Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians

Of course Reservation IS the problem if you're unfortunate to be an upper caste.

The problem is that a caste-based reservation did NOT eliminate caste-based bias, it amplified it. More and more castes, outside the original designation, demanded it in exchange for votes, and more and more upper caste Indians felt cheated as they lost limited opportunities that should have been purely been given on merit basis.

NOTE: I support reservation if it is on the basis of economic criteria, wherein a student genuinely did not get the opportunities as they were growing up. The problem is, India is full of lower-caste affluent families where generations have taken advantage of the reservation, while the poor lower-caste, and upper-caste, people have languished. And due to the reservation, these affluent lower-caste students, in general do now have to work as hard as the students competing in the general category.

Tamil Nadu has 69% reservation, there is similar data for other states.

In IIT, while there was cutthroat competition for general category seats, SC/ST (reserved category) seats went unfilled since in the IITs there was (not sure if it still is there) a min standard was required.

Every, baring maybe 1-2 exceptions, of SC/STs were in slow paced category, which meant they graduated in 5 years as opposed to everyone else graduating in 4 years.

What this meant is that by default the general category students who made through the system, were on average, better educated and trained, than the lower-caste equivalents.

This is just the unfortunate truth.

I have never once been asked my caste, and I have never once seen my friends be asked their castes. But, I realize that being middle class in an Indian metro city already puts me in the 10% class of India that is somewhat shielded from this stuff. I also know that caste becomes a huge thing during marriages and dating. But, I haven't seen much of it in tech. It is far more prevalent in careers where you need communication with under-skilled workers (mechE, civilE), since these workers stick by castes quite closely.

> My college fucking put the caste next to people's names on notice boards

Would you be willing to tell me what university this was. I can't imagine this being the case in any metro city in India.

I won't call you a liar, but this is the first I hear of it and the burden of evidence is on you.

> I'm light skinned so people assume I'm "upper caste"

Oh yeah, I am too, and I can completely empathize with this people making this assumption. Although, it has been more commonly used in situations where it is used as a way to say "you do not understand the problems of lower caste / dark skinned people in India" than anything else.

________________

Caste based discrimination is a huge problem in India, especially in non-metro India. But, my 2 cents, I have yet to notice any in my time in Tech in the US. ( I did go to a university/location with low south Asian%, but my peer groups in university were very Indian, as are most masters programs, but YMMV)

I have seen far less serious things related to caste dragged on media for days. I think this is illegal, and I am sure I heard in the news there is a law against marking someone's caste. Also there is law where you can be selective about disclosing caste and won't have to disclose it if you don't want the benefit. Any proof you have for this?

Category JEE Main 2019 Cut Off Common Rank List 89.7548849 Gen EWS 78.2174869 OBC NCL 74.3166557 SC 54.0128155 ST 44.3345172 PWD 0.11371730

Common Rank List = Upper caste SC/ST = lower caste

90 vs 44/54.

How do I even find out what "caste" I'm in?

I've literally never heard that word used in a conversation with other Indian people ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What kinds of things do they say, or how does their speaking change once they learn? I'm totally outside of this culture but have been studying caste discrimination and its history lately and have been trying to learn all I can about it.

The correct approach is, if the parents of a lower caste person have got advantage of reservation, the reservation should go to next person in queue. This way benefits can be evenly distributed instead of benefitting few wealthy people.

Excuse my ignorance but how does one "speak as such" because of caste?

Are there different words, eg like "tu" and "vous" in French?

I agree. It shouldn't be. But then it shouldn't be relevant during admissions too yeh?

Question is whether most Indians who come to US for work are actually upper class Indians already and thus this 90% number is what it is. Or do lower class Indians also come to US, face discrimination and thus either go back or struggle to find work. If the former, the issue is policies/attitudes in India which needs to be done better (easier said than done). If the latter, then we need to dig deeper.

That is, until one day, out of the blue, she said she was getting married. Her parents had found a boy who also grew up here in Norway that she was to marry the following year.

