Upping the ante by raising ever expanding demands enlarges the role of group activists and gives them a bigger stage from which to manipulate more people. Caste is now being used in India as a system for distributing political spoils. It is organized for capturing political power and the social and material benefits that flow from it, whether a government job, preferential entry into an educational institution, or a government licence. The most insidious consequence of affirmative action is the fact that it is so often counterproductive. They rest on the assumption of superiority in the nontarget groups, and reinforce the sense of inferiority in target groups.
State intervention can be as distorting in the cultural sphere as in the economy.
Because such intervention promotes an artificial market, it seems destined to be as futile an effort as state economic planning. In both cases, the proper role of the state is to provide the political, legal and administrative framework in which individuals and groups can compete freely on a level playing field. Laws and policies should be neutral between religious, caste and gender as well as economic competitors. Not all preferential policies have to be abandoned. But when public policy shifts from equal opportunity to equality of outcome, individual and national interests are subordinated to the claims of special interest groups.