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Comment by andrewflnr | Hacker News Reader

> ...and the caste system dictates admissions policies anyway

Like, officially, in writing? Even if it's informal, as an American it blows my mind that that's still a thing.

It is not the caste based discrimination like you might intuitively perceive.

In history there was a caste system that led to systemic deprivation of education and opportunity to underprivileged castes. So India (few decades back) came up with a reservation system so that people belonging to those castes could get jobs/education/opportunities.

In today's times it's scale is more like racism that you would find in most developed nations.

However after achieving the basic purpose, the reservation system based on caste was never withdrawn. Lots of political parties invested into those vote banks.

Nowadays, the situation is such that many people who get admissions based on the reservation policy are from acceptably well off educated families. There are many people who are relatively poor and financially underprivileged but belong to the upper caste and they cannot get any benefits.

Ah, that is not what I assumed, and rather less surprising.

Sounds like you're describing was what Americans call affirmative action ("a reservation system so that people belonging to those castes could get jobs/education/opportunities"). I am not knowledgeable about India's system, but I get the impression that like the one in the US, it is politically/culturally divisive and I would take any comment about it as opinion/preference rather than fact.

It's factual that a policy exists or does not, however one feels about it.

I was told (if I remember correctly) that discriminated castes get an advantage (or even a certain percentage of seats) at universities in India. I am surprised this could be considered mind blowing, isnt there also affirmative action for college admission in America?

Universities aren't allowed to have racial quotas in the US. They are allowed have affirmative action that is implemented in a fuzzy non-numerical way, but they can't just say "we will admit X students of Y race".

They aren't allowed to have racial quotas anymore, but it was commonly done before the 2003 supreme court ruling that ended the practice.

Racial quotas haven't been allowed since 1978[1]. The 2003 case[2] was about a points-based system, not about racial quotas.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_Univ._of_Cal._v...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger

Yes. There is actually a whole Wikipedia entry[1] on it.

The relevant portion:

> For candidates in the general category, successful students must generally score within the top 0.25% or top 0.5% of all students to gain admission to the IITs, whereas SC/ST/OBC candidates must generally score within the top 2% of all students to gain admission to the IITs.

> Currently, reservation of 15%, 7.5% and 27% seats are provided for candidates originating from the SC, ST and OBC communities respectively.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_policy_in_Indian_I...

To be clear, that's affirmative action for people in the lowest castes (not everyone knows what SC etc mean offhand).

TIL that "SC" is the caste formerly known as "untouchables". It does not seem unreasonable to institute some affirmative action for them.

SC/ST were historically the most oppressed. However the OBC[1] designation is heavily diluted and is often handed out to previously well to do communities in exchange of votes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class

No, it’s formal. Much as there are certain groups in the US that are held to lower standards in the US for purposes of admission to universities and some other opportunities so it is in India. There are reservations for Scheduled Castes and Backward Tribes. If you don’t come from them the grade you need to get into a good college will be higher, much as if you want to get into Harvard it’ll be harder if you’re Li or Nguyen than if you’re Jones or Ramirez.

Honestly the remnants of the caste system are hard to distinguish from "legacy" in America. If you're a Bush or a Kennedy you're going to have an easy time getting into school - in America it's a bit weirder even because buying your way in is generally considered legitimate and culturally approved.

Is it that surprising? We have the exact same system in the States.

Affirmative Action exists today. The Ivies modified its acceptance criteria to "soft" discriminate against Jewish Americans in the 50s and 60s. There are arguments that this is indeed the case for Asian Americans today.

The soft discrimination actually happened much earlier than that. I think it was happening in the 20s and 30s already.

Officially - yes. It's affirmative action. About 40% or more of the seats are reserved for students from a "lower caste".

In this case, the caste system based admission is equivalent to affirmative action in US universities

Well, sort of. Explicit quotas used to be a thing in American universities until Bakke in 1978, and racial "points" systems were ended in 2003 with Grutter. Notably these Supreme Court decisions actively endorsed Affirmative action in general, they just implied you couldn't be too explicit about how you were using it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_Univ._of_Cal._v... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger

The proportions would be different. Minorities in US are, well, minorities - but if Wikipedia is to be believed, the category that is targeted for affirmative action in India constitutes about 40% of the entire population.

> Even if it's informal, as an American it blows my mind that that's still a thing.

In past times (and by that I mean XX century - before WWII usually) anti-semitism was pretty harsh, and official. Even on university admissions in the US.

I mean it's literally the same thing as affirmative action.

Yes there are laws about disadvantaged Castes I believe and caste discrimination goes on amongst communities outside India.

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