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> Affirmative action is always bad.

I disagree. I grew up poor and white, I was the "victim" of AA once, I come from exactly the demographic that racist demagogues play to, and I still disagree. Just as the original systemic discrimination has uneven effect (on both sides), so does AA. The beneficiaries of AA as it has existed in the US are not particularly likely to be privileged. In fact it really is a bit of the opposite, because it's much easier to skirt AA in professions requiring high levels of education and specialization. It mostly has its effect at the lower end of the economic spectrum, in jobs that even those who have been shortchanged by the educational system can do.

Do some rich minorities benefit from AA? Do some poor white people get the shaft as a result? Oh, I do know about that, and it sucks mightily. From what I can tell it's quite possible that India's reservation system is even worse. But that doesn't mean AA must fail. Flaws in a specific implementation of an idea do not necessarily refute the idea itself. The US version of AA, for all its many and great flaws, still seems net positive and a valid part of addressing systemic discrimination.

Its a good thing you didn't grow up poor and asian - then you would have had to work even harder with even less privelege

That's exactly the problem affirmative action is supposed to address. That's exactly why I support it, even though it wasn't in my own interest back then. So what's your point here? Do you support AA, or oppose it? The "point" that discrimination already exists was not in dispute.

Yeah, I read that another commenter on this forum mentioned that in one family, at most one person should be able to get benefit of affirmative action. That will spread the benefits much more evenly.

Indian reservation system is in bad state, and especially in the context of IITs/NITs it is worse due to the reasons I mentioned.

> 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.

Honestly from the arguments I'm seeing in here, it really really isn't. From the perspective of a white guy with almost no understanding whatsoever of the caste system and its politics, I'm seeing exactly the same kinds of arguments here that I find being made by racists.

The only difference being that India has had reservation system for more than half century now and it doesn't work as well. Yes, I know examples where it has actually helped people in need but by vast margin it helps already well off people from underrepresented minorities not the ones in need. This is one of the main reasons why India's medical facilities are sub par and one can't get anything done in govt offices. Also reservation system was meant to be a temporary until we had representation from minorities. We already have achieved that for many minorities yet they still benefit from this.

As someone from fairly higher cast but economically poor family, coming to US felt liberating where I could define & own my success irrespective of my cast, religion. Yes we have problems in US and I've faced discrimination too but it doesn't limit me from succeeding.

We should take this as a learning in US if we were to implement a reservation like system. Have it backed by data on who really needs it not driven by political climate.

The upper castes are hardly 20% of the population. But they take up 80% or more of the higher education and jobs already.

The affirmative action in India is to reduce this gap so that their representation is comparable to their population.

No, it really is not more complicated. The US has its own implicit systems of discrimination. The white racist from Tennessee is going to be looked down upon by the white racist from Connecticut who will be looked down upon by the white racist with a Central Park apartment.

Affirmative action is not "always bad." There are multiple purposes of affirmative action, some of which have NOTHING to do with the individual student.

About 60% of NFL alumni in the US are of African-American origin, and that number climbs every year. Most coaches in the NFL are either former players or coaches at some other level of football. The VAAAAST majority of coaches at the NFL level at ALL levels are white. Of the 32 head coaching positions in the league, only 3 are held by black coaches, and black coaches are more likely to get fired quicker than their white counterparts.

You know why? Because the owners are white. People hire who they relate to, and a white guy is going to relate to another white guy more than they will to most black guys. It's simple.

Same thing applies to affirmative action. A lower caste person who gets a chance and succeeds is more likely to hire lower caste employees. So even though those lower caste employees may not have been direct beneficiaries of affirmative action, they can still benefit from the network effect.

There is no reason to identify as "upper caste" unless one is interested in maintaining that hierarchy.

> You know why? Because the owners are white.

Actually it’s because being black isn’t an advantage in coaching the way it is on the field. White guys tend to suck at a lot of positions, but they’re perfectly capable of coaching. So you have a reasonable proportion of black coaches.

Isn't it racist when lower cast employee hires another lower cast employee. Arent we trying to stop that very same thing with AA?

Not remotely, no. The entire purpose of AA is to try to bring normalization to a system that is heavily and unfairly biased. AA has an understanding of the network effect and peoples' bias built in. Lower caste people favoring lower caste associates is a feature, not a bug. You want them to hire more people like them to help bring the group up. This doesn't always work, of course, but that's not the point. You want to increase the probability that it will happen

No high achievers are truly worried about being in a system with AA with regards to their personal employment and advancement. They're going to succeed regardless. The high caste people who are waiting for their (or are waiting for their kids') handout simply because they had good grades as a child are the ones who are the complainers.

It's not perfect, but it's not resource intensive and it's vastly better than the alternative.

> "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?

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?

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.

Affirmative action is not generally about giving people money, it's about giving people opportunities. The idea is something like, you set a lower bar for people from groups that have been historically discriminated against.

When we have programs that are specifically designed to help people monetarily, such as financial aid at colleges or welfare, they consider people's economic situation but not their race.

> If the help is going to privileged people instead, it's not affirmative action

While I might agree about this being a bad outcome, I also don't think a "no true Scotsman" argument is helpful. What is described here is still affirmative action - just a bad implementation of it. Instead of trying to define them away, we should admit that such bad implementations can exist, and push for good implementations instead.