Does the dabbawalas (Indian Lunch Delivery) system have a works manual ???. How do you learn it if you are new to it ???.
You request somebody already working in the system, to take you as intern. Internship can go for multiple years.
Indian Railways Works Manual (2000) [pdf]
61–70 of 71 posts
Re: Indian Railways Works Manual (2000) [pdf]
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
The word "caste" is derived from the Portuguese castas. The European class system is essentially what transformed into the Indian caste system. Not to mean there was no social hierarchy in India, but the rigid birth based system we have today is the handiwork of the British social engineering. Especially interesting is the population survey which labeled population with a caste, the power to label someone X lay with…
>Not to mean there was no social hierarchy in India, but the rigid birth based system we have today is the handiwork of the British social engineering. That is not true. Caste endogamy goes back a long ways[1] before the Brits. 1. https://www.brownpundits.com/2018/06/07/genetical-observatio...
That's pretty broad conclusions for Razib Khan to be drawing from scant (and biased) data. (The population of Indians in the United States in a non-random sampling of the Indian genome, especially since our immigration policy is largely selected on the basis on already having family networks based in the US. I would expect to see a lot more clustering than in an Indian sampling).
This is a better and more holistic description. I'd quibble withs some aspects of its framing but it's mostly nitpicks. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3514343/
The gist of it is that there are a lot of discrete, endogamous subgroups within India formed by successive waves of migration by different groups to where they are functionally distinct ethnic populations. So it wouldn't be all that different from racial differences in a plural society like the United States. What's remarkable is the maintenance of this plurality, as well as in-group social norms, over a very long span of time rather than it becoming a genetic melting pot as we might have expected from experiences with Europe. But even there you still have distinct groups with strong endogamy norms (e.g. Ashkenazi Jews).
There's also additional complexity because in many places there isn't just a norm of endogamy, but consanguinity (cousin-marriage). Which is certainly going to make groups look more endogamous even though it would lead us to draw subtly different conclusions about what that means in terms of historic cultural norms.
TL;DR it's a really complicated matter that doesn't lend itself to summarization into a single, clean, generalizable narrative.
Re: Indian Railways Works Manual (2000) [pdf]
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is that different from business vs economy class on airlines in the west?
Economy class doesn't get toilets? Local rails doesn't provide toilets, but long travel rails always do no matter what class you use.
> but long travel rails always do no matter what class you use
Same in India. I was referring to the other perks that the GP post mentioned. I cannot find the reference to 'only first class passengers get toilets' in the document. In fact the phrase 'first class' itself has zero hits, there's one hit for 'upper class' which is unrelated. Perhaps they meant toilets adjacent to waiting rooms for first class at the station so they don't have to walk to the general ones.
Re: Indian Railways Works Manual (2000) [pdf]
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Varna is decided by karma, not birth. Dalits can and do become brahmins by following diets, rituals and become temple priests. Brahmins also have become kshatriyas by picking up weapons of war. [1] https://indianexpress.com/article/india/kerala-dalit-priests... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmakshatriya
Vedic scriptures is very clear (rig veda) and prohibits any move. Even "Richard Stallman" (RMS) understands this https://stallman.org/articles/ramayana.html which native indian people act like they don't understand. I can site recent and better example that happened in TamilNadu ( https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/tamil-nadu-dmk-temples... ). 120 or so priests were appointed who were not from priest families. Thi…
You are proving my point. The fact that there was no murderous mobs rampaging against the TN government move should tell you majority's support for reforms. Compare that to a SC killed in Delhi for allegedly "disrespecting the holy book", or the Bangladesh riots for the same reason a few days ago.
Re: Indian Railways Works Manual (2000) [pdf]
#65Trains fares are very low in India. For example you can travel by a sleeper coach from Hyderabad to Chennai (628km) for just $5.38. Unfortunately the low cost reflects in the poor quality of service.
The train fares are not intended to reflect costs; it is a public (well, state) enterprise funded via taxes by the overall economic activity of Indian society. Which is to say that the quality of service is the result of political decisions at the social level rather than the fares. The fares could well have been 0 with great service, or much higher with the same poor quality.
Ah thanks for clarifying. That does make sense.
Re: Indian Railways Works Manual (2000) [pdf]
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
See first two paras in wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India Excerpt: The British Raj furthered this development, making rigid caste organisation a central mechanism of administration. Between 1860 and 1920, the British formulated the caste system into their system of governance, granting administrative jobs and senior appointments only to Christians and people belonging to certain castes.
they incorporated a caste system (that was already operating) into a central mechanism of administration
Caste systems had been operating in Europe as well [1]. But for the embracement, formalization and expansion of the caste system by the British it may have died down as it did elsewhere.
[1] https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Sociology/Intro...
Re: Indian Railways Works Manual (2000) [pdf]
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
The word "caste" is derived from the Portuguese castas. The European class system is essentially what transformed into the Indian caste system. Not to mean there was no social hierarchy in India, but the rigid birth based system we have today is the handiwork of the British social engineering. Especially interesting is the population survey which labeled population with a caste, the power to label someone X lay with…
This is not true. caste is the foundation of the vedic. Its the division of labour not laboreres. For the scientific minided with verifable facts read the short manual by an actual scientist and later political reformer https://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/ambedkar/web/readin...
I think vedic period had "varna" which is different from "jati" or castes of today.
Re: Indian Railways Works Manual (2000) [pdf]
#68For what seems to be a fairly organized system, they still have not figured out how to not have the compartments smell like stale urine. I am not even joking. The moment you step into a compartment even the air-conditioned ones, the stench of urine is unbelievably strong. This has been this way since 2000s. Such a shame for a system that could be so much better.
Have you been on an Indian train recently? The cleanliness on Indian trains has really improved much in recent years.
I mean I still avoid using the toilets, but it is nowhere near as bad as it used to be.
Re: Indian Railways Works Manual (2000) [pdf]
#69Trains fares are very low in India. For example you can travel by a sleeper coach from Hyderabad to Chennai (628km) for just $5.38. Unfortunately the low cost reflects in the poor quality of service.
The price for the air-conditioned coaches are much higher.
Re: Indian Railways Works Manual (2000) [pdf]
#70Indian Railways was started by the colonial British for just two purposes. 1. To Return multiple times returns for British investors on the expense of Indian colonies. 2. To move supply of Raw material to the ports and manufactured goods from England to the natives. The British left India. But the Indian Railways is still in India. This organization was not built to serve the people of the land. The Indians have impr…
They also brought manufactured goods back and helped unify India as a nation. Get that chip off your shoulder.
Is it still cool to use colonialist apologist arguments?