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I don't get why is everyone who is saying this a result of the reservation system is getting downvoted. I am an Indian and clearly reservation system is a spec

I don't get why is everyone who is saying this a result of the reservation system is getting downvoted. I am an Indian and clearly reservation system is a spectacular failure. The reservation system actively creates a divide among castes. I will not be surprised if some these upper caste people who are fed up of reservation in India discriminate when they go to USA. These upper caste people are not discriminating due to fact that they believe that one caste is superior to another, they are doing it because they are able to sympathise with the plight of other unreserved Indians in India. How it is to be unreserved in India: Any unreserved Indian who wants to stay in India is basically agreeing to working two to three times as hard as a reserved Indian to get into any government jobs/colleges while at the same time their tax money is being used to fund these. Also complaining about caste system or reservation can land you in jail (for offending minorities) and the politicians use reserved people as their vote-banks providing them even more privileges for votes. This system is only going to get worse for upper castes. So even your future generations have to work two - three times as hard because of their caste. Sounds like a good deal? Also reservation benefits only rich reserved people not the poor ones who actually need help because everyone of the caste regardless of their economic circumstances can take advantage of reservation. My grandparents were literally rag pickers at one point in their life and now they are in the middle class I'm not sure how this is due to their caste and not their hard-work. The system is utterly disrespectful to anyone in the upper class. Thus, the higher amount of immigration is of the upper class anyways. P.S. - By upper caste I mean the "General" unreserved people and "SC ST OBC" etc are the reserved quotas.

higerordermap 6y ago
This. I think US people see caste system as something like skin color based racism in west. Actually it is much more complicated than that. I know people from upper castes who were actually middle class farmers, and those from lower castes that got benefit from quotas even if they were rich[0]. Affirmative action is always bad. Because the people getting benefit of it are likely to be privileged. In this particular lawsuit, the discriminated was mentioned to be an IIT alumnus. It is basically hard to get into an IIT without decent investment in study materials / training to pass entrance exams these days. But still most of the seats are reserved for SC/ST/OBC and availed by people who are rich. After reading this, some so called Indian liberals jump in to defend this is never the case. Go to an IIT and check the list of students who got in due to affirmative action (called reservation here). You will find most of them having wealthy parents because most students who write IIT entrance exams take coaching[1], and that's quite expensive. Some media likes to highlight this or this may even give impression that upper caste Indians are casteist. They are not. But they are likely fed up with the abomination that reservations (affirmative actions) are. Apart from that, there is likely chances of nepotism in bureaucratic organizations like Cisco. Also, as for as I know, the caste system alone doesn't explain why South Indian upper caste people are more successful than North Indian upper castes (Brahmins / Baniyas) who outnumber them easily, and also appear more in IITs/NITs.
- mcv 6y ago
  > "Affirmative action is always bad. Because the people getting benefit of it are likely to be privileged." But this is not what affirmative action is. The purpose of affirmative action is to help under-privileged people. If the help is going to privileged people instead, it's not affirmative action, it's corruption. If it's really true, as you suggest, that some Dalit are rich and some Brahmin are poor, that some Dalit are privileged and some upper castes are not, then what does the caste system even mean? And why do people care enough that it's still a thing?
  - jefftk 6y ago
    Consider the case of race in the US. Some of the benefit of affirmative action goes to children from well off black families. That doesn't mean it's corrupt, it just means that if you are doing something on the basis of race and not wealth then you're sometimes going to give a benefit to people who are rich. If you took your last paragraph, and substituted racial groups for castes, I think it would be clear that it doesn't make sense?
    - mcv 6y ago
      The big question is: are they privileged, or are they discriminated against? I've heard of rich black people in the US getting stopped and investigated by the police for driving a fancy car that they bought with their own money. There's different kinds of privilege of course. You can be rich but still discriminated, you can be white but poor. And the way you need to help people who are poor is different from the way you help people who suffer from discrimination. If poor people have a hard time getting access to something because it's too expensive, and you want to help them, then that money shouldn't end up with rich people. If a demographic group is kept out of universities or other opportunities because of their caste or the colour of their skin, then you correct that by giving them better access, maybe through a quota or some other form of preferential treatment that compensates for the effects of discrimination. And that shouldn't apply to people who don't suffer from that discrimination. You need to address the thing that's going wrong, and not something completely different. Rich black people don't need money, they need to not get arrested over nothing by the police.
