The striking of a clever bargain might make a good story - especially if one of the parties happens to be the prime minister of a modern democracy. There was the usual bravura in Narendra Modi telling a delegation of Jats that he would consider their appeal for the restoration of benefits reserved for Other Backward Classes (recently quashed by the Supreme Court) if they promised, in return, to stop killing female foetuses and baby girls. The way in which the prime minister had gradually revealed this condition to the Jats and cornered them into making the promise - pulled off with the theatrical cunning of a Portia - was narrated with self-congratulatory relish by Mr Modi himself to office-bearers in his party. But what did not seem to occur to anybody, least of all to the prime minister, was the shockingly unethical implications of such a bargain - the promise not to kill female foetuses and murder baby girls was extracted in exchange for the hope of a restored quota. So little did the immoral logic of such a bargain strike Mr Modi that he held it up as an example of how political strategy could be used to transform social attitudes and bring about social change. None of the awe-struck party volunteers asked the prime minister what he would have done if the Jats had refused to accept his condition and chosen, instead, to forfeit their quota and go back to killing foetuses and murdering girls. If Mr Modi's offer is thought through to its logical conclusions, then this ends up being one of the options implicitly offered to the delegates.

The prime minister's statecraft should be absolutely clear that this is no way to correct shameful and dangerous gender biases in society. Men and women, from whatever state, caste or class, have to understand unconditionally why sexual discrimination is a crime - and changing their ways of thinking and acting should have nothing to do with what they get, or are given, in return. It would be deeply unethical, therefore, to link the politics of OBC quotas with, say, the "Beti bachao, beti padhao" programme, which is supposed to be close to the prime minister's heart and was launched in Haryana, with its infamous sex ratio. Keeping them well apart is the only way to give a human face to statecraft and to social movements.