Is urbanization and industrial development defeating
the inequities of caste in India, as many upper-caste Indians like to believe (using it to buttress their opposition to caste-based reservations)? Well, not quite.
Cities do offer greater anonymity and a diversity of jobs unrelated to
traditional caste occupations, thereby weakening many, perhaps even the worst, forms of rural
casteism. An office-going Brahmin
is unlikely to worry about being polluted if he brushes against a Dalit in a crowded bus, or object to eating out lest a Dalit prepared the meal. But
even as many old caste abuses have vanished or weakened in the face of
urbanization, others have arisen or evolved into malignant forms. Industrialization is indeed a turbulent force for the caste system,
but it is not in itself a socially progressive force. