thank you.

best,
eric.

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.

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