After a bit of talking it was clear she was not very fond of the idea of her parents finding her a mate. However from what I gathered she was just about as worried about his caste.

He was of a lower caste than her, and this was not ideal at all from what I understood. However, his family was rather well off, so perhaps it would be acceptable after all...

This came as a complete shock to me, as I had perceived her as rather liberal and as mentioned had never heard her speak of her caste or similar. But there it was, weighing her down.

[1] That's the word he used. It might well have been shorthand for a more complex concept that he knew I wouldn't understand.

And have clear sanctions: if someone does discriminate against lower-caste colleagues, and especially when they abuse their power against them (by denying promotion, keeping them away from prestigious projects, etc), then the abuser should be demoted or fired.

If you want to work in an environment where caste matters and the caste hierarchy is observed, do not work for a western company.

Also, maybe there should be some education projects and affirmative action for those Dalit communities.

But, I have seen shit happen in front my eyes, in my own home , in many many conversations. Anyone who is "upper caste" and says this is not real, have buried their sand in the head.

Discrimination in India is rampant, and on different dimensions. religion, caste, language, nationality (Don't get me started on how locals treated a few African students in my college back in India), skin color, financial status - the list goes on. But religion & caste take the crown.

A little bit like the class system in the United States (or France) eh :-)

It's a set of assumptions: that someone's pigeonhole in the social structure somehow strongly defines the limits of their abilities; that in the org chart, wisdom always flows top to bottom, never the other way around; that the org chart itself is (and indeed MUST BE) set in stone; etc.

The system feels very rigid, especially for someone who grew up in an individualistic culture.

This is not about conscious, deliberate actions, it's about unconscious attitudes and assumptions.

I do not see any of this in people of Indian descent who grew up here. It's also much less typical of young people with a progressive mindset who grew up in India. But older folks and/or more conservative - yeah, it's clearly there.

I could be wrong, but I feel - the moment India is able to jettison this pattern, the whole country will experience some sort of major renaissance.

Your strategy would reinforce the awareness of caste status.

I don't think non-Indians would even be able to discriminate by caste. Discrimination against Indians is perfectly possible of course.

In many cases parents will live incredibly frugally their whole lives to save up enough money for their child's education. Growing up on $3-8k annually is a humble background for a family when look at from the American lens. Qualifying for Indian universities is a nightmare exam that takes 2+ years of 10+ hrs a day of study. The kids compromise on any hobbies and a life just to MAKE IT.

Everything in India IS far harder than the developed world. A family that can't afford a personal vehicle, air conditioning or a single vacation over their lifetime is a humble family. Being successful enough to make it to the >95th percentile in the western world from such beginning is commendable and something a person should be able to take pride in.

Now, is it still an order of magnitude less hard to do this than it is for a dalit ? Ofc it is. But, should a person born in the western world feel ashamed to get a phd because kids in Africa are dying of hunger ? NO.

> Come from humble backgrounds and 'made it' in society all on their own

> Upper caste Indians are more likely to have access to better education

Both these statements can be true. One should not need to throw away pride in their accomplishments to empathize with someone less fortunate.

The number of people I've run into that claim this, but their parents paid their rent, or bought them a house, or they work for their family's company, is staggering. It's a common blind spot for upper middle class and rich people.

So... pretty much like most Americans in similar situation, then?

In fact, I think looking at both through the lens of caste is a better way to interrogate some of the issues.

I thought this podcast made that point in a pretty compelling way: https://cafe.com/stay-tuned/americas-caste-system-with-isabe...

These policies are meant to help society in aggregates so there will always be folks who get screwed. Its important to keep trying though. While slavery in the US is perhaps 300 years old, the caste system has been seemingly around since the beginning of civilization on the Indian subcontinent...that's an unimaginable amount of time over which certain sections of society were systematically discriminated against.

