India’s caste system limits diversity in science | Hacker News Reader

India’s caste system limits diversity in science

nature.com

43 pointsBrajeshwar64 comments

One of the things missing in this article is that the reservation system by design results in quota students typically being less prepared/qualified. These students then enroll in, say, IIT, and many of them perform poorly due to, well, lack of merit. And this poor performance contributes heavily to the lack of continuity on to further, and higher studies.

Who is responsible to fix this? If institutions were stricter on reservations, they would simply exacerbate the problem. If institutions were mandated to provide above-and-beyond resourcing to help poorly prepared students they were forced to accept, that's a pretty onerous burden.

The solution isn't finger-pointing at higher education/academic institutions or doubling down on reservations -- it's to kill reservations entirely and double down on earlier education subsidies for historically disadvantaged groups.

No political party in India wants to abolish reservation policies. Beneficiaries, along with political parties, make a big deal, if the reservation system is abolished. The whole government bureaucracy is corrupt to the core, where incompetence is prized. One contribution to this incompetence is the reservation system.

Reservation comes in 1950, does India doing great before that?

There may be pockets in India where caste still impacts your life (mostly poor, uneducated and backward villages), but in major cities where people are educated and modern, caste is not significant. More on that here: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/caste-is-n...

This just isn't correct. Not only is it still pervasive in India it actively impacts US Indian immigrants as well.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/big-techs-big-pro...

Untrue. You can get people to complain about anything, that doesn't make it true.

Just want to point out that the unnatural vigor with which HN and other forums reject the idea of Caste Discrimination is telling. If this were White on Minority racism for instance people defending it in this way would be ostracized and most would say that it this type of discrimination is beyond the pale and call for vigorous investigation into the claims.

Instead all we see about Caste discrimination is "it doesn't exist", "it's manufactured", "it's not a problem". It's frankly glaring.

Your intuition is on point. It is very much alive in India.

That is exactly the point I was going to make. Thank you.

That's because people on HN are vastly more familiar with things in their own country, and see and hear abject racism among their own folks. For example, the classic uncle at the Thanksgiving table, or a grandparent.

They have no context of Indian caste system, and only go by some online articles that have their own agenda to make a bigger deal of the caste system in modern day, than it is.

Thank you for reinforcing my point like nothing I say could.

It's funny how folks like you have zero clue or context about the caste system in India yet read a couple of agenda based biased articles and come to nonsense conclusions.

Instead of standing up and saying "I believe all caste discrimination is wrong and any alleged instance of it should be quickly investigated," you instead decided to go into multiple comment chains and simply deny it's existence int he face of numerous firsthand experiences from posters. Good job.

>int he face of numerous firsthand experiences from posters

Like which ones?

People from India need to speak up about this if that's true, because Western readers love articles like this to broadly discriminate.

Wait - if that's the case, why is caste an issue at Oracle, up to the point where there's federal lawsuits? Are the Indian employees at that firm all from backwards villages?

If someone finds a way to make a buck through a lawsuit they will do it. Just because someone filed a lawsuit doesn't make it true.

And just because you are being dismissive doesn't make it false.

That's an interesting editorial - it doesn't match what I've heard from multiple people and especially seems hard to reconcile with things like the more recent discussions and lawsuits regarding caste in Silicon Valley:

https://qz.com/apple-meta-and-google-must-fight-caste-discri...

Look, if someone files a racial discrimination lawsuit against your company then does that prove that everyone in your company is racist?

No, but it suggests that management/HR _may_ be.

Exactly, so take the lawsuits with a grain of salt.

A single lawsuit isn't proof — that would come out as the case is evaluated — but they're being brought on a regular basis it suggests that there is some kind of problem.

I appreciate that this is a subject you care deeply about but I think you might need to start looking for some supporting evidence for your claims. There are a number of people who say discrimination is a problem and it seems unlikely that they're all making it up.

Accounting firms know that tone is set at the top - look at FTX if you don't believe. Leadership sets the company climate, no one else has the power.

When it reaches the stage when actual lawsuits are filed it means that the situation is grave. Most labour disputes are settled informally. The ones that end in front of a judge are usually the ones with merit, the filing party will have consulted with an attorney who will have advised against proceeding if the case isn't watertight.

If one can’t code and gets fired as it was in Adobe case, you can’t blame caste system for it. That lawsuit for meritless and pushed by a CA EOC officer of Pakistan descent and a hinduphobe to his core.

The point being this is politics and lack of competence. Nobody even in India cares about caste unless it is election time. Further the biggest casteism I have seen is in USA between the ivy leaguers vs non ivy leaguers, particularly in finance and vc industry.

The globalists hate Modi’s India so there is this consistent pattern of hammering India on caste, religion and Hinduism irrespective of the forum. Historically India has a Varna or class system based on temperament(Guna)and actions(karma). The caste system in India was a British creation modelled after Spanish Casta system - blood purity etc,

You got it backwards. There may be small pockets where caste won’t matter, but it mostly does in insidious and invisible ways all the time.

