With Reservations: Business and Caste in India

The Economist: With Reservations: Business and Caste in India

India's government is threatening to make companies hire more low-caste workers.

A 23-YEAR-OLD dressed in white pyjama trousers and a black over-shirt represents two worlds in India that know almost nothing of each other. One is fast growing, but tiny: the world of business. Strolling through the Californian-style campus in Bangalore that serves as the headquarters of Infosys, a computer-services company, she grins and declares herself glad. Her brother, she adds shyly, is so proud that she is an “Infoscion”.

He is in the rural world where 70% of Indians reside: cultivating the family plot in Bannahalli Hundi, a village near Mysore. Life is less delightful there. Half the 4,000 population are brahmins, of the Hindu priestly caste. The rest, including the software engineer and her family, are dalits, members of a “scheduled caste” that was once considered untouchable.

Sixty years on this is still the case in Bannahalli Hundi, says the young woman, who does not want to be named. She has never entered the house of a brahmin neighbour. When a dalit was recently hired to cook at the village school, brahmins withdrew their children. Has there been no weakening of caste strictures in her lifetime? “I have not seen it,” she says.

The tale is in startling contrast to Infosys's modernity, and she is embarrassed by it. But it partly explains how she came to be hired by a company that is considered to be one of India's best. She is the beneficiary of a charitable training scheme for dalit university-leavers that Infosys launched last year. ...

Comments

[samlcarr]

It's hard to know where to begin. Some companies are voluntarily making the effort to hire more low caste people. Our government does make threatening noises about enforcing reservation in hiring but they are already bogged down with the courts in trying to get reservations enforced for education.

The caste problem is still a ruling reality in many rural areas. Our cities are somewhat doing better.

It is not realised that caste is one of the central facets of a genuinely Hindu way of life. It is tied into how our society functions at almost every level and most powerfully in the system of finding mates.

Our hope is that with better education, the internet, free flows of information, an unfettered press and a somewhat vibrant democracy, I think that we will slowly wipe out casteism.

[Michael W. Kruse]

Sam, I found the story to be a wonderful case study in why can't just parachute money and capital instituions into a culture and, presto-chango, you have prosperity. Every culture, including American culture, has challenges like this.

I wonder how Hindus will adapt?

[samlcarr]

Educational institutions, schools, colleges and universities, are mostly coed and so is the workplace, and this is bringing people together and building relationships in ways that a half century ago was hard to imagine. Extended families have been the main culprits in propagating casteism but they too are being challenged as kids fall in love without regard to caste and even creed!

it's interesting though that amongst immigrants to England some families are still managing to arrange marriages for their kids even over against these kids objections. The systems really are deeply entrenched and it will take time and continuing effort to make a permanent change.

Hinduism is becoming somewhat more liberal. There are a number of temple priests, for example, who encourage love marriages simply by refusing to ask any awkward questions. What is very sad is that casteism is quite deeply but quietly entrenched in the Indian Christian church.

[Michael W. Kruse]

Thanks for your great insights, Sam. As to the state of the church in India ... **big sigh** May God open eyes to new visions.