Asking for father's name is pretty much India's equivalent of Americans asking "what's your current salary", you use it to judge the person's situation.
How does that work?
I will delete my comment if I am wrong, but I believe that is in reference to the caste system.
Isn't the applicant's own name sufficient for that? Why do they need the father's name as well?
I don't see how. Last name is same usually for both father/son, and you can't figure anything out from first name. It's almost useless information I think, except maybe differentiate between two people with same name, which is useful only for government applications I think.
In some parts of India, first names can be very lengthy, and contain lots of information, like: where you're from, your father's name, your grandfather's name, etc.
Wow, I'm an Indian, and I didn't know that. But yeah, I still dunno what can be potential use of that information in a resume. Sometimes, I think it's just because of old traditions where people introduce someone as "X son of Y from Z".
Wow. Can you share more about this? Is it due to names being stratified by income/background?
Without knowing more, this seems both easy to cheat and biased towards... people with father's with certain names?
And asking "what's your current salary?" is pretty sleazy and in many cases illegal (e.g., in New York)
Overseas being not America?
Well, I'm not American...
America being the continent or the US?
Being from America the nation, obviously. I'm sure you're just being pedantic, but that is how it's used. I'm not sure why you feel a need to make a point about this.
Not trying to be pedantic, I’m still somewhat confused when I read “america” when referring to the United States of America. Reason being, everywhere outside of the US, we learn that America is the continent. People who are much less into reading forums in English, or with a high percentage of US readers, can get even more confused, specially when the context is as vague as in this specific response.
Except no one refers to "America, the continent". It's always North America, South America, The Americas, or possibly Central America (though that's not really a continent). Typically America is the nation. This is doubly true because there is really no other good term for a citizen; "United States Citizen" is verbose and somewhat clinical, and there is no such word as "United Statesian". That's part of what happens when you choose a name for a nation with more than one word.