Context - Indian Engineer from the 'General' category.

I agree to the fact that there is systemic caste based discrimination across the institutes specified. No doubt about it.

The data clearly shows that not enough people from marginalized communities get a representation in these institutions. However, there are so many factors at play that could influence their representation (other than the one suggested by the article):

- What about parents from these communities who are not aware of such opportunities existing for their children

- What about students who don't get science education at higher secondary level because of lack of infrastructure locally

- What about parents who do not have an economic backing to let their children pursue a career in science

All I am saying is that the caste based 'reservation' is a slippery slope. I personally know people who belong to these communities, who score very low in entrance tests and still manage to secure an admission to top colleges. Worse I have seen people bribe their way and change their community certificate to 'OBC/MBC' to get admitted into colleges.

There needs to be equity not in number of seats reserved. That is a lose-lose situation (student with merit doesn't get a chance, students from marginalized community are discriminated because they have a free ticket). The first step IMHO would be ensure access and infrastructure, and awareness to people from these communities.

Equity in primary, secondary education for all >>> Equity by caste based reservation of seats

This. You said it in better words (than my comment).

Forget about diversity.

When a society excludes whole classes of people from fields of study or professions, that society also limits the pool of talent available.

Excluding women, castes, races, ethnicities seems like a poor choice for any society that wants to advance as a whole.

Every mind has value, we must agree.

I think the point here is caste is something different than the other categories. Caste doesn't discriminate gender, religon etc. In the indian caste system you can be a woman, a Christian, etc and still not escape it. It is a layer on top of all the other forms of discrimination and traditionally passed through generations.

Most of the people I know that came from India to America, when I have asked, have told me that they forgot about caste within a few years of living in the US. Everyone's lived experience is different though and I can imagine these traditions die harder in pockets of the US where South Asian communities live.

Here are the facts about women in India:

Technology firms in India have a better female to male staff ratio than the tech giants of Silicon Valley [1]. India has a much better male-to-female ratio compared with the U.S. Engineering male-female ratio in India is 1.96 as compared with 4.61 in the U.S.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-professional/2015/jun/2...

[2] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/engineering-...

What India Can Teach Silicon Valley About Its Gender Problem https://www.wired.com/2014/08/silicon-valley-sexism/

https://blog.hackerrank.com/which-countries-have-the-most-sk...

The 2015 stackoverflow survey has this interesting statement: "Developers in India are 3-times more likely to be female than developers in the United States." See https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015 Actually it is worse than it sounds because most of the female developers in the United States are first generation immigrants from Asia and Eastern Europe.

What's the breakdown of women in the context of this discussion (caste)? Is there an equitable ratio?

Those are facts about women in Indian IT that employs 5M / 0.5% of population.

Real concerning facts about women in India is they have some of the lowest female labour force participation rates in the world, excluding Arab countries. And DECLINING from 25-30% in early 2000s to ~17% today. Which is absurd since everywhere else, female partcipation increases in workforce as country developes.

That said, my understanding is, at least with respect to "elite" fields, i.e. talent that drives development, the balance is improving. Which TBH might be enough.

One aspect of this could be the support in India for maternal care?

https://www.sumhr.com/blog/maternity-leave-in-india#:~:text=...

Compare this with US where mothers are expected to be back to "normal levels of productivity" within 6-12 weeks. Any more is really a company benefit.

It's been sinking since 2000s and intuitively, Indian TFR is not high enough to explain such low female labour force participation, where world average is 50%. Also plenty of of countries with much better maternity benefits and significantly higher participation rates, but not fair to compare OECD. Culturally, I think it's driven by traditional social pressure for women to stay at home if husband can be bread winner, or jobs get deferred to men when times are tough.

>Those are facts about women in Indian IT that employs 5M / 0.005% of population

You're off by two orders of magnitude in your percentage calculation, which makes the rest of your comment suspect.

I forgot to multiple by 100 in haste. And even rounded up what was suppose to be 0.3% to 0.5% to be charitable. Therefore all other easily verifiable facts are suspect.

This is a real problem that doesn't get as much attention as it ought to. Google canceled a planned talk about this earlier this year.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/02/google-...

Why should Google let Tamil ethno-nationalists like Thenmozhi hold a talk?

> Why should Google let Tamil ethno-nationalists like Thenmozhi hold a talk?

Can you elaborate on why she is a "Tamil ethno-nationalist", and why this should disqualify her from giving a talk about caste equality?

Cisco:

Rare Caste Bias Case Advances, Raising Calls for Federal Action https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/rare-caste-...

California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cisco-lawsuit/california-...

---

Google:

Google’s Caste-Bias Problem https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/googles-caste-bias-pr...

Big Tech’s big problem is also its ‘best-kept secret’: Caste discrimination https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/big-techs-big-pro...

---

Cal State:

Cal State banned caste discrimination. Two Hindu professors sued. https://wapo.st/3CHYYSA

This is a poorly researched article that just put forward one side of the story.

Ask the general category students about it and they will tell you how they are deprived of opportunities because of quota system.

