10 ms·

The facts are spot on. The conclusions are a bit off though. Ancient Indian civilization was pretty advanced in theoretical mathematics and was able to calcula

by anukin 4y ago

The facts are spot on. The conclusions are a bit off though. Ancient Indian civilization was pretty advanced in theoretical mathematics and was able to calculate the expansion of sines and cosines before Taylor’s theorems. It also had an understanding of sines cosines etc. The main area where it fell behind was the engineering aspect of theorems. Other than few civil engineering marvels, Indians never discovered things like antikythera mechanism or aqueducts like ancient romans. This could partially be blamed on education being limited to few people as a direct side effect of caste system. The few who worked as smiths were not versed in theorems. Those who worked on theorems were never versed in engineering. They also did not cross pollinate that well. All owing to failure of education system of country. A curse it still suffers from tbh. As for Sanskrit it was never the language of masses. Pali or Prakrit would have been the language of masses during time of Al biruni. Sanskrit is an elegant language but was again limited in access to few by the caste system.

cscurmudgeon 4y ago
Both your comment and the parent comment seems biased and in a way parallels jingoistic comments overhyping Indian achievements (but in the opposite direction). Was there any objective metric by which ancient Indian engineering was behind others? There are other Indian achievements that have no parallels elsewhere in a similar time. But you can't overgeneralize from them in the other direction either: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20170110-indias-ancient-engineering-marvel https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20170110-indias-ancient-e... https://mymodernmet.com/kailasa-temple-ellora-caves/ https://mymodernmet.com/kailasa-temple-ellora-caves/
- DiscourseFan 4y ago
  These far post-date the engineering constructions in Rome and Greece--not to mention Egypt and other bronze age civilization, including the Indus River Valley civilization itself. Its clear from ancient texts and stories like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Bhagavata Purana that the Aryans were a nomadic, tribal cow-herding people who didn't tend to live in fixed structures. At some point people starting creating permanent structures, and they are architectural marvels of course, but those achievements do not seem to co-ordinate with the vedic mathematics in the same way that Greek, Egyptian, and Roman mathematics co-ordinate with Greek, Egyptian, and Roman engineering marvels.
  - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
    > These far post-date the engineering constructions in Rome and Greece--not to mention Egypt and other bronze age civilization, including That has zero relevance to the statement about Al Biruni unless he magically travelled back in time and was stuck in some x-00 BC and couldn't see newer developments in India. Also strange is the fact that around Al Biruni's time Hindu numerals were adopted by Arabs (and that we all use now). Maybe he did go back in time! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu–Arabic_numeral_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu–Arabic_numeral_system > Its clear from ancient texts and stories like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Bhagavata Purana that the Aryans were a nomadic, tribal cow-herding people who didn't tend to live in fixed structures What? No, the Mahabharata has elaborate descriptions of palaces, cities. Even Ramayana mentions palace. And nomads, usually, don't have palaces or cities lol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakshagriha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakshagriha https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/history-of-architecture/a3627-architecture-in-mythology-architecture-as-described-in-the-mahabharata/ https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/history-of-architecture... Lets leave all that aside and come back to this question: Was there any objective metric by which ancient Indian engineering was behind others?
  - akprasad 4y ago
    > Its clear from ancient texts and stories like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Bhagavata Purana that the Aryans were a nomadic, tribal cow-herding people who didn't tend to live in fixed structures. Do you have examples of stories to support this point? I ask because the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, at least, are deeply concerned with cities, city life, and the politics of cities, and nomadic life within them is a salient point only insofar as its main characters are in exile from the cities they wish to return to.
  - jaldhar 4y ago
    Whether or not you accept “Aryan migration” it would have occurred at least 1000 years or more before the period under discussion so I don’t see the relevance.
  - unmole 4y ago
    > vedic mathematics The comment is almost entirely wrong but this is especially deranged.
jaldhar 4y ago