lowend 6y ago
Read this: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=24552608&goto=item%3Fid%3D24552047%2324552608 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=24552608&goto=item%3Fi... reservation system is not the issue. It's politicized heavily. For people who for generations have been fucked with and been given no opportunity to do better cannot suddenly do good for themselves and their family without help. This is not a problem.
adjkant 6y ago
> I am an Indian and clearly reservation system is a spectacular failure. The reservation system actively creates a divide among castes. I will not be surprised if some these upper caste people who are fed up of reservation in India discriminate when they go to USA. These upper caste people are not discriminating due to fact that they believe that one caste is superior to another, they are doing it because they are able to sympathise with the plight of other unreserved Indians in India. Replace: - reservation system -> affirmative action - upper caste -> middle class "true" Americans / white Americans / people born well-off / etc and this reads exactly like rich white conservatism in America, and falls into the exact same pitfalls of "well I worked hard so obviously I deserve it". Systemic oppression is not erased by hard and honest work of the descendants of oppressors, it must be actively fixed. I don't mean to say this as a way to call out India specifically as the US obviously has done quite badly here. The point is that it's quite wild to see the direct parallels of systemic classist oppression and the same story playing out here. When you have unjust power and things are equalized, psychologically it feels like you are losing something. It's not an illogical response to dig in your heels into "but I earned it" and "but reverse discrimination", but people must fight that basic instinct to understand beyond their own perspective. Preemptively, I want to state this: the more mild form of this argument goes "yes there's discrimination we need to solve, but let's not let the pendulum swing past the point of equilibrium and hurt us in any way". This is effectively stating that you value never facing actual oppression over the solving of a long faced oppression of others in a timely manner. It's an inherent devaluing of the oppressed while acknowledging they are, indeed, oppressed. For what it's worth, among many times asking for this, I have yet to encounter a historical example of a time the "pendulum" actually swung too far. This is more or less the story of civil rights in America over the centuries. Every time is a step towards equilibrium, stunted and delayed by many sympathetic oppressors cutting actions short.
- legolas2412 6y ago
  > Systemic oppression is not erased by hard and honest work of the descendants of oppressors, it must be actively fixed. But it looks like these measures do not solve where the systemic oppression exists. Systemic oppression exists mostly in wealth inequalities, and somewhat in society that restricts access to education for those who are oppressed. Given that is the problem, the solution should be to provide high quality universal primary and secondary education. Taking number of STEM engineers by race/caste and trying to force universities to discriminate in admissions does not solve the poor quality of public school education
raincom 6y ago
Well, my classmates became army soldiers instead of class teachers because they belong to 'upper castes'. Even though they got better marks in second grade teachers' recruitment, than those from many reserved categories, they couldn't get a teacher job. From rationality and morality perspective, see this piece on reservations: https://www.hipkapi.com/2015/09/10/indian-view-from-outside-quotas-rational-moral/ https://www.hipkapi.com/2015/09/10/indian-view-from-outside-...
gamma_kappa 6y ago
>> The reservation system actively creates a divide among castes. No it does not. Caste based divisions existed for thousands of years before the reservation system. The reservation system tries to bring a fair competition between candidates who are from different caste backgrounds. Think of it like the weight division of boxers. Saying a heavyweight boxer should not fight a lightweight boxer is not discriminating against the heavyweights. It is a mechanism to ensure the competition is fair. If we eliminate the weight divisions, the winners of the tournament are most likely to be from the heavier categories. Before reservation, the castes who were only about 5% of the population were occupying more than 70% of the top jobs like judges, bureaucrats, academics etc. Reservation ensures that the lightweights fight among themselves and heavy weights fight among themselves and the there are winners from both the categories.

