Saturday, December 30, 2006

Upper castes in India a "market-dominant minority"?

I wonder if the upper castes in India would fit the bill of "market-dominant minority" as defined by Yale Law School professor Amy Chua? In her book she argues that democracy and globalisation is
a principal, aggravating cause of group hatred and ethnic violence throughout the non-Western world

She goes on to warn of 3 kinds of violence that can be unleashed
The first is a backlash against markets, targeting the market-dominant minority's wealth. The second is a backlash against democracy by forces favorable to the market-dominant minority. The third is violence, sometimes genocidal, directed against the market-dominant minority itself.


I guess the current debate on reservations essentially boils down to the righteousness of the first form of violence...while the 2nd form of violence has more or less been reversed or countered
What scares me now is that with even the left leaning so called liberal intellectia deserting the uppercaste minority when will the 3rd form of violence start in the right earnest...
more pointedly she observes
democracy leads to the emergence of manipulative politicians and demagogues who find that the best way to get votes is by scapegoating the minorities

"Ballot boxes brought Hitler to power in Germany, Mugabe to power in Zimbabwe, Milosevic to power in Serbia -- and could well bring the likes of Osama bin Laden to power in Saudi Arabia."

Am I being paranoid?