A couple of observations 1. Indian advances in Mathematics are several centuries in the future from the period under discussion. And they owe quite a bit to interaction with the Greeks though patriots might not want to admit it. 2. Pali wasn’t a “language of masses” either. It was a trade language of Western India that became the literary language of the sthaviravadi Buddhists. Other sects used Sanskrit or other Prakrits. Shakyamunis mother tongue was Magadhi yet another Prakrit. 3. Sanskrit was the most prestigious language though at this point it didn’t have the monopoly it would later have. No it wasn’t a mass language either but more people had access to it than you might think.
- th2o3i4uo3i4443 4y ago
  [flagged]
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago
  1. What is the period under discussion? It seems to jump around. From 12 century BC to Al Biruni's time. 2. > And they owe quite a bit to interaction with the Greeks though patriots might not want to admit it. Yes, it is hand wavy statement without specifying the period of interaction. This is as bad as the "patriots" (who are non existent except as bogeymen in this thread, lol. Maybe this makes sense if you are a Greek patriot. ) I always assumed it is not rude to ask for academic references. (I am even scared to ask for references here lol.) Eurocentrism is a real thing but I did try to search for any refs.
  - jaldhar 4y ago
    The period I am referring to is from Alexander’s invasion of India to the height of the Roman Empire. That the siddhantas are influenced by Greek is obvious to anyone who has examined them. E.g. one is called Romaka Siddhanta. Another, Paulisha Siddhanta is a literal translation of Paulus of Alexandrias’ commentary on the Syntaxis of Ptolemy. The considerable advances Indians made in mathematics in e.g. Ganesh Daivajna or Nilakantha Somayaji etc. are comparatively later say 13th to 16th century. There’s an unfortunate tendency amongst some people to get all defensive about the idea that things may not have been invented in India but why? Yes we borrowed from the Greeks but we took their system and made it better. That’s reason enough for pride. Nowadays I read Sanskrit original sources only so I’m not entirely up to date with the academic literature I’m afraid.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
adolph 4y ago
> Indians never discovered things like antikythera mechanism As a point of conjecture few/nobody would have thought the Greeks made something as complex as the Antikytheria mechanism unless it was discovered and studied extensively for a century. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if something of similar quality from Asia would be discovered or is in the study process already.
- stametseater 4y ago
  > As a point of conjecture few/nobody would have thought the Greeks made something as complex as the Antikytheria mechanism unless it was discovered and studied extensively for a century. Well.. nobody except those who were willing to believe Cicero wasn't spinning a science fiction yarn when he described a very similar device and attributed it to Archimedes. But to your point, it seems like people didn't take it seriously until one was found. It makes you wonder what other things have been written of but not taken seriously because they sound too fantastic.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    What we know about history is inevitably constrained by the evidence we find. As for fantastic descriptions, what would future archaeologists think of scifi novels? Should they accept them as factual? When I browse used bookstores, I often find novels stuffed into the history section. They aren't there maliciously, it's just that the titles on the books sound like plausible history books. Sometimes it's even harder to distinguish a novel from an actual account, though modern fiction seems to put "a novel" somewhere on the cover in small print.
    - adolph 4y ago
      Perhaps context and interpretation constrain more than artifactual concordance.
    - stametseater 4y ago
      Much of what we think we know from history is known to us only because somebody claimed it in writing, and it seems plausible enough so we have no particular reason to believe they made it up. As far as I'm aware we haven't dug up any ancient Greek polybolos ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybolos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybolos) But they were described in ancient writings and the premise seems plausible, so we believe such polybolos existed and put it into our modern history books. The Antikythera mechanism evidently failed the implicit plausibility test, so we didn't believe it until we found one. Or maybe the written mentions of it simply failed to attract much notice so the plausibility was never given much thought in the first place.
cleanchit 4y ago
> was able to calculate the expansion of sines and cosines before Taylor’s theorems. It also had an understanding of sines cosines We need a source
- kaitai 4y ago
  Here are pointers to some sources: https://web.archive.org/web/20100214195826/http://www.new.dli.ernet.in/rawdataupload/upload/insa/INSA_1/20005af4_54.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20100214195826/http://www.new.dl... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuktibhāṣā https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuktibhāṣā with digital open access at https://books.sayahna.org/ml/pdf/yukthibhasha.pdf https://books.sayahna.org/ml/pdf/yukthibhasha.pdf (I'm afraid I cannot read it)
th2o3i4uo3i4443 4y ago
Even the facts are wrong.
