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As someone who has lived in India for most of his life, I can assure you we are very far from being meritocratic or egalitarian in any way. People are weighed d

As someone who has lived in India for most of his life, I can assure you we are very far from being meritocratic or egalitarian in any way. People are weighed down by the poverty, caste and religion of the families they are born into. Very few escape this fate. You can point to a few success stories but I can tell you of thousands more that will never escape the general circumstances of their birth.

blinkingled 7y ago
> People are weighed down by the poverty, caste and religion of the families they are born into These are just noisy words that people throw around without giving any concrete examples or offering any ideas on how it should be done. Like what does weighed down by caste mean actually in 2020 India? I see plenty of inter-caste marriages - I never did in the past. That's progress to me. I lived there 30 years - 70s through early 2000s - and each time I visit I find that circumstances have improved quite a bit for the poor. I even saw my doodhwallah's daughter enroll in MBBS last time and the maid only had 2 kids (as opposed to when I was a kid the maid would have 5 or 6 because of lack of knowledge about birth control!) It isn't exactly a do this and that and then suddenly billions will be "free" and prosperous thing. It's not a problem that has been solved - not at this scale certainly. Given the history and the odds I would say the progress has been nothing to sneeze at.
- kranner 7y ago
  What does weighed down by caste mean? Go to google news for India and search for ‘Dalit’. Count the number of people beaten up and killed for being lower caste and trying to drink from an upper caste well or marrying an upper caste person. In the last month. Individual anecdotes don’t mean very much. My parents had an inter-caste marriage 42 years ago. Does that mean there was no casteism then?
  - blinkingled 7y ago
    Individual anecdotes are not meaningful but cherry picked stories from specific google searches is a-ok? (Try searching for "stories about dalit success" and see if you are willing to change/rebase your viewpoint based on that - just like you originally did with a different search.) Nobody said it's a solved problem - but denying that things are much better than they used to be is just biased nonsense.
    - kranner 7y ago
      My anecdotes are biased nonsense while yours are not. This is uncomfortably ad hominem and I don’t know how to respond civilly but let me ask you why you think I would be biased? I live in India. India is home; I don’t enjoy portraying it in a bad light. Also no cherry picking is needed to make my point. I asked you to search for ‘Dalit’, not ‘Dalit killings’. I don’t like to get in shouting matches. I won’t be responding further.
      - blinkingled 7y ago
        > asked you to search for ‘Dalit’ That's what I did btw - eye opener if you are a simpleton basing your opinions on what the media chooses to highlight and what google tries to show you :) Also I don't remember using any ALL CAPS words so not sure where you got "shouting match" from :) - probably a gut feel based pre-determination I am guessing?
        saiya-jin 7y ago
        No need to lower yourself to personal attacks, whatever message or opinion you are trying to express is severely derailed by this. India is one of the worst places (if not the worst) when it comes to inequality. Caste system is a proper evil that should be gone in 21st century if the country wants to call itself civilized. Millions of us have seen it first hand when travelling through it. It can't be expressed by mere words to a westerner, one has to see it. How deeply it is ingrained in whole society. I did backpacking 6 months in the past all over it, and in some ways this shows you more of a country than any other way of travelling and integrating. One ex-girlfriend did spent few years living in Mumbai with her ex. She had no clue about real India, especially when I compared the backpacking with her. Like literally no clue. What I want to say - just staying there as a westerner doesn't make you automatically see all good and bad. Depends how dirty you