Lately, I struggled to put a name to the phenomenon that I see in many elitist circles.
These people are as conservative as it goes in their private life. Yet, they aggressively profess to stand by ‘enlightened’ beliefs in public.
Imagine my delight when I saw that someone had coined a term, “luxury beliefs”, to define this very occurrence. Here’s how Rob Henderson, an author, defines Luxury Beliefs:
Luxury beliefs are defined as ideas and opinions that confer status on the affluent while often inflicting costs on the lower classes. And a core feature of a luxury belief is that the believer is sheltered from the consequences of his or her belief. There is this kind of element of duplicity, whether conscious or not…
As a case in point, Henderson shares an anecdote about a former Yale classmate.
This person felt marriage was a patriarchal, outmoded institution. Interestingly, she was raised by a two-parent, stable family. Not just that, she plans to get married too and have a conventional family life.
Yet, her stated public position on marriage: people shouldn’t have to do this.
When Luxury Beliefs Guide Public Policy
Luxury beliefs impose significantly higher costs on the society when they guide public policy.
Nowhere is this more pronounced than the design and implementation of Right To Education (RTE) Act in India.
Poor parents in India prefer to send their children to private schools for a nominal fee over government schools for free. That’s because the private schools have a proven record of achieving better outcomes at lower costs.
Ideally, we should applaud the private schools for taking up the mantle of public schools, and empower them. Because, this is, above all, a failure of the government schooling system. (From 2011-2015, the enrollment in private schools was up by 16 million; while it decreased by 11 million for government schools).
Yet, to the powers that be an educational institution is only good when it comes with the elitists trappings: well-stocked libraries, playgrounds, separate toilets for boys and girls, and low teacher–student ratios.
In an ideal world, these are good to have. Unfortunately, we live in a world that requires judicious use of scarce resources. If pushed to the wall, the choice is not between a well-furnished school vs. a poorly-maintained one. The ultimate choice will be between functional, affordable schools vs. elite schools that have been priced out for the poor.
And, the RTE Act, with all its sugarcoated aims, achieved the latter.
Sans the verbiage, the RTE Act is simply a list of mandated inputs imposed on private schools. Failure to comply can invite government action.
This is unevenly disadvantageous for the low-margin, private schools:
- They may not have the library/playground that elite schools have, making them vulnerable to government action
- They are incapable of admitting 25% of the children without any fee in their schools. The richer schools, with substantially higher fees, can manage it easily.
- This puts them at the mercy of bureaucrats with authority to penalize them for any shortcoming. “The threat power has spurred a business of side payments to the bureaucracy and potentially raised the cost of entry to and functioning of low-budget private schools that cater to the poor”.
- It penalizes paying market wage to teachers instead of the high wage mandated by government
Let’s ignore the RTE Act’s stated objectives and instead focus on what it HAS achieved: According to a survey, about 10,000 to 1,00,000 private schools had to be closed since RTE’s adoption.
Rooted in Luxury Beliefs
According to me, this happened because the RTE Act was guided by Luxury Beliefs. Elite people take it for granted that a good institution must necessarily have large playgrounds, well-furnished libraries and low teacher–student ratios.
This is what their lived experience agrees with. They probably think an institution that fails to provide the above is probably cheating the students of their parents’ hard-earned money.
They don’t question as to why poor parents are refusing to send their children to government schools that house the very amenities they associate with quality education.
And what does RTE mandate about learning outcomes, the most critical metric to gauge a policy’s success? The unfortunate answer is NONE. RTE not just makes no mention of learning outcomes, it doesn’t even provision for monitoring the outcomes.
And while the elite scores the status points for mouthing these politically correct beliefs, they are not the ones that pay the cost. It’s the poor who pay for their costly beliefs.
Musings by Madhav 
Leave a comment