temp383838 4y ago
This could partially be blamed on education being limited to few people as a direct side effect of caste system -> But the data seems to indicate otherwise at least from surveys around 1800. From Dharampal "Beautiful Tree" > It is, however, the Madras Presidency and Bengal-Bihar data which presents a kind of revelation. The data reveals the background of the teachers and the taught. It presents a picture which is in sharp contrast to the various scholarly pronounce- ments of the past 100 years or more, in which it had been assumed that education of any sort in India, till very recent decades, was mostly limited to the twice-born amongst the Hindoos, and amongst the Muslims to those from the ruling elite. The actual situation which is revealed was different, if not quite contrary, for at least amongst the Hindoos, in the districts of the Madras Presidency (and dramatically so in the Tamil- speaking areas) as well as the two districts of Bihar. It was the groups termed Soodras, and the castes considered below them who predominated in the thousands of the then still-existing schools in practically each of these areas. > In most areas, the Brahmin scholars formed a very small proportion of those studying in schools. Higher learning, however, being more in the nature of professional specialisation, seems in the main to have been limited to the Brahmins. This was especially true regarding the disciplines of Theology, Metaphysics, Ethics, and to a large extent of the study of Law. But the disciplines of Astronomy and Medical Science seem to have been studied by scholars from a variety of backgrounds and castes. This is very evident from the Malabar data: out of 808 studying Astronomy, only 78 were Brahmins; and of the 194 studying Medicine, only 31 were Brahmins. Incidentally, in Rajahmundry, five of the scholars in the institution of higher learning were Soodras. According to other Madras Presidency surveys, of those practising Medicine and Surgery, it was found that such persons belonged to a variety of castes. Amongst them, the barbers, according to British medical men, were the best in Surgery.
snambi 4y ago
Caste system itself was introduced in India by Portuguese in the 15th century.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
You can generally blame a bulk of India’s historical lapses on the caste system, including its repeated conquests by invaders. The worst part is that instead of dying out, it seems to be coming back. I’ll always be bearish on India as long as we still have this awful institution around.
- Idiot_in_Vain 4y ago
  >> it seems to be coming back Curious about that - do the founders of big indian IT companies, like Infosys or Zoho, belong to a specific cast?
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    Almost all founders are upper castes. Upper castes completely dominate most positions of power, from bureaucracy and judiciary to politics and entrepreneurship. See this, for example: Last 5 years, 79% of new HC judges upper caste, SC and minority 2% each [0] https://indianexpress.com/article/india/last-5-years-79-of-new-hc-judges-upper-caste-sc-and-minority-2-each-8371593/ https://indianexpress.com/article/india/last-5-years-79-of-n... Indians will defend this by pointing out how Modi belongs to an "other backward castes" (OBC) category, conveniently skipping over the fact that this category was created as a political tool to gather votes and most OBCs face none of the discrimination the truly backward, lowest castes face (I also belong to OBC category fyi). India's minorities, lower castes, and tribes - more than a third of the population - is heavily underrepresented in any position of power. In rural areas, caste discrimination is prevalent enough that lower caste people regularly get lynched for marrying someone from the upper caste. I'm generally baffled and frustrated by the Indian unwillingness to acknowledge their privilege. It's turned into a meme at this point where everyone calls themselves middle class, from the finance minister, to Satya Nadella (whose father was the most powerful bureaucrat in his state of birth). Anyhow, my ranting won't change things.
    - yutijke 4y ago
      The president of India belongs to a Scheduled Tribe. If optics is what you are concerned about. Some occupations like Law employ such a tiny percentage of the population, that Caste becomes too coarse grained to be the only dimension of analysis for the basis of privilege. You probably will have a better chance of breaking into the top echelons of this industry by living in the right gated society in Delhi that puts you into contact with these entrenched folks rather than being the right caste in some remote Indian Village. To look at a broader scale of occupational distribution, SC/ST folks have 23% affirmative action Quotas in Govt/State universities like IITs, IIMs and Medical Colleges. Is the issue that they are unable to compete in the Industry post college? Caste based affirmative action quota is 52% with overall affirmative action quota at 63%. Do you think more affirmative action is necessary to fix the problem? At this point it just looks like " The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves". You could also say no matter how large a portion you cut out of a pizza, you will never feed a hundred people if one pizza is all you have.

