empirical argument is about the facts of the case; a normative argument is the author’s view of what should be done. My empirical argument had two components:

(a) that quotas in the private sector did not hurt the economic rise of Malaysia; and

(b) that quotas, instead of aggravating social conflict, appear to have dampened them, especially because Malaysia’s economic growth rate was so high.

Hence my conclusion that if you wish to oppose Indian quotas, do not do so on economic grounds, find some other arguments; and do not assume that quotas only produce conflict. Nothing more was said or intended. Malaysia is certainly not a model for India. The point of comparative analysis is rarely to suggest models for imitation. Rather, the point is to provide food for reflection. Nor did my argument imply that Malaysia’s affirmative action had no darker sides. Two are widely noted, but each has problematic implications for Mehta’s claims.

First, Malaysia is finding it hard to make a transition to a knowledge-based economy, primarily because the quality of a Malaysian graduate, reared in a quota regime, is not very high. But that does not mean that Malaysia has not had a manufacturing revolution. And it is labour-intensive manufacturing that attacks the problem of mass poverty, not knowledge-intensive IT industries, which India has excelled at. Less than two per cent of Malaysia’s population is below the poverty line today; in India that figure is still 20-25 per cent...

A feeble concept of citizenship is the second dark aspect of Malaysian quotas. Here Mehta is spot on. Malaysia is Malay, Chinese and Indian, but still not fully Malaysian. The affirmative action programme appears to have brought peace, but also a deeply ethnicised Malaysian society. The writer is professor of political science, University of Michigan editor@expressindia.com