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Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

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Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#121

Post by rvn1045 »

fmajid wrote: post #118
rvn1045 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really does not in a place like India where differences between the rich and the ultra poor are everywhere to witness. You cannot miss it. 90% of the country is living in poverty.

Caste is not necessarily associated with wealth. My dad's old teacher in Hyderabad was a Brahmin and he lived in very modest circumstances.

Yes but caste is associated with education. And the current generation of the upper caste is succeeding because they are more educated than the rest and come from more educated families. Which I would say is a huge privilege given that a large majority of the country can't even read and write.

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#122

Post by mcv »

cheph wrote: post #5

> It may seem bizarre that the caste system, a centuries-old system that organises and stratifies human society, continues to play a heavy role in deciding which Indians prosper and which don't within a space many consider to be an uber-meritocracy -- the US tech landscape. Well for I'm not surprised, and further I doubt anybody in it considers it an "uber-meritocracy", it really is much more perverse.

Yeah, that the tech industry is a meritocracy is a myth that's popular with the white educated middle-class men who like to believe they have more merit than other groups.

(I'm a white educated middle-class man myself, and a career in the tech world has been easy and natural for me. I'd love to believe it's because I'm really that good, but I try to be aware of my privilege.)

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#123

Post by C1sc0cat »

barry-cotter wrote: post #120
C1sc0cat wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your being naive Caste discrimination does exit in communities overseas in the UK for example.

I believe you. It just doesn’t matter. Once immigration stops these people will all dissolve into the general population like the Huegenots, Flemings or other old ethnic groups. When mass immigration from the subcontinent stops caste based discrimination will go from a lot less than in India/Pakistan/Bangladesh to non-existent in short order.

That's going to be a long time.

Look at northern inland there are places in Ireland and parts of Scotland and even the USA where I would have to be careful as I am a product of a mixed marriage and I also was a a "crown servant for 15 years" and have a southern ie catholic last Name.

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#124

Post by brazzy »

golergka wrote: post #106
brazzy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why shouldn't you be able to spend all the resources you can to give your kids advantage? Because it's absolutely toxic for society as a whole if inequality gets amplified over generations. Estate tax should ideally be 100% above a reasonable cap. And by "reasonable" I mean a sum definitely below "never needs to work to support a middle class lifestyle". > If the first generation achieved success, should it be rese…

Well, that almost looks a classic conflict of interests of a society versus interests of an individual, but only at the first glance. Because when you dig in, you realise that it's the most successful and capable individuals that are most interested in building something for their children and next generations of their family — and that's the most marginalised and useless ones that have to get the most by redistribut…

And if you dig in a little deeper, you realize that that's a bunch of social Darwinist bullshit perpetrated by those already rich who stand to gain the most from inequality - No different from the concept of nobility in centuries past.

Very telling are those "ands" and what's left out: "successful and capable (implied: rich)". "marginalised and useless (implied: poor)". Those traits don't go together automatically at all unless you use circular logic to define them in the first place.

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#125

Post by mcv »

higerordermap wrote: post #115
pringles_red wrote: post #104

I don't get why is everyone who is saying this a result of the reservation system is getting downvoted. I am an Indian and clearly reservation system is a spectacular failure. The reservation system actively creates a divide among castes. I will not be surprised if some these upper caste people who are fed up of reservation in India discriminate when they go to USA. These upper caste people are not discriminating due…

This. I think US people see caste system as something like skin color based racism in west. Actually it is much more complicated than that. I know people from upper castes who were actually middle class farmers, and those from lower castes that got benefit from quotas even if they were rich[0]. Affirmative action is always bad. Because the people getting benefit of it are likely to be privileged. In this particular l…

> "Affirmative action is always bad. Because the people getting benefit of it are likely to be privileged."

But this is not what affirmative action is. The purpose of affirmative action is to help under-privileged people. If the help is going to privileged people instead, it's not affirmative action, it's corruption.

If it's really true, as you suggest, that some Dalit are rich and some Brahmin are poor, that some Dalit are privileged and some upper castes are not, then what does the caste system even mean? And why do people care enough that it's still a thing?

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#126

Post by [deleted] »

rvn1045 wrote: post #121
fmajid wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caste is not necessarily associated with wealth. My dad's old teacher in Hyderabad was a Brahmin and he lived in very modest circumstances.