by anukin 4y ago

cscurmudgeon 4y ago

Both your comment and the parent comment seems biased and in a way parallels jingoistic comments overhyping Indian achievements (but in the opposite direction). Was there any objective metric by which ancient Indian engineering was behind others? There are other Indian achievements that have no parallels elsewhere in a similar time. But you can't overgeneralize from them in the other direction either: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20170110-indias-ancient-engineering-marvel https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20170110-indias-ancient-e... https://mymodernmet.com/kailasa-temple-ellora-caves/ https://mymodernmet.com/kailasa-temple-ellora-caves/

DiscourseFan 4y ago
These far post-date the engineering constructions in Rome and Greece--not to mention Egypt and other bronze age civilization, including the Indus River Valley civilization itself. Its clear from ancient texts and stories like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Bhagavata Purana that the Aryans were a nomadic, tribal cow-herding people who didn't tend to live in fixed structures. At some point people starting creating permanent structures, and they are architectural marvels of course, but those achievements do not seem to co-ordinate with the vedic mathematics in the same way that Greek, Egyptian, and Roman mathematics co-ordinate with Greek, Egyptian, and Roman engineering marvels.
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago
  > These far post-date the engineering constructions in Rome and Greece--not to mention Egypt and other bronze age civilization, including That has zero relevance to the statement about Al Biruni unless he magically travelled back in time and was stuck in some x-00 BC and couldn't see newer developments in India. Also strange is the fact that around Al Biruni's time Hindu numerals were adopted by Arabs (and that we all use now). Maybe he did go back in time! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu–Arabic_numeral_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu–Arabic_numeral_system > Its clear from ancient texts and stories like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Bhagavata Purana that the Aryans were a nomadic, tribal cow-herding people who didn't tend to live in fixed structures What? No, the Mahabharata has elaborate descriptions of palaces, cities. Even Ramayana mentions palace. And nomads, usually, don't have palaces or cities lol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakshagriha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakshagriha https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/history-of-architecture/a3627-architecture-in-mythology-architecture-as-described-in-the-mahabharata/ https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/history-of-architecture... Lets leave all that aside and come back to this question: Was there any objective metric by which ancient Indian engineering was behind others?
- akprasad 4y ago
  > Its clear from ancient texts and stories like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Bhagavata Purana that the Aryans were a nomadic, tribal cow-herding people who didn't tend to live in fixed structures. Do you have examples of stories to support this point? I ask because the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, at least, are deeply concerned with cities, city life, and the politics of cities, and nomadic life within them is a salient point only insofar as its main characters are in exile from the cities they wish to return to.
- jaldhar 4y ago
  Whether or not you accept “Aryan migration” it would have occurred at least 1000 years or more before the period under discussion so I don’t see the relevance.
- unmole 4y ago
  > vedic mathematics The comment is almost entirely wrong but this is especially deranged.

jaldhar 4y ago

A couple of observations 1. Indian advances in Mathematics are several centuries in the future from the period under discussion. And they owe quite a bit to interaction with the Greeks though patriots might not want to admit it. 2. Pali wasn’t a “language of masses” either. It was a trade language of Western India that became the literary language of the sthaviravadi Buddhists. Other sects used Sanskrit or other Prakrits. Shakyamunis mother tongue was Magadhi yet another Prakrit. 3. Sanskrit was the most prestigious language though at this point it didn’t have the monopoly it would later have. No it wasn’t a mass language either but more people had access to it than you might think.

