If you work as a programmer then you can’t deny the tremendous presence Indian engineers and companies have on the field. When i walk across the Yahoo campus i see South Asians all over the place. I think it’s wonderful. India (and the rest of South Asia) has a long history and many traditions which the west can learn from.
One thing which has always burdened India, held it back in many ways, is the caste system. Taking normal class divisions and making them more arcane and completed than anybody could think was possible. Some times the rulers of India have tried to break down the caste system, Gandhi and early congress, many of the Muslim mogul rulers, and Ashok a Buddhist king. Other times the leaders have build them up and used them to control the country, the British Raj and many, but not all, Hindu rulers. The British setup a system where by the maintained and reinforced the caste system placing white Europeans on top, above the bramhins.
Since independence it’s been India’s official government policy to abolish the caste system. There’s has been considerable affirmative action in everything from low level government jobs to university entrance exams and even political offices which are reserved for lower castes. All of which has helped.
Now there are Dalits (untouchables), Muslims (often who at some time, many generations ago converted to islam to escape being a lower caste), and women (who are discriminated against at all castes) who are graduating from the top Indian universities. In a fair system driven by merit, these people should be getting jobs at top firms.
A new study just out confirmed that they aren’t getting interviews or being hired. They used techniques from studying discrimination in the US. Where the same resume and experience are used with different names. They found that Dalits only get 2/3rds of the interviews that a high caste person would get with the SAME resume. Muslims did worse, only getting 1/3rd of the interviews. They didn’t try, but i’m sure that if you submitted the same resume with an English or European name they’d get even more interviews.
Regrettably this is totally in line with my experience in India. Even once they are hired, lower caste people face discrimination. Within the work place many upper caste managers try and enforce a hierarchy which is often incompatible with creative and collaborative work. Often westerns working with Indian teams in India are told that they are not respecting Indian ways of doing things. Sometimes it’s with good reason. There are real cultural differences and way’s of working. But in my experience, it’s often a ruse for defending a corrupt system based on caste and not merit.
Western companies and people working with Indian engineers miss out on the best Indian hackers because are least likely to be able to succeed within the Indian corporate organization. The two sharpest Indian hackers I’ve worked with, and hired in to a company i was working at, both were driven out of the company by this very issue. I wish western companies did more to demand that the best engineers get hired instead of the engineers from the ‘best’ families.
5 Comments, Comment or Ping
Devah Pager and others have done similar work in the US. In Marked she send black & white applicants with the same application to jobs. Black applicants are only half as likely to get called as white ones. (I think these are not in high-skilled jobs, but still). In other words, our caste system is worse than India’s. Just to put it in a little perspective
December 16th, 2007
If we want to play the “who is worse” game, wouldn’t the sheer numbers of the Indians indicate theirs is worse, Erik?
December 16th, 2007
i can’t find an e-mail address for you anywhere on your site. but i received an e-mail from you that i think you may find interesting, at least i did. when i replied to the address that sent it, my message was returned. will you please drop me a line @ inkuspress@yahoo.com?
thank you.
best,
eric.
December 16th, 2007
Not how I read it, Al. What does “sheer numbers of the Indians” mean? We are talking percentages: 50 versus 66, more or less. The total population is completely irrelevant.
I know a.geek understands this ; but I still think that it is in important point. I’m not trying to play ‘oppression olympics’, but I think comparisons are often valid. What does it mean that the contemporary effects of India’s famous caste system, are more or less equivalent to the contemporary effects of racism & slavery in the US? Maybe they are not equivalent: I’m not up on Indian sociology.
Look at it this way: some time in the past months the SF Chronicle had a piece on dalit sewage workers. They die at an extraordinarily high level : apparently about half of them live long enough to retire. This is awful, surely. But why does the Chronicle not run pieces on, say, garbagemen in the US? What is the racial composition of this sector of the working class?
I can do hardly anything about caste oppression in India. But as an American, I can do something about racial oppression right at home.
But thanks to anarchoggek for making me aware of this issue.
December 16th, 2007
Rabble,
The so called “affirmative action” system in India was supposed to be dismantled within 15 to 20 years after India’s independence. This never happened and will never happen in the future, not because the playing field will not be levelled, but which Political Government which depends heavily and plays on the caste system for its vote bank will have the guts to even hint at its removal?
You are spot on with who tried to do what in India’s history, but the present scenario is much more complicated than the way you present it. Let us take engineering for example. I’m sure you would know that the competition to get a stream of choice in a good college is intense. Now, the “affirmative action” scheme that the government has in place is to provide quotas (the same quotas that exist in medicine, all forms of education and government jobs) for people. These quotas can (and often exceed) 50% of the seats available. This 50% is further broken up into sub quotas for people belonging to various minorities and sub castes.
To get into a college in the general category is thus far tougher than it is to do so if you belong to one of these castes. This skews the “merit” system that is supposed to be in place. To exemplify what I have said, a student who applies in the general category may have to score 99% in the entrance exam vs. some one who applies from the “reserved” category who may have to score just 80% to get through.
This is also valid for seats in India’s famed IITs and the IIMs.
You can imagine what this does to the society as a whole.
The caste discrimination problem will definitely not be solved by providing quotas in the provate sector as well (as the government had thought of doing on the basis of the recommendation of a planning commission’s report).
The private sector that the report you link to, talks about should not be the first area to be tackled.
I think I should stop now, lest my keyboard gives up.
- Ant
December 16th, 2007
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