Yes but caste is associated with education. And the current generation of the upper caste is succeeding because they are more educated than the rest and come from more educated families. Which I would say is a huge privilege given that a large majority of the country can't even read and write.

[deleted]

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#127

Post by brazzy »

nullsense wrote: post #95
brazzy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why shouldn't you be able to spend all the resources you can to give your kids advantage? Because it's absolutely toxic for society as a whole if inequality gets amplified over generations. Estate tax should ideally be 100% above a reasonable cap. And by "reasonable" I mean a sum definitely below "never needs to work to support a middle class lifestyle". > If the first generation achieved success, should it be rese…

I think it's bad if runs rampantly forever as eventually someone nefarious (which is more people than you might think) accumulates too much power and turns large swathes of society into a machine that benefits only them to everyone's detriment. But at the same time it seems the pursuit of wealth engenders risk taking that brings about benefits for large swathes of society and turns society into a machine that constan…

>I think it's bad if runs rampantly forever as eventually someone nefarious (which is more people than you might think) accumulates too much power and turns large swathes of society into a machine that benefits only them to everyone's detriment.

It's bad longe before it gets to that point, just less obvious.

> But at the same time it seems the pursuit of wealth engenders risk taking that brings about benefits for large swathes of society and turns society into a machine that constantly improves itself.

Putting a cap on inheritance would not impede that in the least. Quite the opposite: inequality prevents a lot of risk taking and improvement from happening.

> I like the game as it is, but perhaps a healthy modification would be to add a reset button where every couple of hundred years the slate is wiped clean and it all just starts again.

That doesn't sound healthy at all because it represents an unneccessarily huge disruption.

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#128

Post by mcv »

DarkWiiPlayer wrote: post #66
coliveira wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump went bankrupt, but still managed to be ok due to a huge inheritance. The same happened to George Bush.

Doesn't that mean he just had more money than he was dumb enough to lose at the time?

He also has the name, connections and status that help him get more money. Despite his bankruptcies, there are still people willing to do business with him, invest in his projects, etc. At the moment he's probably mostly propped up by Russian money, but those Russians would not do that for just any bum on the streets.

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#129

Post by mcv »

buran77 wrote: post #111
mcv wrote: post #103

My dad recently told me how during the 1980s they had two Indians working together on a project. Turns out one of them was upper-caste, and the other lower-caste, and the upper-caste basically refused. Was impossible to work with, because he was offended that he had to work with a lower-caste person. If this attitude discrimination of Dalits by upper-castes is really so common in non-Indian companies, it sounds like…

I saw the situation a bit differently, the upper caste guys would have no problem working with the lower caste ones simply because this meant they never had to work. They would pawn off all the work on the others and order them around. And if I tried to force any work on them it just backfired since they just shoved it down the throats of their "slaves". Even trying to embarrass them in a meeting didn't work. With al…

Might have been that the situation at my dad's work was actually similar. But if that's their attitude, it still makes me wonder why anyone would hire them. Doesn't this attitude basically make them useless to their employer? As an employer, would you promote the guy who did all the work or the guy who did nothing while taking all the credit?

Re: Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

#130

Post by buran77 »

rvn1045 wrote: post #121
fmajid wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caste is not necessarily associated with wealth. My dad's old teacher in Hyderabad was a Brahmin and he lived in very modest circumstances.

Yes but caste is associated with education. And the current generation of the upper caste is succeeding because they are more educated than the rest and come from more educated families. Which I would say is a huge privilege given that a large majority of the country can't even read and write.

They are succeeding because the historical cultural norms keep the "competition" down, and because they have money. Everything else is a consequence, not a cause. Take 2 equally educated people from high and low castes and see how they behave next to each other and how they're treated doing the same jobs. One will be treated like a "natural born leader", the other like a "born to be a slave". That's because as much education as those in the lowest caste may have, the system is rigged against them by people who aren't inherently any better but can "invent" such an advantage.

Caste, like race or gender, is the kind of bottom of the barrel discrimination. When the other person is just as educated, or smart, or capable, or sometimes they may be even better, you pull out this card which is by definition impossible to fight. You can't reasonably change them. So some people will keep working to make these still "a thing", something they can always use to get an edge they don't deserve.

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