hats the matter with France?

Twice in the space of six months, the world was rivetted to action from the "French street". Throughout the 19th century, action on the French Street evoked fear in the rest of the world (remember 1789, 1830 and 1848). In the 20th century, it evoked concern (remember 1968) but now the only thing it evokes is pity. France, at least from where I sit in Navi Mumbai, is seen as a lazy, has been of the previous century (a lot like Britain) than an ancient civilization to which the modern world owes a lot of its modernity to (like codified laws, republics, etc).

So what has changed? On the surface nothing much. Since 1789, the mobs pretty much have got what they wanted whenever they came onto the streets. Something they did as recently as last month. But there is a fundamental difference between all those revolutions and those of the last six months. Till 1968, the French street has always tried to achieve a discontinuous break with the past. In 1789 they wanted to get rid of the aristocracy. In 1830, it was Louis XVIII; in 1848, it was the Duke of Orleans; in 1871, Napoleon III and in 1968, it was the fourth republic which was at the receiving end. The street wanted drastic change and short circuited the process to achieve it.

The French Street of October 2005, was an incoherent protest (more like the American variety thatn the French one) against status quo. That of March 2006 was more even worse, it was a protest against change. The french students in 2006 don't want a break from the past, but wanted to bring the past back. When students are the most conservative elements in a society, the least that can be said is that the society is stagnating intellectually. It is not producing ideas to catch the fancy of its youth. A sorry commentary on a state which gave us concepts of equality, law, due process and the republic.

The French youth is a seriously conservative lot. In a widely quoted survey it was found that three out of four french students want to be civil servants!!! Why? Not because of the power, or any desire to change anything, but because it was a permanent jobs from which they couldn't be fired??? This is a pointer to intense risk aversion. The "Economist" deconstructed the causes of the this risk aversion brilliantly.

Read this http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_VPNPRRR

The summary of the argument is that people become risk averse when the chance of getting a new job is lesser than the cost of leaving the current one. Risk aversion will increase when new jobs are not being created as fast as possible, which might be the case when the umemployment rate hovers at 12%; or when workers are not sure that they have enough skills (or capability to acquire them) for the new jobs being created, also reasonably true due to defunct continental European education systems. Now jobs are not being created due to difficulty of letting people go when things turn out to be bad, so the remedy may be liberalize the sacking procedures. But then the whole lot of insiders (people with jobs currently) come onto to the streets since they are the ones with the most to lose if such reforms happen.

In essence, young frenchmen see no new jobs being created and conversely see that it is easier to get fired. And without a job the pleasures of a french life - wine, good food, two hour lunch breaks, 35 hour work weeks, 6 week vacations in July-August, etc are pretty much not attainable.

I will get to the solution part of the problem, may be some other time.