The Indians have not given a good deal of thought to this problem. The author of the Quartz article, however, suggests what the Hindu escape clause may be: “holy lands” that should be ruled by their “holy people”: Hindus rule India, Jews/Christians rule Jerusalem, and Muslim rule Mecca. Since America is only “holy” to the Indians (feather, not dot) everyone else should be equal and therefore white Americans have no right to discriminate against Indians (dot, not feather).

There’s something else I’ve been thinking about: In societies where smart women are still compelled to have nearly as many babies as dumb ones (as is the case in much of the muslim world), in theory there should be less erosion in genotypic IQ. Seems to me that factor could be at work in Pakistan too but I don’t want to push that concept too hard as I may be wrong.

Anyway, by my calcs, Pakistan’s phenotypic IQ rose from 70 in 1980 to about 92 today (taking 2002 as the benchmark year and not re-basing).

The population explosion and the industrial revolution that occurred in the last two centuries have radically changed the shape of society in a way that the leaders have not really confronted properly. It’s not like the economic viewpoint is alien to indians. The arthashastra by kautilya is quite decent on many aspects of political economy, and it was written at the time of Alexander. The RSS and other hindutva orgs formally do not recognise the caste system. But they’re in no hurry to marry off their relatives to people from other castes. Another place where formailism might actually be of some benefit.

The independence movement was too much tainted by socialist ideas and that essentially led to the 65 year stagnation of current independent india. Rajagopalachari and Gandhi had suggested an apprenticeship/worksmanship program combined with basic primary education as a way to educate the masses. This was rejected soundly because it stank of perpetuation of the caste system and India went in for an english liberal university system. Aah.. the pain of counterfactuals..

The really huge issues for India, today are the allocation of a vast number of unskilled workers away from agriculture and managing the sex ratio. Many have prophesised that the caste system will die soon due to lack of marriageable girls from certain castes. We’ll see. I don’t think Modi is going to affect the big picture much, though he may start acknowledging the real problems, which is a step up for India.