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My Caste

cs.toronto.edu

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Re: My Caste

#121

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

alephnerd wrote: post #106
rollcat wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While the atrocities and punishments by "upper" caste people on "lower" caste people continue, even OBCs oppress SCs and STs quite badly [...]. This is the step 1. in ensuring any oppressive system continues to be supported by a majority / critical mass of people, who are themselves subject to oppression: make sure there's someone even lower than you, on whom you can unleash your frustration.

The issue is OBC (Other Backwards Castes) was invented as a populist measure in 1992. After Independence, Affirmative Action/Reservation was created so Dalits and Nomadic Tribes who were traditionally outcastes in South Asian society could be integrated into society. Yet, in the 1980s-90s, Agrarian and Feudal Caste politicians like Mulayam Singh Yadav (Yadav), Lalu Prasad Yadav (Yadav), Chaudhary Charan Singh (Jatt),…

So it’s like playing a fake victim card?

Re: My Caste

#122

Post by hef19898 »

kaycey2022 wrote: post #112
hef19898 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because history showed us that equal societies, compared to centemporary pears, fare muchuch worse than those discriminating. Or rather not.

Equality is the prerogative of the government. Why do you want equal share in someone's private property? This is what reservations in the private sector mean. Someone takes all the risk, and works their ass off to establish a business and you come in with demands of equality in what someone else has made.

I want discrmination, of any shape, form and kond and for all reasons, to go away in the private sector as well. Your, and my, personal freedom stop where someone elses begins. And that explicitly includes caste based discrimination, among all other forms.

Re: My Caste

#123

Post by rhaway84773 »

darth_avocado wrote: post #98
flownoon2 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author says that: 1. OBCs are estimated to comprise 40-45% of India's population and 2. Exactly one out of 180 CS faculty members across five IITs belongs to OBC category Those two facts alone make it sound like a pretty big deal to me, even if it hasn't been a part of your experience in India. Or do you think he is wrong about those numbers?

The numbers could be right, but you couldn’t exactly argue discrimination tbh. 27% seats are reserved for OBC students in IITs There is a similar quota for people in OBC categories in govt jobs (which IIT professors are). Maybe there are plenty of OBC professors, but not in CS? Or that they don’t openly identify as OBC? Or maybe, people just don’t qualify/apply to the position?

Lol and why don’t they qualify?

Because of centuries of discrimination that has kept them poorer and less educated.

You might be able to argue that there is no discrimination today and that the hiring process itself is not discriminatory, but the outcomes are entirely the result of discrimination in society.

Re: My Caste

#124

Post by neilk »

h4ch1 wrote: post #92
banshiram123 wrote: post #59

[flagged]

Reservation is necessary for 2-3 generations to uplift, anything further than that is just the reverse of casteism. Tell that to my OBC friends who paid 5% of our school fees while they were dropped in Audis.

Yeah, and you can always tell someone's full financial position from little details like that. (eyeroll)

So someone who got a benefit from the state that addresses a serious, well-proven injustice, and wasn't crawling on their knees and begging for it. Sounds like the system is working.

Even if your anecdote is real, and their use of an Audi indicated they were well able to pay full school fees, so what? We give such benefits to the parents because we want to target the child. Sometimes the parents might make different financial choices, obtain a car that's more than they need. (And you don't know how they got it, whether it's used, or whether they feel they need it to "keep up appearances" with others so peers, like you, don't judge them by their car.)

In any case that's why the benefit is delivered as reduced school fees. TLDR the children aren't the ones who bought the Audi.

Re: My Caste

#125

Post by aildours »

b215826 wrote: post #103

.

Complete bs.

>Caste-based surnames are extremely uncommon in South India (20% of India's population), and it's not even a recent thing.

No, caste-based surnames are uncommon among some upper caste communities. A significant chunk (Gowdas, Reddys, Nairs etc.) have surnames strongly linked to castes. And what you might refer to being a "recent thing" is having a western style surname at all.

>FWIW, as someone who has spent considerable time in Indian academia, this article reeks of BS. No one cares about your caste in Indian academia. The languages you speak, the part of India you come from, etc., cause a bigger divide than caste.

I've also spent time in Indian academia (and left it, for unrelated reasons) and can say that caste matters a lot, in a very insidious way. Respectfully, if you can't tell that Bulsara is a Gujarati surname (which means it could be a Hindu, Parsi or a Muslim surname, so may not even be linked to a caste as is the case with Freddie Mercury), then you may not know enough to comment on caste.

>How exactly did the author find their castes?

Perhaps try reading the article? He has even linked the RTI responses if you doubt him so much.

Re: My Caste

#126

Post by isanjay »

soligern wrote: post #119
isanjay wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only applies to Northern part of the country. In south each state has it's own language and there is no way an outside state person can know your caste without asking

Even in the north, someone from Himachal Pradesh is not going to be able to identify someone’s caste in Bihar or West Bengal

Thank you. I didn't know that :)

Re: My Caste

#127

Post by rhaway84773 »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #121
alephnerd wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is OBC (Other Backwards Castes) was invented as a populist measure in 1992. After Independence, Affirmative Action/Reservation was created so Dalits and Nomadic Tribes who were traditionally outcastes in South Asian society could be integrated into society. Yet, in the 1980s-90s, Agrarian and Feudal Caste politicians like Mulayam Singh Yadav (Yadav), Lalu Prasad Yadav (Yadav), Chaudhary Charan Singh (Jatt),…

So it’s like playing a fake victim card?

And yet 1 out of 180 CS professors are OBCs despite the population being over 40%.

It’s probably closer to the welfare queen trope. Yeah, there are a few people who cheat the system, like any other system in the world.

Thaw existence of cheaters does not negate the very real problems and challenges faced by the actual “victims”.

Re: My Caste

#128

Post by [deleted] »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #121
alephnerd wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is OBC (Other Backwards Castes) was invented as a populist measure in 1992. After Independence, Affirmative Action/Reservation was created so Dalits and Nomadic Tribes who were traditionally outcastes in South Asian society could be integrated into society. Yet, in the 1980s-90s, Agrarian and Feudal Caste politicians like Mulayam Singh Yadav (Yadav), Lalu Prasad Yadav (Yadav), Chaudhary Charan Singh (Jatt),…

So it’s like playing a fake victim card?

[deleted]

Re: My Caste

#129

Post by b215826 »

alephnerd wrote: post #29

Depends on the region too. Part of my family is from a landowning/feudal caste (Chaudhary/Jatt and Pahari) that is traditionally Upper Caste but successfully lobbied to become counted as OBC/Lower Caste in order to avail affirmative action benefits. The Jatts side got reservation thanks to Congress [0] and the Pahari side got reservation thanks to the BJP [1] Edit: Lmfao this professor (Kuldeep Meel) is Jatt from His…

.

Re: My Caste

#130

Post by rhaway84773 »

raincom wrote: post #115

Even though RTI queries to major IITs reveal that almost all faculty comes from un-reserved category, one needs more evidence (than this RTI data) to show that caste discrimination occurred. If there is an opening for two faculty positions in the IITM CS department esp in machine learning and AI, if 20 people are applied, two are selected, and two happened to be from un-reserved category. Does it prove caste-discrimi…

It may not prove caste discrimination during the hiring process (I’m not sure that’s even claimed by the author).

It does however strongly suggest and maybe even prove the existence of caste discrimination at a societal level.

Why are the “best candidates” so disproportionately upper castes? That’s not a trick question. We know that the upper castes have suppressed lower castes. You may want to argue it doesn’t exist today, but the data very clearly show even if that’s true, the historical impact of that discrimination on the lives of people living today is high.

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