higerordermap 6y ago

This. I think US people see caste system as something like skin color based racism in west. Actually it is much more complicated than that. I know people from upper castes who were actually middle class farmers, and those from lower castes that got benefit from quotas even if they were rich[0]. Affirmative action is always bad. Because the people getting benefit of it are likely to be privileged. In this particular lawsuit, the discriminated was mentioned to be an IIT alumnus. It is basically hard to get into an IIT without decent investment in study materials / training to pass entrance exams these days. But still most of the seats are reserved for SC/ST/OBC and availed by people who are rich. After reading this, some so called Indian liberals jump in to defend this is never the case. Go to an IIT and check the list of students who got in due to affirmative action (called reservation here). You will find most of them having wealthy parents because most students who write IIT entrance exams take coaching[1], and that's quite expensive. Some media likes to highlight this or this may even give impression that upper caste Indians are casteist. They are not. But they are likely fed up with the abomination that reservations (affirmative actions) are. Apart from that, there is likely chances of nepotism in bureaucratic organizations like Cisco. Also, as for as I know, the caste system alone doesn't explain why South Indian upper caste people are more successful than North Indian upper castes (Brahmins / Baniyas) who outnumber them easily, and also appear more in IITs/NITs.

mcv 6y ago
> "Affirmative action is always bad. Because the people getting benefit of it are likely to be privileged." But this is not what affirmative action is. The purpose of affirmative action is to help under-privileged people. If the help is going to privileged people instead, it's not affirmative action, it's corruption. If it's really true, as you suggest, that some Dalit are rich and some Brahmin are poor, that some Dalit are privileged and some upper castes are not, then what does the caste system even mean? And why do people care enough that it's still a thing?
- jefftk 6y ago
  Consider the case of race in the US. Some of the benefit of affirmative action goes to children from well off black families. That doesn't mean it's corrupt, it just means that if you are doing something on the basis of race and not wealth then you're sometimes going to give a benefit to people who are rich. If you took your last paragraph, and substituted racial groups for castes, I think it would be clear that it doesn't make sense?
  - mcv 6y ago
    The big question is: are they privileged, or are they discriminated against? I've heard of rich black people in the US getting stopped and investigated by the police for driving a fancy car that they bought with their own money. There's different kinds of privilege of course. You can be rich but still discriminated, you can be white but poor. And the way you need to help people who are poor is different from the way you help people who suffer from discrimination. If poor people have a hard time getting access to something because it's too expensive, and you want to help them, then that money shouldn't end up with rich people. If a demographic group is kept out of universities or other opportunities because of their caste or the colour of their skin, then you correct that by giving them better access, maybe through a quota or some other form of preferential treatment that compensates for the effects of discrimination. And that shouldn't apply to people who don't suffer from that discrimination. You need to address the thing that's going wrong, and not something completely different. Rich black people don't need money, they need to not get arrested over nothing by the police.

lowend 6y ago

Read this: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=24552608&goto=item%3Fid%3D24552047%2324552608 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=24552608&goto=item%3Fi... reservation system is not the issue. It's politicized heavily. For people who for generations have been fucked with and been given no opportunity to do better cannot suddenly do good for themselves and their family without help. This is not a problem.

adjkant 6y ago

> I am an Indian and clearly reservation system is a spectacular failure. The reservation system actively creates a divide among castes. I will not be surprised if some these upper caste people who are fed up of reservation in India discriminate when they go to USA. These upper caste people are not discriminating due to fact that they believe that one caste is superior to another, they are doing it because they are able to sympathise with the plight of other unreserved Indians in India. Replace: - reservation system -> affirmative action - upper caste -> middle class "true" Americans / white Americans / people born well-off / etc and this reads exactly like rich white conservatism in America, and falls into the exact same pitfalls of "well I worked hard so obviously I deserve it". Systemic oppression is not erased by hard and honest work of the descendants of oppressors, it must be actively fixed. I don't mean to say this as a way to call out India specifically as the US obviously has done quite badly here. The point is that it's quite wild to see the direct parallels of systemic classist oppression and the same story playing out here. When you have unjust power and things are equalized, psychologically it feels like you are losing something. It's not an illogical response to dig in your heels into "but I earned it" and "but reverse discrimination", but people must fight that basic instinct to understand beyond their own perspective. Preemptively, I want to state this: the more mild form of this argument goes "yes there's discrimination we need to solve, but let's not let the pendulum swing past the point of equilibrium and hurt us in any way". This is effectively stating that you value never facing actual oppression over the solving of a long faced oppression of others in a timely manner. It's an inherent devaluing of the oppressed while acknowledging they are, indeed, oppressed. For what it's worth, among many times asking for this, I have yet to encounter a historical example of a time the "pendulum" actually swung too far. This is more or less the story of civil rights in America over the centuries. Every time is a step towards equilibrium, stunted and delayed by many sympathetic oppressors cutting actions short.

legolas2412 6y ago
> Systemic oppression is not erased by hard and honest work of the descendants of oppressors, it must be actively fixed. But it looks like these measures do not solve where the systemic oppression exists. Systemic oppression exists mostly in wealth inequalities, and somewhat in society that restricts access to education for those who are oppressed. Given that is the problem, the solution should be to provide high quality universal primary and secondary education. Taking number of STEM engineers by race/caste and trying to force universities to discriminate in admissions does not solve the poor quality of public school education

raincom 6y ago

Well, my classmates became army soldiers instead of class teachers because they belong to 'upper castes'. Even though they got better marks in second grade teachers' recruitment, than those from many reserved categories, they couldn't get a teacher job. From rationality and morality perspective, see this piece on reservations: https://www.hipkapi.com/2015/09/10/indian-view-from-outside-quotas-rational-moral/ https://www.hipkapi.com/2015/09/10/indian-view-from-outside-...

gamma_kappa 6y ago

>> The reservation system actively creates a divide among castes. No it does not. Caste based divisions existed for thousands of years before the reservation system. The reservation system tries to bring a fair competition between candidates who are from different caste backgrounds. Think of it like the weight division of boxers. Saying a heavyweight boxer should not fight a lightweight boxer is not discriminating against the heavyweights. It is a mechanism to ensure the competition is fair. If we eliminate the weight divisions, the winners of the tournament are most likely to be from the heavier categories. Before reservation, the castes who were only about 5% of the population were occupying more than 70% of the top jobs like judges, bureaucrats, academics etc. Reservation ensures that the lightweights fight among themselves and heavy weights fight among themselves and the there are winners from both the categories.