For those unaware of quota system in India, in easy words, it is somewhat similar to this analogy-

There is a 100m race. 'General' category, SC/ST category, OBC category participates in that same race.

For General category start line is a 0 mark and finish line at 100m mark. For OBC start line is at 10m mark and finish line at 90m mark. For SC/ST start line is at 20m mark and finish line at 80m mark.

This makes it easy for an OBC, SC/ST to enter in any top university they want. It is after entering the institute, they are unable to cope up with the rigor and fail or drop out. That is when this "victim" picture is painted by them. Ask an IIT/NIT/IIM/Doctor/IISc student in your circle about it and they will tell you the other side of the story.

Successive Indian govts have taken several measures to ensure they are not deprived. Today the scenario is that if a general category person, even by mistake, calls them out with certain words, there is an instant jail with no provision of bail.

Is there stats on what the population/percentage representation of folks in these 3 categories are?

Yes. OBC ~ 52%, SC/ST ~ 22%. Rest General.

Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India#Caste

(Though it refers to a 1983 report but more or less this proportion remain the same.)

> after entering the institute, they are unable to cope up with the rigor and fail or drop out.

I'm curious, what's your theory for why these individuals are not performing at the level of the top students from other castes? The obvious answer would be that due to a history of discrimination and/or limited opportunities, they haven't been able to flourish in the same way. But according to you:

> Successive Indian govts have taken several measures to ensure they are not deprived.

So what is it?

This is where most General category folks have the pet peeve with the government.

Gen folks won't mind if govt spends, gives them scholarship, exclusive tuitions to the deprived ones BEFORE such exams BUT let them compete with the same starting and finish line.

India is run by populist measures with an unending eye on the next elections. (This is irrespective of governments or whichever party is ruling.)

> So what is it? Read about the mindboggling misuse of SC/ST act and you will have your answer. It is so highly misused that Supreme Court of India had to intervene and dilute it but govt under immense pressure had to pass an ordinance within a week of that judgement to negate it.

Throwaway can explain everything

>General category start line is a 0 mark and finish line at 100m mark its BS

Let me explain OBC - around 48% of population SC/ST - around 27% of population General category - around 30% of population That's why Gov is not doing caste census

Entire reservation is only 50% so remaining 50% for general

>Throwaway can explain everything

Calling out names won't help your case sir.

Read about eligibility criteria of any such insti. It is exactly the analogy I have described above.

Here is the one for NEET (Medical entrance exam in India) - https://medicine.careers360.com/articles/neet-eligibility-cr...

What I found surprising is that the genetic distance between Indian castes is rather large, comparable to the distance of a northern European to eg a greek person: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC311057/

That because of about 1500 years of strict endogamy. It's only in very recent times that inter-caste marriages have become more common.

A lot of research into the genetic history of the Indian subcontinent seems to be from the late 90s and early 2000s.

Is there a reason it has stopped? We have gotten a lot better at genetic anthropology since then but for some reason there is very little new research on the genetic history of the Indian subcontinent.

I assume people are not in a hurry to get themselves canceled. I’d imagine genetic researchers are particularly sensitive to potential misuse of their research.

> the genetic distance between Indian castes is rather large, comparable to the distance of a northern European to eg a greek person

It's best said that India is Europe in half the land area. Culturally (languages, writing scripts, music, food, dance, architecture, politics) and pheno/genotypically (skin colour, facial and body structure, mt/Y-chromosomal DNA). I struggle to find another single country with as long a history as India's, which is as diverse.

It seems to me that, if you have a society that divides people by caste and comes down hard on intermarriage, after some generations this is what you'd expect. Not one big "Indian" gene pool, but several smaller ones who remain distinct while still living close together.

I think the surprising aspect is how completely the separation must have been maintained for such a long time.

Actually, we _do_ see this in Europe too. They don't have castes in Europe, by that name, but they did have the feudal system, with a clear division between commoners and aristocrats. One big difference was that it was possible for a commoner to be given a title and hence promoted, so there was some fresh blood coming in, but you still saw things like the serious genetic diseases of the Habsburgs.

Its a chicken & egg question, what came first? The caste separation or the genetic separation? I find both plausible.

https://unherd.com/2022/06/americas-fake-caste-war/

Pervasive in Tech as well. Well known in FAANG companies that upper castes promote other upper castes and squash anyone under them from a lower caste. Also actively hushed, see Google canceling a talk on their campus about this very issue after upper castes complained.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/big-techs-big-pro...

~2% of Indian expats in the US are low-caste, and most of those are not in tech. This is a manufactured controversy.

Spoken like an upper caste member. The article lays out issues in Google and lawsuits in other large tech companies. "Manufactured Controversy" that has led to major Discrimination lawsuits. Sure.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cisco-lawsuit/california-...

I don't think we should make these kinds of accusations on hn, but, it's interesting that they are a first time commenter

It’s negatively impacted companies I’ve worked with with good developers being stone walled. I spent half of my time being a go-between for different groups that refused to talk to each other.

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