Even trying to embarrass them in a meeting didn't work. With all eyes on them they would just look at me with a look of mild surprise. They simply (and sincerely) could not acknowledge why someone would phrase as a criticism something that for them is so naturally correct. For them it looked like criticizing a farmer for using work horses. I found this as some of the most disgusting behavior I have ever witnessed in a place of work.

Both yes and no need to be substantiated by examples by the interviewers and that should be able to tell you whether there is any bias or not.

Companies also have bias training which can be very useful.

Could you guess a person's caste through his accent?

They don't care about right or wrong, they only care about making the most money they can while staying within the technical legal constraints of the countries they operate in.

I doubt they'd stop at workplace discrimination, if the CCP or Indian government wanted to leverage their tech to kill people (Dalit or Uighur) I'm sure they'd line up to do it (of course they’d rationalize some reason why it wasn’t their problem).

As a former H1-B myself, I thought the "2 month window" was a very unofficial grace-period and actually, de-jure, you're ostensibly meant to leave the US immediately (literally, the same day) and only return when a new sponsor agrees to take you on.

You don't understand what you have taken for granted. In the name of hindu religion, citing the vedas education has been denied to all non-brahmins(other than priestly caste) until Britishers arrived. This is the reason majority of the indians are first college goers in their family. For us what you described is the definition of heaven.

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.

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.

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.

From rationality and morality perspective, see this piece on reservations: https://www.hipkapi.com/2015/09/10/indian-view-from-outside-...

This is something I have been thinking quite a lot about.

The Govt. really struggles to cap affirmative action to only those who need it.

I knew people who were from lower castes, used reservation to get in and had Macbooks, iPhones and spent summers abroad touring.

How hard is it to disqualify them due to financial means ? There are too many poor Dalits who would rather use those seats.

There are no overseas communities of majority Indian subcontinental origin that maintain rigid caste distinctions. Not even Mauritius which is majority ethnic Indian or Fiji or Guyana where they’re about half the population. Caste will not be maintained in America for the same reason no ethnic group maintains itself without religious endogamy or continuing immigration; People socialize and mate with those they spend time with unless there are powerful reasons not to. All will be assimilated in time.

As a low caste Hindu who grew up in India, it is not at all shocking to me. In-fact Dr.Ambedkar, the lead author of Indian Constitution, wrote "If Hindus migrate to other regions on earth, Indian caste would become a world problem."[1] and he is proven right.

The reason Indians continue the caste system wherever they go is because, it is ingrained in the Hindu religion. Caste system and the religion are inseparable. Ambedkar realized that it is impossible to get out of the clutches of the caste system as long as one is Hindu. Hence he said “I had the misfortune of being born with the stigma of an Untouchable. However, it is not my fault; but I will not die a Hindu, for this is in my power.”[2] and he converted to Buddhism.

1. http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/txt_...

2. https://time.com/5770511/india-protests-br-ambedkar/

Is it so shocking though? The US has its own sordid history of caste-like discrimination in work, civic, and personal life, as the African American community can attest to. Huge portions of the US had anti-miscegenation laws on the books up until 50 ago [1]

If anything, many of the patterns of discrimination in the US line up quite nicely with those that arrived with some (though not all) Indian immigrants.

This has frequently resulted in a stark schism between the older generation of Indian immigrants, many of whom readily adopted the US' racist attitudes toward African Americans, Mexicans, etc, and their American children, who often have nearly the opposite perspective.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_laws_in_the...

Now, with specifics to Indians, - if you hear someone mention they are Brahmin for no real reason, or in relationship to being really good at something, make a mental note that they may be at high risk of discriminating others - if you hear folks pejoratively putting down someone because of where they are from or how they grew up - a small village

The above comment is downvoted, maybe for sounding pro-upper-caste? But the statement is true.

Caste discirimination has already crept into American firms.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/opinion/caste-cisco-india...

Here is one hard quote by Buffet: The ovarian lottery is the most important event in which you'll ever participate. It's going to determine way more than what school you go to, how hard you work, all kinds of things. The nation of birth changes your life much more than your effort or intelligence.

