Why not Nyay for Everyone, Rahul?

Debt waiver. In India, come election time, we always hear promises of farm loan waiver. And in the US? One of the Presidential candidates said she’d support student loan waivers. To which, Alan Jacobs asks:

“Why only student loans? Millions of Americans who have never attended college are being crushed by debt. Why shouldn’t something be done for them?”

An instinctive criterion many use to decide whose loans should be waived is their financial shape. Thus, they’d support waiving off farmer loans but not student loans. After all, aren’t graduates (statistically) in “significantly better financial shape” than those who didn’t take student loans?

Aha, but as Fredrik de Boer writes, things are never that black and white:

“If we lived in a vacuum and were doing nothing else, sure… but we don’t and we aren’t.”

Instead, he says, we also have “income-rich but heavily indebted” folks who need to be helped via economic and social policies just as much as the worst off folks:

“In general, any thinking person should be able to grasp that people 1) can be privileged and 2) still need help. Indeed I’d say that grasping this idea, this act of negative capability, is the essential step for the 21st century left.”

Rahul Gandhi should read such stuff, because I never hear him talk of nyay for the middle class. Instead, our possible future PM only listens to the likes of Digvijay Singh (sigh)…