want to get, how much off trodden path you want to go. How far from rich well educated people you want to steer. Its perfectly normal experience to talk to young couple of brahmins with very westernish look on life and desires, even well traveled ones, who without bating an eye would say its perfectly fine to send poor 5 year old kids to fireworks factory or coal mine instead of school. Of course not their kids, just kids of the poor, so they can help their families. By losing their future, health and often even lives. This is quite recent experience and far from only one. Is it getting better? I am sure it is and it makes me very happy. Is it still a very very long path to a fair society? Absolutely. I don't expect current western level of society in my life, maybe my grandkids.
  - trianglem 7y ago
    At the very least, caste doesn’t mean a whole lot in Indian cities.
    - foolinaround 7y ago
      Not true at all. A more accurate statement would be "caste is slightly less of a problem these days in Indian cities among 1) the more liberal educated classes 2) very low and poor folks living in chawls" For the vast middle class folks and rigid rich folks, it is just as painful
      - trianglem 7y ago
        I don’t know if I agree with that. I’ve seen it come up very infrequently within the middle class.
  - throwGuardian 7y ago
    Your accusations need proper, large scale statistical backing. As pointed out in another comment, with quotas in education and employment, and laws protecting the historically oppressed, social equality has seen a massive increase in India. That doesn't mean casteism is dead, just that statistically things are much much better for the historically oppressed. I have hope for the new, educated Indian.
    - mavelikara 7y ago
      The GP seems to say that that "statistically things are much much better for the historically oppressed" has not caused people NOT to be "weighed down by the poverty, caste and religion of the families they are born into".
      - throwGuardian 7y ago
        The GP is free to suggest anything, but without statistical backing, it's merely that: a suggestion. India has had the world's largest middle class emerge from poverty in the last three decades, and to somehow claim that economic (& social) upliftment has only benefitted the upper strata is mathematically false. If people were truly weighted down by caste,etc. this uplifted wouldn't be possible Again, India still reels from literacy problems, and one's likely to see more inequity among the uneducated with regard to social strata.
        mavelikara 7y ago
        Why can't both statements be objectively[1] true? That progress has been made does not preclude the observation that large sections of the society are weighed down by caste. [1]: I assume that this is the word you seek when you mention statistically
sbmthakur 7y ago
I think the parent is saying that meritocracy and egalitarianism have increased in India when compared to 1947 which is not false. There are hardly any countries in the world which are fully egalitarian and meritoric in their approach. Obviously, it's one's personal choice to see the glass either as half empty or half full.
throwGuardian 7y ago
Wow - that is a strong accusation against a nation with laws to prevent just this, with oodles of "quotas" in education and government employment. Do you have any large scale research or evidence to back this? Au contraire, the largest upliftment from povery, and massive social mobility is what has driven India's 8%+ growth rate for more than 2.5 decades
- justaguyhere 7y ago
  Those quotas are very much part of the problem. There are thousands of kids who have to settle for their second, third, fourth choice of college, because someone else needed to get in, even if that someone had scored less (often times laughably less) than them in the qualifying exams. Because you know, quotas I am sure it all started with good intentions - you set aside a portion of admissions for the historically oppressed people, they come up - they win, society wins and everyone wins at the end. Right? In practice though, it is more used as a weapon by politicians to expertly divide and conquer votes, kinda like redistricting in the US but much worse. There is a reason for brain drain ...

