Friday, January 04, 2008
Equality or Excellence
How should a federal govt deal with states which are significantly different in performance ? What is the basis of allocating central funds to say two states who are at the end of the spectrum of development :
- one growing rapidly by good economic policies of the Govt (Say AP or Gujrat)
- and the other languishing due to their internal mismangement and antedeluvian policies ? (say Bihar)
Essentially the question is :
1.Should the largeresse be allocated based on their relative contributions ?
2.Should the federal govt. try to 'encourage' the lower performing states by allocating more resources to them and by giving them a chance to come up.
The above question is a larger one. Substitute 'the federal govt' with parents and the question can be asked of two children who have different performances. Given limited resources, should the parents try to reward the better-performing child to reward and reinforce behaviour or should the parents try to make the extra effort to improve the lower-performing child's performance. The same question can be asked in the context of 'affirmative action' (read Reservation in the Indian context).
Let us make the question a little more personal. Say you have a limited amount of money to choose one course of action and two children. Both play the piano and one of them has the markings of a genius. The other however does not have that innate talent. You can spend your money in two ways - spend it on the budding maestro and send him to a special school thereby giving him a path to being a genius. (no guarantees though) Or you can pay for extra classes for the other one so that their performance differntial can be narrowed.
Now this is a tough one. There is merit in both points of view. Not reinforcing and rewarding good behaviour may lead the better performer demotivated. Howver, without extra encouragement (resources), the poorer performing child may just not catch up and hence there will be a yawning gap between the two. The question one may need to ask therefore is - should be value 'excellence' or 'equality' ? Here excellence means rewarding the better performing child to set up a virtuous cycle of reinforcement and effort and equality implies that neither of them will become geniuses but both will reach some respectable level of performance (the better performing child with his innate effort and the other with a lot of extra effort).
While philosophically we may mull this question, i will delienate my stance. While one should make every effort to ensure 'equality of opportunity' we should not try to ensure 'equality of outcome'. Equality is an outcome. Equality often degenerates to the 'lowest common denominator'. The world is better off with one mozart than with a hundred unnamed musicians. However let not the generalisation not blind us to the possibilities in the human character. Always be mindful that one is not perpetrating a griveious wrong. Sometimes even a mediocre talent needs just that right nudge to propel it to greatness (remember genius is 1 % inspiration and 99% perspiration). So the message is still unclear. We need to use that elusive quantity 'wisdom' to make the judgement call wether the horse we are backing is destined for greatness or not. Accepted that we may be making the incorrect choice sometimes. But the question is that of 'choice'. Equality or Excellence ? In my view, excellence should triumph. Again painting with a broader brush the question can be asked of 'capitalism' - a philosophy which rewards excellence albeit with income inequality or communism - a philosophy which holds equality dear. History has showed that excellence triumps given that we have done the due diligence.
- one growing rapidly by good economic policies of the Govt (Say AP or Gujrat)
- and the other languishing due to their internal mismangement and antedeluvian policies ? (say Bihar)
Essentially the question is :
1.Should the largeresse be allocated based on their relative contributions ?
2.Should the federal govt. try to 'encourage' the lower performing states by allocating more resources to them and by giving them a chance to come up.
The above question is a larger one. Substitute 'the federal govt' with parents and the question can be asked of two children who have different performances. Given limited resources, should the parents try to reward the better-performing child to reward and reinforce behaviour or should the parents try to make the extra effort to improve the lower-performing child's performance. The same question can be asked in the context of 'affirmative action' (read Reservation in the Indian context).
Let us make the question a little more personal. Say you have a limited amount of money to choose one course of action and two children. Both play the piano and one of them has the markings of a genius. The other however does not have that innate talent. You can spend your money in two ways - spend it on the budding maestro and send him to a special school thereby giving him a path to being a genius. (no guarantees though) Or you can pay for extra classes for the other one so that their performance differntial can be narrowed.
Now this is a tough one. There is merit in both points of view. Not reinforcing and rewarding good behaviour may lead the better performer demotivated. Howver, without extra encouragement (resources), the poorer performing child may just not catch up and hence there will be a yawning gap between the two. The question one may need to ask therefore is - should be value 'excellence' or 'equality' ? Here excellence means rewarding the better performing child to set up a virtuous cycle of reinforcement and effort and equality implies that neither of them will become geniuses but both will reach some respectable level of performance (the better performing child with his innate effort and the other with a lot of extra effort).
While philosophically we may mull this question, i will delienate my stance. While one should make every effort to ensure 'equality of opportunity' we should not try to ensure 'equality of outcome'. Equality is an outcome. Equality often degenerates to the 'lowest common denominator'. The world is better off with one mozart than with a hundred unnamed musicians. However let not the generalisation not blind us to the possibilities in the human character. Always be mindful that one is not perpetrating a griveious wrong. Sometimes even a mediocre talent needs just that right nudge to propel it to greatness (remember genius is 1 % inspiration and 99% perspiration). So the message is still unclear. We need to use that elusive quantity 'wisdom' to make the judgement call wether the horse we are backing is destined for greatness or not. Accepted that we may be making the incorrect choice sometimes. But the question is that of 'choice'. Equality or Excellence ? In my view, excellence should triumph. Again painting with a broader brush the question can be asked of 'capitalism' - a philosophy which rewards excellence albeit with income inequality or communism - a philosophy which holds equality dear. History has showed that excellence triumps given that we have done the due diligence.
# posted by Abhijat @ 4:09 AM 
