31–40 of 68 posts
Who is responsible to fix this? If institutions were stricter on reservations, they would simply exacerbate the problem. If institutions were mandated to provide above-and-beyond resourcing to help poorly prepared students they were forced to accept, that's a pretty onerous burden.
The solution isn't finger-pointing at higher education/academic institutions or doubling down on reservations -- it's to kill reservations entirely and double down on earlier education subsidies for historically disadvantaged groups.
What I found surprising is that the genetic distance between Indian castes is rather large, comparable to the distance of a northern European to eg a greek person: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC311057/
It seems to me that, if you have a society that divides people by caste and comes down hard on intermarriage, after some generations this is what you'd expect. Not one big "Indian" gene pool, but several smaller ones who remain distinct while still living close together.
There may be pockets in India where caste still impacts your life (mostly poor, uneducated and backward villages), but in major cities where people are educated and modern, caste is not significant. More on that here: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/caste-is-n...
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Untrue. You can get people to complain about anything, that doesn't make it true.
Just want to point out that the unnatural vigor with which HN and other forums reject the idea of Caste Discrimination is telling. If this were White on Minority racism for instance people defending it in this way would be ostracized and most would say that it this type of discrimination is beyond the pale and call for vigorous investigation into the claims. Instead all we see about Caste discrimination is "it doesn'…
What I found surprising is that the genetic distance between Indian castes is rather large, comparable to the distance of a northern European to eg a greek person: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC311057/
It seems to me that, if you have a society that divides people by caste and comes down hard on intermarriage, after some generations this is what you'd expect. Not one big "Indian" gene pool, but several smaller ones who remain distinct while still living close together.
Forget about diversity. When a society excludes whole classes of people from fields of study or professions, that society also limits the pool of talent available. Excluding women, castes, races, ethnicities seems like a poor choice for any society that wants to advance as a whole.
Most of the people I know that came from India to America, when I have asked, have told me that they forgot about caste within a few years of living in the US. Everyone's lived experience is different though and I can imagine these traditions die harder in pockets of the US where South Asian communities live.
One of the things missing in this article is that the reservation system by design results in quota students typically being less prepared/qualified. These students then enroll in, say, IIT, and many of them perform poorly due to, well, lack of merit. And this poor performance contributes heavily to the lack of continuity on to further, and higher studies. Who is responsible to fix this? If institutions were stricter…
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That's an interesting editorial - it doesn't match what I've heard from multiple people and especially seems hard to reconcile with things like the more recent discussions and lawsuits regarding caste in Silicon Valley: https://qz.com/apple-meta-and-google-must-fight-caste-discri...
Look, if someone files a racial discrimination lawsuit against your company then does that prove that everyone in your company is racist?
I appreciate that this is a subject you care deeply about but I think you might need to start looking for some supporting evidence for your claims. There are a number of people who say discrimination is a problem and it seems unlikely that they're all making it up.
Ask the general category students about it and they will tell you how they are deprived of opportunities because of quota system.
For those unaware of quota system in India, in easy words, it is somewhat similar to this analogy-
There is a 100m race. 'General' category, SC/ST category, OBC category participates in that same race.
For General category start line is a 0 mark and finish line at 100m mark. For OBC start line is at 10m mark and finish line at 90m mark. For SC/ST start line is at 20m mark and finish line at 80m mark.
This makes it easy for an OBC, SC/ST to enter in any top university they want. It is after entering the institute, they are unable to cope up with the rigor and fail or drop out. That is when this "victim" picture is painted by them. Ask an IIT/NIT/IIM/Doctor/IISc student in your circle about it and they will tell you the other side of the story.
Successive Indian govts have taken several measures to ensure they are not deprived. Today the scenario is that if a general category person, even by mistake, calls them out with certain words, there is an instant jail with no provision of bail.