Thread by @muralipiyer

There are two problems with the caste debate.
A) it’s about the identity of the person.
B) it’s about the culture of the land.

You can talk about caste discrimination, but it has to be a two way street.
When a “Dalit” insults a “Brahmin”, law must allow victim to file complaint.

https://twitter.com/muralipiyer/status/1292291371353509888

Caste or a caste-like structure is inherent in any society.
The primitive societies talk in terms of class instead. Sadly, the anti-caste brigade is rooted in this primitive dialectic.
Civilisations sustained over millennia have evolved more than these primitive societies.

In terms of societal understanding, these primitive “modern” schools are all looking too much at the materialistic of the now instead of having a long term holistic view of human species as a whole.
Defined roles is a caste-based society is work of evolution.

There are some roles that will get redundant over time.
There are going to be migration from one set of roles to another.
In a caste-based society, both happen, have happened, and will continue to happen.
Rigidity is only imposed by those hide the truth.

The hard fact is that castes have become far more rigid only after the primitive dialectics infiltrated socio-political discourse of this country. Same case with religion.

The only way for social reform is by providing equal opportunity to all.

What is equal opportunity?

An interesting pic that was circulating earlier:

Needless to say, all three are wrong.
Equality means: for the same amount of money paid, the vendor should give the same quality of tea in the same type of glass.
Money is the objective criteria here.

Equality is not materialistic.

Equal opportunity doesn’t mean equal outcomes.

Free markets have provided more equality than wokeness.

Among inequalities, digital inequality is a concern, because it is limited by access.
By providing equality of access, this can be resolved.
In the tea analogy, lack of tea shop or tea vendor denying access despite customer having money is the concern.

A meritorious person denied entry is the problem.
This is against the principle of equality.

The government and the society’s role is to ensure this equality.

In the tea analogy, ensuring that no one with money is denied tea(and we are assuming stock hasn’t run out) is the key.

The role of government is to ensure there is a rule that prohibits tea vendor from denying access.

In terms of Indian society, the role of the government is to ensure that everyone with a fixed criteria is provided access.
In terms of jobs, it means anyone who is meeting criteria gets the job.

Reservation is just the wrong principle to do this basic work.
It’s doubly wrong because jobs are a limited resource, involving competition.
Competition is a great leveller. When only merit is considered, the best(most qualified) should get the job.

If a certain section is not getting the job, the question to be asked is why.
Is it because of lack of opportunity or lack of access or lack of sufficient merit.
Remedial actions need to be assigned based on that.

We have NET coaching where people from SC/ST background need to pay less fees. That’s a good policy, if the premise is that the number of people cracking NET is lower. It’s a wrong policy, if the premise is that the group requires special treatment.

Asking religion or caste or any other such irrelevant details at the time of job recruitment process is inherently wrong if the specific role has no need for such information.
That is the core principle.

Jobs is one area where the criteria is both objective and subjective.
Objective part involves checking requisite skills.
Subjective part involves identifying who has better skill among those who meet the objective criteria.

In the subjective part(typically the interview part), the question is: how do we ensure that a person is not denied equal access to the limited resource of the job vacancy.
Among two people, why is one chosen over the other.

This is where rubrics come in.
How do you evaluate who among the two is more passionate about the job. This can only be judged by how well they communicate.
This skill is subjective, but a suitable rubric with say a 1 to 3 or a 1 to 5 scale can capture it.

Essentially, there has to be a method for quantifying the subjective.

In India, the main issue is actually the other part of the problem. In the tea analogy, it’s the lack of tea shop in the particular region.
In the jobs example, it’s the lack of sufficient vacancies.

Essentially, the Indian problem is a demand side construct.

This needs to be dissected further.
Take the example of doctors. There are states where doctors after are working for as low as ₹10,000-₹20,000, barely able to meet personal expenses let alone the educational loans. There are states/districts with no doctors available.

You have to understand this. There is high competition due to limited number of vacancies in one place. Or there is a supply problem in one side.
At the same time, there is a huge demand problem in another part of India.
This disparity is one of the main concerns.

In India, we have an aggregate demand problem, complicated by local supply problem.
In this thread, demand is about existence of vacancy and supply is about availability of qualified people to fill that vacancy.
To address demand, we have to increase supply.

Skilling enough people to meet the requirements is one aspect.
The other is to create more vacancies in places with more supply of skilled workers. An alternative is to guide skilled workers to move to places with relative scarcity, or places with vacancies.

Note that caste never cane into picture in this example of medical jobs.

India’s current problems are so basic that even without caste based constraints imposed by the myopic reservation policy, it’s already a difficult problem to solve. Caste only complicates the matter.

In this analogy, we can’t go Marxist way because we don’t have tea. We can’t go Ambedkarite way, because we don’t have glasses. We can’t go Periyarite way because we don’t have a measuring glass to judge quantity, and we don’t have tea as well.

Without sufficient access, how can you even talk about equality.

Equality can come into picture only when there is available opportunity.

That brings us to the urban rural divide.

Over the years, urban areas started building enough (or enough-ish) capacity while rural areas are mostly deprived.

Take the case of legal education. There are only 23 law National Law Universities. All of them are in cities, almost all in administrative/economic capital of that state.
IITs and NITs have all been urban focused.
AIIMS was Delhi focused.

The reason why urban areas got opportunity is because of concentration of everything on and around urban areas. This meant that quality of life is drastically different. It’s not as stark as in more developed states like Kerala, but it’s really bad in many states like BIMARU ones

As a mental exercise, try removing all cities and their incomes from national numbers.
Immediately, you will find both gdp and per capita income plummet to the bottom levels.

Caste is pronounced in rural areas in their functional nature, and is pronounced in urban areas due to its confrontational nature.
The reason: urban areas provide role mobility of people from the largely functional castes. Rural areas are not developed enough to provide access.

The caste debate is myopic and one sided because people are airing their views either from a rural angle or an urban angle. The key problem here is lack of sufficient opportunities in the rural economy.

The biggest advantage of the current Wuhan virus health crisis is that now people know that a similar kind of access can be made available from villages as well. We have the numbers suggesting that rural data demand has increased manifold. Software services run from villages now.

We now know that we can create opportunities in rural areas too.
A child need not be denied access just because they grew up in rural areas.
A child need not be denied access because of caste or religion.

Vikas or development is the key to ensure that rural environment doesn’t interfere with social mobility.

At the end of the day, equality of opportunity is all about enabling social mobility.

To summarise, there is nothing wrong with the natural caste-based social structure. In the past, social mobility was not restricted. Lack of access is the key issue. Socialist/leftist politics forced on us has worsened Casteism/caste rigidity. India has bigger problems to deal.

There is only one cure for the negative side of castes, or what i referred as casteism: development or Vikas.
There is only one impediment for development: socialism/wokeness.
It’s time to focus on fixing structural issues, and caste doesn’t matter there.

We have all seen and endured the problems of casteism, whether it’s in politics or in personal life.
It’s time we move out of casteist shackles by getting back to our roots.
Remember Ramayana was accessible to all, even though Valmiki Ramayana was not read by all.

Let’s get back to our core identity. The identity that’s rooted in individual, locality, community, caste group, linguistic group, and cultural identity of bhArata, the sovereign in the bharata khanda of bhArata varsha.
Let’s get back to being Indian again.