blinkingled 7y ago

> People are weighed down by the poverty, caste and religion of the families they are born into These are just noisy words that people throw around without giving any concrete examples or offering any ideas on how it should be done. Like what does weighed down by caste mean actually in 2020 India? I see plenty of inter-caste marriages - I never did in the past. That's progress to me. I lived there 30 years - 70s through early 2000s - and each time I visit I find that circumstances have improved quite a bit for the poor. I even saw my doodhwallah's daughter enroll in MBBS last time and the maid only had 2 kids (as opposed to when I was a kid the maid would have 5 or 6 because of lack of knowledge about birth control!) It isn't exactly a do this and that and then suddenly billions will be "free" and prosperous thing. It's not a problem that has been solved - not at this scale certainly. Given the history and the odds I would say the progress has been nothing to sneeze at.

kranner 7y ago
What does weighed down by caste mean? Go to google news for India and search for ‘Dalit’. Count the number of people beaten up and killed for being lower caste and trying to drink from an upper caste well or marrying an upper caste person. In the last month. Individual anecdotes don’t mean very much. My parents had an inter-caste marriage 42 years ago. Does that mean there was no casteism then?
- blinkingled 7y ago
  Individual anecdotes are not meaningful but cherry picked stories from specific google searches is a-ok? (Try searching for "stories about dalit success" and see if you are willing to change/rebase your viewpoint based on that - just like you originally did with a different search.) Nobody said it's a solved problem - but denying that things are much better than they used to be is just biased nonsense.
  - kranner 7y ago
    My anecdotes are biased nonsense while yours are not. This is uncomfortably ad hominem and I don’t know how to respond civilly but let me ask you why you think I would be biased? I live in India. India is home; I don’t enjoy portraying it in a bad light. Also no cherry picking is needed to make my point. I asked you to search for ‘Dalit’, not ‘Dalit killings’. I don’t like to get in shouting matches. I won’t be responding further.
    - blinkingled 7y ago
      > asked you to search for ‘Dalit’ That's what I did btw - eye opener if you are a simpleton basing your opinions on what the media chooses to highlight and what google tries to show you :) Also I don't remember using any ALL CAPS words so not sure where you got "shouting match" from :) - probably a gut feel based pre-determination I am guessing?
      - saiya-jin 7y ago
        No need to lower yourself to personal attacks, whatever message or opinion you are trying to express is severely derailed by this. India is one of the worst places (if not the worst) when it comes to inequality. Caste system is a proper evil that should be gone in 21st century if the country wants to call itself civilized. Millions of us have seen it first hand when travelling through it. It can't be expressed by mere words to a westerner, one has to see it. How deeply it is ingrained in whole society. I did backpacking 6 months in the past all over it, and in some ways this shows you more of a country than any other way of travelling and integrating. One ex-girlfriend did spent few years living in Mumbai with her ex. She had no clue about real India, especially when I compared the backpacking with her. Like literally no clue. What I want to say - just staying there as a westerner doesn't make you automatically see all good and bad. Depends how dirty you want to get, how much off trodden path you want to go. How far from rich well educated people you want to steer. Its perfectly normal experience to talk to young couple of brahmins with very westernish look on life and desires, even well traveled ones, who without bating an eye would say its perfectly fine to send poor 5 year old kids to fireworks factory or coal mine instead of school. Of course not their kids, just kids of the poor, so they can help their families. By losing their future, health and often even lives. This is quite recent experience and far from only one. Is it getting better? I am sure it is and it makes me very happy. Is it still a very very long path to a fair society? Absolutely. I don't expect current western level of society in my life, maybe my grandkids.
- trianglem 7y ago
  At the very least, caste doesn’t mean a whole lot in Indian cities.
  - foolinaround 7y ago
    Not true at all. A more accurate statement would be "caste is slightly less of a problem these days in Indian cities among 1) the more liberal educated classes 2) very low and poor folks living in chawls" For the vast middle class folks and rigid rich folks, it is just as painful
    - trianglem 7y ago
      I don’t know if I agree with that. I’ve seen it come up very infrequently within the middle class.
- throwGuardian 7y ago
  Your accusations need proper, large scale statistical backing. As pointed out in another comment, with quotas in education and employment, and laws protecting the historically oppressed, social equality has seen a massive increase in India. That doesn't mean casteism is dead, just that statistically things are much much better for the historically oppressed. I have hope for the new, educated Indian.
  - mavelikara 7y ago
    The GP seems to say that that "statistically things are much much better for the historically oppressed" has not caused people NOT to be "weighed down by the poverty, caste and religion of the families they are born into".
    - throwGuardian 7y ago
      The GP is free to suggest anything, but without statistical backing, it's merely that: a suggestion. India has had the world's largest middle class emerge from poverty in the last three decades, and to somehow claim that economic (& social) upliftment has only benefitted the upper strata is mathematically false. If people were truly weighted down by caste,etc. this uplifted wouldn't be possible Again, India still reels from literacy problems, and one's likely to see more inequity among the uneducated with regard to social strata.
      - mavelikara 7y ago
        Why can't both statements be objectively[1] true? That progress has been made does not preclude the observation that large sections of the society are weighed down by caste. [1]: I assume that this is the word you seek when you mention statistically

sbmthakur 7y ago

I think the parent is saying that meritocracy and egalitarianism have increased in India when compared to 1947 which is not false. There are hardly any countries in the world which are fully egalitarian and meritoric in their approach. Obviously, it's one's personal choice to see the glass either as half empty or half full.

throwGuardian 7y ago

Wow - that is a strong accusation against a nation with laws to prevent just this, with oodles of "quotas" in education and government employment. Do you have any large scale research or evidence to back this? Au contraire, the largest upliftment from povery, and massive social mobility is what has driven India's 8%+ growth rate for more than 2.5 decades

justaguyhere 7y ago
Those quotas are very much part of the problem. There are thousands of kids who have to settle for their second, third, fourth choice of college, because someone else needed to get in, even if that someone had scored less (often times laughably less) than them in the qualifying exams. Because you know, quotas I am sure it all started with good intentions - you set aside a portion of admissions for the historically oppressed people, they come up - they win, society wins and everyone wins at the end. Right? In practice though, it is more used as a weapon by politicians to expertly divide and conquer votes, kinda like redistricting in the US but much worse. There is a reason for brain drain ...