th2o3i4uo3i4443 4y ago
[flagged]
cscurmudgeon 4y ago
1. What is the period under discussion? It seems to jump around. From 12 century BC to Al Biruni's time. 2. > And they owe quite a bit to interaction with the Greeks though patriots might not want to admit it. Yes, it is hand wavy statement without specifying the period of interaction. This is as bad as the "patriots" (who are non existent except as bogeymen in this thread, lol. Maybe this makes sense if you are a Greek patriot. ) I always assumed it is not rude to ask for academic references. (I am even scared to ask for references here lol.) Eurocentrism is a real thing but I did try to search for any refs.
- jaldhar 4y ago
  The period I am referring to is from Alexander’s invasion of India to the height of the Roman Empire. That the siddhantas are influenced by Greek is obvious to anyone who has examined them. E.g. one is called Romaka Siddhanta. Another, Paulisha Siddhanta is a literal translation of Paulus of Alexandrias’ commentary on the Syntaxis of Ptolemy. The considerable advances Indians made in mathematics in e.g. Ganesh Daivajna or Nilakantha Somayaji etc. are comparatively later say 13th to 16th century. There’s an unfortunate tendency amongst some people to get all defensive about the idea that things may not have been invented in India but why? Yes we borrowed from the Greeks but we took their system and made it better. That’s reason enough for pride. Nowadays I read Sanskrit original sources only so I’m not entirely up to date with the academic literature I’m afraid.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

adolph 4y ago

> Indians never discovered things like antikythera mechanism As a point of conjecture few/nobody would have thought the Greeks made something as complex as the Antikytheria mechanism unless it was discovered and studied extensively for a century. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if something of similar quality from Asia would be discovered or is in the study process already.

stametseater 4y ago
> As a point of conjecture few/nobody would have thought the Greeks made something as complex as the Antikytheria mechanism unless it was discovered and studied extensively for a century. Well.. nobody except those who were willing to believe Cicero wasn't spinning a science fiction yarn when he described a very similar device and attributed it to Archimedes. But to your point, it seems like people didn't take it seriously until one was found. It makes you wonder what other things have been written of but not taken seriously because they sound too fantastic.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  What we know about history is inevitably constrained by the evidence we find. As for fantastic descriptions, what would future archaeologists think of scifi novels? Should they accept them as factual? When I browse used bookstores, I often find novels stuffed into the history section. They aren't there maliciously, it's just that the titles on the books sound like plausible history books. Sometimes it's even harder to distinguish a novel from an actual account, though modern fiction seems to put "a novel" somewhere on the cover in small print.
  - adolph 4y ago
    Perhaps context and interpretation constrain more than artifactual concordance.
  - stametseater 4y ago
    Much of what we think we know from history is known to us only because somebody claimed it in writing, and it seems plausible enough so we have no particular reason to believe they made it up. As far as I'm aware we haven't dug up any ancient Greek polybolos ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybolos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybolos) But they were described in ancient writings and the premise seems plausible, so we believe such polybolos existed and put it into our modern history books. The Antikythera mechanism evidently failed the implicit plausibility test, so we didn't believe it until we found one. Or maybe the written mentions of it simply failed to attract much notice so the plausibility was never given much thought in the first place.

cleanchit 4y ago

> was able to calculate the expansion of sines and cosines before Taylor’s theorems. It also had an understanding of sines cosines We need a source

kaitai 4y ago
Here are pointers to some sources: https://web.archive.org/web/20100214195826/http://www.new.dli.ernet.in/rawdataupload/upload/insa/INSA_1/20005af4_54.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20100214195826/http://www.new.dl... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuktibhāṣā https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuktibhāṣā with digital open access at https://books.sayahna.org/ml/pdf/yukthibhasha.pdf https://books.sayahna.org/ml/pdf/yukthibhasha.pdf (I'm afraid I cannot read it)

th2o3i4uo3i4443 4y ago

Even the facts are wrong.