Denial of caste based discrimination is at obscene levels. The truth is that lower castes get discriminated against, even in urban areas, no matter what their credentials or merits are.

[1] https://theprint.in/opinion/brahmins-on-india-campuses-study... [2] https://livewire.thewire.in/personal/caste-isnt-just-confine...

Do you have any data at all for this?

> Then it is not a stretch to imagine that some of them may not be very good at their job either.

It's not right to assume that someone may not be good at their current job because they may (in your mind) have benefited from some "affirmative action" program far in the past (John Doe is 20+ years into his career). Judge people on current performance, not past history. Plenty of average students shine in the real world.

> The cynic in me thinks this guy accuser in the lawsuit is trying to hide his incompetence

Why don't we let the courts work it out instead of speculating on people's motivations or honesty?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India#Distribu...

> How do you know that So-and-So is a Brahmin? > How do you know he isn’t? And we do some research before we post.

I guess that just includes looking at the surname.

Problem is that those who benefit from social structure does not want the change, and are working on keeping status quo.

If there were a source for the 90% figure, that would be a totally separate issue with different causes and different considerations.

It's very complicated. TLDR: if you are a high-caste foreigner (meaning white, well educated, successful), you will probably be accepted. If you aren't that, your mileage may vary.

After all, caste in large part a codification of the hierarchical social structures found throughout the world.

Historically, just like all other old world societies, foreigners were considered barbarians. But if those foreigners brought more powerful technologies (weapons, tools, or social structures) they were quite often accommodated and absorbed.

So in reality, the Indian subcontinent has absorbed wave after wave of foreign immigration over millennia, each adding a facet to the complex and fractal social structure and hierarchy.

That dynamic - the foreigners with more power subjugating and marrying into a local population - plays a large part into how the caste system (both the theoretical model from scripture and the on-the-ground instances) formed in the first place. Again this is very similar to how the societal estates (clergy, aristocrats, merchants, and serfs) formed in other parts of the world.

An innovation of the Indian system is a category of people completely outside the system, the Dalits, who by consequence of both their ancestry and traditional professions, are completely ostracized by people in all layers of the caste system.

At some point however in India, the castes became very rigid - meaning endogamous - and also provincial, with caste being interpreted and enforced primarily on a local level.

Overall, it's not very different from what you see in the social structure of Latin America, which is not surprising because the Spanish/Portuguese colonists were directly inspired by the social structure they observed in India when they established the post colonial social structure of Latin America. The English word caste is itself a borrowing from Portuguese that subsumes two subtly different Indian terms: varna (the theoretical 4-level social structure) and jati (the actual "tribe" or "community" that identifies with one level of the structure).

Today, many Indians are actually more willing to accept an upper class educated foreigner than a lower caste Indian in matters such as marriage, but only usually if the foreigner is white, which is to say they have just adopted the racial hierarchy used in the western world. This tells you a little bit about how much similarity there actually is between the caste system and western racial hierarchies, despite the often heard claim that they have nothing in common.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India)

If you try to understand caste by analogy to class you will fail completely. It is its own thing.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24556347

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24554209

(I'm a white educated middle-class man myself, and a career in the tech world has been easy and natural for me. I'd love to believe it's because I'm really that good, but I try to be aware of my privilege.)

The idea of "it takes a few generations" is also widely critiqued with respect to racial progress in the US: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/the-myt...

Many people studying today had poor parents that never had any form of higher education. I don't think the US systems is good at this. It concentrates on excellence or at least the appearance of it, although there are probably exceptions if you parents are rich or influential. Bad thing is that it works to a degree because the smartest heads get concentrated while others need to be content with lower quality education. A system that should be obsolete with modern logistics of information. Tech is currently leveraging that weakness by building an even worse alternative with their own campuses. While integrating the industry in universities can be quite the advantage, I doubt this will be a helpful basis. There will be people that like to live in infrastructure belonging to their employer, it is just the modern version of a cult.

