Mayank Mishra on the Delhi riots

Mayank Mishra writes in Quint, in regard to the recent Delhi riots- 

Research suggests that slight reduction in the (relative) deprivation of Muslims could be the reason behind this polarisation. The 2014 study by Anirban Mitra of University of Ohio and Debraj Ray of New York University begins with an assumption that: “if a group is relatively poor to begin with, an increase in the average incomes of the group controlling for changes in inequality, must raise violence perpetrated against that group.”

What Mitra & Debraj Ray reported was that when Hindus get richer they are less likely to kill others whereas when Muslims get richer they spend some of their new wealth on killing non Muslims.

Using data of all communal riots between 1950 and 2000 and extrapolating that with NSSO’s per capita monthly expenditure data, they conclude that: “an increase in Hindu prosperity is negatively associated with greater religious fatalities in the near future, while the opposite is true of Muslim prosperity.” Does this conclusion match with what you hear on the ground?

Yes. Muslims attacked Hindus on the first day of the riots. An AAP Councillor and his brother orchestrated the attacks. Then, on the second day, the Hindus brought in people to retaliate. The police joined in. Once a new Police Chief was appointed, the violence stopped. 

The country had had, on an average, nearly 16 communal riots every year, between 1950-1981. The number swelled to 48 every year during 1982-1995.

Why? Muslims were getting richer. Money from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf was coming in. There was more money available for mayhem. Muslim gangsters moved to Dubai or Karachi and received help from the Pakistani ISI to foment trouble. 

The decades of the 1980s and 1990s witnessed heightened agitation for the construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya and that probably explains the sudden spike in incidents of horrific communal riots.

Because the money was flowing in to cause that spike. 

While the number has come down since then, sporadic episodes of inter-community violence do take place even now, with Delhi being the latest.

In 1992 a riot in the same part of Delhi was swiftly put down because an IPS officer, seeing one of his men being stabbed, drew his gun and started shooting. The rest of his company followed suit. Some 25 Muslims were killed on the spot. After that, the miscreants ran away.

The same thing should have been happened when the first cop was injured. But the Police Chief, who was due to retire, didn't want the bad press. He had previously refused to let the police retaliate when attacked by lawyers. Thus it was only the Hindu retaliation which emboldened the cops to teach the Muslims a lesson. Then a new Police Chief was appointed and police morale was restored.

The authors find out that every one percent increase in “Hindu per capita expenditure is predicted to decrease casualties by anywhere between 3 percent and 7 percent, while the same increase in Muslim per capita expenditure increases casualties by 3-5 percent.” (Per capita monthly expenditure is an indication of how much he/she is earning.)

So, two Hindu academics- perhaps of East Bengali refugee origin- are saying 'Hindus become nicer and nicer as they get richer. Muslims, cretins that they are, try to use increases in income to kill non-Muslims. Then they get stomped.'

Obviously, these Hindu academics had to pretend to be saying the opposite because of 'political correctness' but there is no other explanation for their finding. 

Is this the reason why we are witnessing heightened polarisation all around? Do we know if members of ‘a relatively poor community’ (Muslims) are indeed experiencing an increase in their income?

Everyone is experiencing a rise in income because growth has been quite strong. As predicted by the model, some Muslims in North East Delhi- seeing the police was demoralized- thought it a good idea to start killing Hindus. The very next day they were slaughtered. Whatever economic gains they had made have now disappeared.

As mentioned above, there is evidence of reduction in (relative) deprivation of Muslims. Based on National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) data, social scientists Sandhya Krishnan and Neeraj Hatekar mapped the growth of the new middle class, according to different social categories, from 1999–2000 to 2011–12.

The authors had included all those who spend USD 2 to USD 10 (roughly Rs 145 to Rs 740) per capita per day, in the new middle class. What stands out is the sharp differential in the growth in size of the new middle class among Muslims and privileged caste Hindus.
According to the NSSO data analysed, while the size of the Muslim new middle class grew by a whopping 86 percent between 1999–2000 to 2011–12, that of the Hindu new middle class went up by 76 percent.

So, according to Debraj Ray & Mitra's prediction, Hindus have become less violence prone- unless they are slaughtered in which case they retaliate if they are the majority- whereas Muslims have become more so- unless the police simply mow them down with bullets.