temp383838 4y ago

This could partially be blamed on education being limited to few people as a direct side effect of caste system -> But the data seems to indicate otherwise at least from surveys around 1800. From Dharampal "Beautiful Tree" > It is, however, the Madras Presidency and Bengal-Bihar data which presents a kind of revelation. The data reveals the background of the teachers and the taught. It presents a picture which is in sharp contrast to the various scholarly pronounce- ments of the past 100 years or more, in which it had been assumed that education of any sort in India, till very recent decades, was mostly limited to the twice-born amongst the Hindoos, and amongst the Muslims to those from the ruling elite. The actual situation which is revealed was different, if not quite contrary, for at least amongst the Hindoos, in the districts of the Madras Presidency (and dramatically so in the Tamil- speaking areas) as well as the two districts of Bihar. It was the groups termed Soodras, and the castes considered below them who predominated in the thousands of the then still-existing schools in practically each of these areas. > In most areas, the Brahmin scholars formed a very small proportion of those studying in schools. Higher learning, however, being more in the nature of professional specialisation, seems in the main to have been limited to the Brahmins. This was especially true regarding the disciplines of Theology, Metaphysics, Ethics, and to a large extent of the study of Law. But the disciplines of Astronomy and Medical Science seem to have been studied by scholars from a variety of backgrounds and castes. This is very evident from the Malabar data: out of 808 studying Astronomy, only 78 were Brahmins; and of the 194 studying Medicine, only 31 were Brahmins. Incidentally, in Rajahmundry, five of the scholars in the institution of higher learning were Soodras. According to other Madras Presidency surveys, of those practising Medicine and Surgery, it was found that such persons belonged to a variety of castes. Amongst them, the barbers, according to British medical men, were the best in Surgery.

snambi 4y ago

Caste system itself was introduced in India by Portuguese in the 15th century.

spaceman_2020 4y ago

You can generally blame a bulk of India’s historical lapses on the caste system, including its repeated conquests by invaders. The worst part is that instead of dying out, it seems to be coming back. I’ll always be bearish on India as long as we still have this awful institution around.

Idiot_in_Vain 4y ago
>> it seems to be coming back Curious about that - do the founders of big indian IT companies, like Infosys or Zoho, belong to a specific cast?
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Almost all founders are upper castes. Upper castes completely dominate most positions of power, from bureaucracy and judiciary to politics and entrepreneurship. See this, for example: Last 5 years, 79% of new HC judges upper caste, SC and minority 2% each [0] https://indianexpress.com/article/india/last-5-years-79-of-new-hc-judges-upper-caste-sc-and-minority-2-each-8371593/ https://indianexpress.com/article/india/last-5-years-79-of-n... Indians will defend this by pointing out how Modi belongs to an "other backward castes" (OBC) category, conveniently skipping over the fact that this category was created as a political tool to gather votes and most OBCs face none of the discrimination the truly backward, lowest castes face (I also belong to OBC category fyi). India's minorities, lower castes, and tribes - more than a third of the population - is heavily underrepresented in any position of power. In rural areas, caste discrimination is prevalent enough that lower caste people regularly get lynched for marrying someone from the upper caste. I'm generally baffled and frustrated by the Indian unwillingness to acknowledge their privilege. It's turned into a meme at this point where everyone calls themselves middle class, from the finance minister, to Satya Nadella (whose father was the most powerful bureaucrat in his state of birth). Anyhow, my ranting won't change things.
  - yutijke 4y ago
    The president of India belongs to a Scheduled Tribe. If optics is what you are concerned about. Some occupations like Law employ such a tiny percentage of the population, that Caste becomes too coarse grained to be the only dimension of analysis for the basis of privilege. You probably will have a better chance of breaking into the top echelons of this industry by living in the right gated society in Delhi that puts you into contact with these entrenched folks rather than being the right caste in some remote Indian Village. To look at a broader scale of occupational distribution, SC/ST folks have 23% affirmative action Quotas in Govt/State universities like IITs, IIMs and Medical Colleges. Is the issue that they are unable to compete in the Industry post college? Caste based affirmative action quota is 52% with overall affirmative action quota at 63%. Do you think more affirmative action is necessary to fix the problem? At this point it just looks like " The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves". You could also say no matter how large a portion you cut out of a pizza, you will never feed a hundred people if one pizza is all you have.