The Economist 14Dec2019

72 Books & arts The EconomistDecember 14th 2019

2 stitutional process. His daughter, Indira

Gandhi, did so much less; in Pakistan,

those in power have rarely felt so obliged.

It is unclear how long all this will last.

Narendra Modi, an unabashed Hindu

nationalist and for much of his life an ar-

dent activist in the rss (others are pictured

on the previous page), has been dominant

as prime minister since 2014. He is un-

doubtedly popular, was handily re-elected

to a second five-year term in May, and has

shown himself ready to smash old norms.

He has celebrated Savarkar as a national

hero. Parliamentarians in his ruling party

even praise Godse, the assassin of Gandhi.

They had a dream

Mr Modi has undermined the constitution

that Mr Khosla celebrates. In August he

scrapped Article 370, ending Kashmir’s au-

tonomy, while suspending democratic

rights there, detaining political leaders

without trial and imposing military rule.

The rest of India, including the Supreme

Court, offered barely a squeak of protest.

That episode suggests “democracy is fail-

ing”, as majoritarianism supplants the

principle of protecting individual rights,

reckons Pratap Bhanu Mehta, another ex-

pert on the constitution.

Partha Chatterjee’s book on populism in

India offers a similar warning. He notes

how elected populists, especially in re-

gional governments, have long distributed

jobs and handouts to voters. More invidi-

ous, he says, is the rise of “ideological” pop-

ulists, who whip up the majority religious

group against the rest. He counts Mr Modi

among them, saying he pushes a “homoge-

nised culture of Hinduness”, spreading

Hindi nationally (to the dismay of speakers

of Tamil, Bengali, English and other ton-

gues) while vilifying Muslims as “deviant”.

For his part, Mr Gandhi thinks India’s cur-

rent rulers consider the constitution to be

packed with “foreign”—ie, secular—ideas.

Are they exaggerating? Not really. The

more leaders talk about group interests

rather than individual rights, the more rea-

son there is to fear that the law may not be

applied equally to all. For Muslims, espe-

cially, there are creeping reasons to worry.

Violent communal attacks are on the rise.

Court judgments can seem biased.

A symbolic case is in Ayodhya, a disput-

ed holy site where a mob of Hindu extrem-

ists demolished a mosque in 1992, sparking

lethal riots. For years courts had refused to

grant either Muslims or Hindus exclusive

claim to it, but in November the Supreme

Court ruled that, after all, the land would be

handed over for a Hindu temple. Mean-

while a government-sponsored bill, now in

parliament, seeks to amend the law on citi-

zenship. It would explicitly make religious

status a condition for nationality, letting

Hindus (and members of some other

faiths) who flee from nearby countries be-

come Indians—but not Muslims (see Asia).

Such ugly developments should sound

an alarm. If Mr Khosla is correct, respect for

individual rights and a liberal democratic

order have helped keep India stable. Un-

dermining them, and reverting to religious

divide-and-rule, will not serve it well. Am-

bedkar, who dreamed that a democratic

constitution would gradually make society

more tolerant, would be downcast today. 7

E

conomists do notnormally write car-

toon books. But Bryan Caplan of George

Mason University wanted to make a radical

argument to the widest possible audience.

So he teamed up with Zach Weinersmith,

an illustrator with a bold and cheerful

brush. The result is a brilliant distillation

of the moral, economic and practical argu-

ments for open borders.

It starts with an uncomfortable

thought-experiment. Suppose a desperate-

ly hungry man called Marvin wanted to

walk to a market to buy food—and another

man, Sam, prevented him at gunpoint,

knowing that he would starve as a conse-

quence. Wouldn’t that be murder? And if

what Sam did is wrong, why is it all right for

Uncle Sam to do something very similar to

would-be immigrants?

Migration is by far the most effective

route out of poverty. Yet all rich countries

make it extremely hard, dooming the Mar-

vins of the world to remain in places where

life is shorter and more wretched. Govern-

ments in rich countries are not merely re-

fusing to help the poor. They are forcibly

preventing them from helping themselves.

Advocates of immigration restrictions

—ie, nearly everyone in rich countries—

predict that free movement would spell di-

saster. Mr Caplan explains why this is un-

likely, and how better policies could make

it vanishingly so. Are immigrants a burden

on taxpayers? Only if the host country’s

policies allow or encourage them to be. He

lays out the fiscal contributions of current

migrants, depending on their age and

skills, and of a theoretical future mix of

new arrivals. His argument is sophisticat-

ed and footnoted, but jargon-free and illus-

trated in a way that helps even readers with

no economic training to follow it.

The format is surprisingly effective. The

chapter on philosophical arguments for

and against open borders features a car-

toon John Stuart Mill debating with Mr Ca-

plan, plus Immanuel Kant, John Rawls, Lee

Kuan Yew and Jesus. The author puts the

strongest arguments against his position

into the mouths of sympathetic Everymen

and -women, and rebuts them respectfully.

Having set out a maximalist goal—com-

pletely free movement—Mr Caplan ex-

plores intermediate steps in that direction.

For each objection he offers a solution that

is less harmful than keeping immigrants

out. Worried that they will freeload? Make

them pay more taxes or exclude them from

most welfare benefits. Concerned that they

won’t learn English? Insist that they do, as a

condition of entry. Many other books on

this topic are angry and hectoring; this one

delivers a deeply moral message in a play-

ful tone, interspersed with humour.

Schools and colleges should use it not only

as the starting point for a civil debate on

migration, but also as an example of how to

hold such debates in general. 7

The art of persuasion

A thousand words

Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of

Immigration. By Bryan Caplan. Illustrated

by Zach Weinersmith. First Second; 256

pages; $19.99. St Martin’s Press; £15.99

Tale as old as time

The case for migration—as you might not have seen it before