However, the size of the new middle class of the privileged castes (meaning non-OBC, non-SC and non-ST Hindus) grew by a mere 45 percent in the same period. The privileged castes, it seems, has lagged behind all other social categories. Is this the category that is getting radicalised the most because of a sense of deprivation? Other than anecdotal evidence, we do not have any credible research to conclude that.

This idiot does not get that a group which is already predominantly 'middle class' is going to see slower growth in that respect. What matters is if they are moving into the upper middle class.

What explains the rise in income of Muslims in recent years? In order to understand that, we need a fair idea about the kind the occupations Muslims are engaged in. The Sachar Committee report, constituted during the UPA I to analyse the socio-economic condition of Muslims, gives us some clues. It says: “While the share of Muslim workers engaged in agriculture is much lower than for other groups, their participation in manufacturing and trade (especially for males) is much higher than for other SRCs (socio religious categories). Besides, their participation in construction work is also high.”

The problem with Muslim instigated riots in Hindu majority areas is that poor Muslims have to run away from the Cities to take shelter in rural areas. That is what pushes them back into hopeless poverty. It is happening right now in North East Delhi. Hopefully, the new Police Chief will make it clear that he will shoot Muslims if they start trouble. This will make it safe for Muslims to return to take up remunerative employment. 

The report highlights that, other than construction, the participation of Muslims in retail and wholesale trade, transport, auto repair, manufacturing of tobacco products, textiles and fabricated metal products is quite high. It adds that: “the share of Muslim workers in manufacturing is particularly high in states like Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan, where the share is more than 25 percent.”

Thus, smart Muslims want the Police to kill rioters and lock up the ring-leaders. But Hindus want that too. No doubt, there are some psychopaths in every community. We don't want them running amok in the name of protecting our religion. Today they are knifing your neighbor. Tomorrow they will be raping your daughter. 

Now, juxtapose this with the findings of the recent TeamLease study published in the The Economic Times. The headline of the study, ‘Want to be an MBA? Why not electrician’, is quite revealing.
Here are the highlights of the study:
An engineering graduate or an MBA from a below par institute earns almost as much as a trained electrician.
Between 2016 to 2018, the average salary of a trained electrician saw a growth in excess of 40 percent. An MBA with similar year of experience saw his salary rise by 30 percent. However, in the case of an engineering graduate, it was a meagre 10 percent.
It says that the demand-supply gap of skilled workers is going to be quite high in the next five years, pushing their salaries even higher.

We know that a lot of Engineering Colleges are utterly useless. Still, such worthless degrees did have some value on the marriage market. What the author is getting at is the notion that Muslims are happy being electricians. They don't hanker for Engineering degrees. Thus the Muslims are doing better than the Hindus with the result that Hindus started killing them.

This is nonsense. Aggrieved 'High Caste' Hindus with useless degrees take the Hardik Patel route. They demand reservations in Government jobs. Muslims aren't their rival. Rather, it is the Scheduled and Other Backward Castes.

Skilled Work & Notions of ‘Purity & Pollution’
Read about the average occupation of a Muslim together with the findings of the TeamLease survey. Add your own inputs from what you observe in your midst. Be it tailoring, auto repair, skilled construction work or retail trading, Muslims have been dominating these areas.
Hence, a reduction in (relative) deprivation of Muslims in recent years.

Why this skew? The Brahminical order’s excessive emphasis on the notion of ‘purity and pollution’ (even with regard to a person’s vocation) is the reason why there are fewer Hindus in the ranks of skilled workers.

But Muslims have the same caste system. Nobody gives a toss about 'purity and pollution' in Delhi. It is money, not manners, that maketh the man. Plenty of Brahmins in Delhi pull cycle rickshaws and clean toilets and so forth. Returning home, they bathe, do puja and return to 'the Brahminical order'. But Brahmin surgeons and soldiers and gangsters do the same thing. 

Hindus have followed an order that places the pursuit of education above everything else.

Fuck off! Hindus don't give a shit about education. They just want lots of degrees and a cushy Government job from which they can't be sacked and where they can collect bribes. 

Today, it means pursuing a degree to get a decent job.

I think degrees are a signal for the marriage market. You can't get a decent job anywhere in the world if you are working class and have an arts degree. Indeed, your lifetime earnings are likely to be lower. However, people with degrees may be able to give their kids a leg up. That's the real story here. 

Soiling one’s hands has always been looked down upon.

So has smearing your face with shit. 

Muslims, on the other hand, have traditionally been engaged in skilled work.