I don't know about the issues in India, but perhaps lower caste members just don't have access to education. Financing education in the US is difficult because economic imbalance and ridiculous prices on education. Of course that works as a selector if you don't get a scholarship.

I think it is fairly possible to have a broad education system that doesn't determine your future if you fuck up elementary school. Instead there need to transient systems that allow to build upon your educational career, because pupils learn at different speed and had different advantages like private tutors.

Inheritance is just like caste, you are born with an advantage over others.

What I've noticed from observing people in all classes is that money is an amplifier. Lazy rich people who are dumb are more likely to lose their wealth than smart rich people that are hardworking.

I do agree that the game is still heavily skewed in their favor, but that doesn't mean they can get away as easily as their more virtuous counterparts.

This is a ridiculous over-exaggeration in the age of internet.

As the anthropologist Maurice Godelier puts it in the L'idéel et le matériel, it is not about seeing another reality behind reality but about seeing the same reality with a different look.

https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-where-intergenerat...

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-mobility-...

And on Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility

India unfortunately fairs quite poorly on these metrics

And most billionaries are first-generation: https://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/16/how-to-stay-rich-for-three-g...

"Oh look at those poor backward indians!!"

Well, most of the rich people I know had rich parents.

If you can live with your parents while building your company or they gift you a few thousand dollars, that's often the make or break factor that saves your ass when pivoting a few times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

In countries with good and available education, competent people from poor families can get good careers. It makes a lot of sense to run companies there as well, as recruiting works well - people are sorted by ability rather than money.

If the economy is organized so that a small minority is rich, and the vast majority is poor, then even if the fraction of people of different castes, races, genders, whatever at each echelon of wealth is similar. And even if you have a good chance = uniform-distribution draw - of ending up as "one of the rich" - that chance can never be anything but lousy for the vast majority of people.

(Also, social inequality skews the focus of production and consumption so that things masses of people need and want just aren't available.)

Part of the definition of class that is often overlooked in discussions is that it's not just about money. This is why the socio qualifier gets added into the "socio-economic" designation... even though people sometimes use the dash and then ignore it.

A class implies a hereditary, cultural and quasi-ethnic aspect. So does caste, obviously.

AFAICT it seems to be taboo outside these circles.

* I should mention that many people make big point that you shouldn't use economic points like this to ignore things like racism, i.e.: while racism intersects with economics you can't treat it like it's the same problem.

I see it discussed constantly all over the internet. Also it's not entirely true; there's a bunch of examples where people did make it big.

All too often this position boils down to "Capitalism bad" which then just attracts the "Communism bad" opposition and ends in a pointless shitshow buzzword exchange.

What I find curious about this discussion, which often occurs when people discuss what advantages are fair and unfair, estate tax and the like, is that they perceive each human being as a completely independent actor. Whereas for me, at least, it's more natural to think in terms of families. If the first generation achieved success, should it be reset in the next one? Why? The example you're talking about, with people reaching incredibly high success from nothing, are exceptions; usually it takes two or three generations at least.

And it's never only about money. Family culture, outlook toward education, work ethic, etc, these things survive when the family loses all of it's fortune or goes through even more dramatic events — though it's easier to notice when you live in a country that lived through a couple of revolutions, bloody wars and a couple of genocides in the last century than in US.

Some people say "I don't see race" as of it's a good thing. (See https://www.oprahmag.com/life/relationships-love/a32824297/c... and https://theconversation.com/i-dont-see-race-and-other-white-... for two of a myriad of articles on the topic.)

Most people in the US really don't see caste, because they don't have the training or experience, and therefore also don't really see caste discrimination.

I think this shows a downside of "not seeing" bigotry.

The article is interesting because it provides a contrast to the common refrain of "diversity good" and "other cultures provide benefits". There is often a lack of balance and nuance in reporting imho, and this kind of article provides at least a little of the opposing view.

Nobody had any problem with his performance until the discriminatory boss was hired.