Only if they came from traditional artisanal sub-castes. You can find high caste Hindu as well as Ashraf Muslim tailors and craftsmen. Often they secured a diploma and had some capital. Their higher status meant they could build up a superior client base. But, speaking generally, they wanted their kids to study STEM subjects or crack the IAS or become a Professor or something of that sort. 

And we know that we are amidst a long period of jobless growth. The country has not been able to create enough jobs to absorb the growing young population.
This, perhaps, has impacted Hindus more than the Muslims. Hence, the growing sense of relative pauperisation among Hindus, and there is a feeling that Muslims are to be ‘blamed’ for their plight.

What the High Caste Hindus complain of is quotas for Hindu S.C and O.B.C candidates. They aren't clamoring for the right to become kasais. 

One gets such ideas whenever one visits troubled areas and talks to the locals there. Several messages on social media platforms indicate as much.
Now, the question is: what is the political fallout of riots? A 2016 study by three Yale professors suggests that riots almost always adversely impact the parties that draw support from more than one community.

Utter bullshit! The Party that draws support from all communities is the one that has no problem with police officers shooting any and every troublemaker out of hand. Furthermore, a Party which can fuck you up if you don't support it, tends to get everybody's support.

It says: “Does Congress in fact lose votes when riots occur?'

Congress loses votes when- as is currently the case- it is completely shit. But this is true of any political party. Who would have voted BJP if Advani had been its Prime Ministerial candidate? 

Though the results should be interpreted with caution as they are not causally identified, estimates from OLS regressions suggest that it does: the outbreak of one additional riot in the year preceding a state assembly election is associated with a 1.3 percentage point average decline in Congress’s district vote share.

 The paper says 'Using a novel application of the regression-discontinuity design, we show that as-if random victory by candidates representing India’s Congress party in close state assembly elections between 1962 and 2000 reduced Hindu– Muslim rioting. The effects are large. Simulations reveal that had Congress lost all close elections in this period, India would have experienced 11 percent more riots. Additional analyses suggest that Congress candidates’ dependence on local Muslim votes, as well as apprehensions about religious polarization of the electorate in the event of riots breaking out, are what drive the observed effect.'

The authors are not Indian but they are repeating a partisan political claim which however no Indian believes. The truth of the matter is that Congress instrumentalized communal riots for political ends. In contrast to other political parties, Congress- at least in States with 'close assembly elections'- had the power to completely prevent riots by getting likely troublemakers to be put under preventive detention. Only Congress had an incentive in keeping Muslims poor and terrified though, no doubt, some of their gangsters and militants gained wealth and power. Thus instigating a Muslim riot- which would lead to a much bigger backlash- was Congress's favorite trick. Shah Rukh Khan's film 'Raees' depicts what happened when a Congress Minister of Fisheries got a bootlegger to use his contacts in Pakistan to send guns and explosives to stage a terror strike in Surat which, predictably, led to Muslims there getting a battering. What was the ultimate outcome of such shenanigans? Gujarat became a BJP stronghold.

Regression discontinuity design is completely useless for the purpose the authors intend. Why? Congress was the only national party during the period. The Janata Morcha and the first NDA Government were unstable coalitions. Gazetted officers in districts where Congress had a chance of forming a Government knew they had to keep in the goodbooks of the Party's High Command. By contrast, non Congress coalitions were ephemeral. One needed to bide one's time and then stick in the knife when told to do so.

There can be no question that Congress used communal riots to harm opposition administrations. But, after Godhra, this backfired. People no longer believed Muslims were always innocent victims of crazy RSS types. After all, 9/11 had happened. The Indian Parliament had been attacked. The World had come round to the opinion that Muslims be kray kray. If they get a bit of money they want to spend it killing infidels.

Can this result be attributed to polarisation? We test this by examining the relationship between riots and the vote share of Hindu nationalist parties” which “shows that the BJS/BJP saw a 0.8 percentage point average increase in their vote share following a riot in the year prior to an election.”

Which was good for Congress at a time when its main rival was on the Left. More importantly, the Muslim vote was consolidated. 

The study focuses on the period 1962 to 2000, when the Congress was a dominant force in national politics. Will the voting behaviour change now that the BJP has replaced the Congress as the key player in the country’s politics?

Sadly, no. Communal rioting during the nineteen twenties and, later, in the Forties, helped the Muslim League. Not all the gains from electoral democracy are cornered by the winners.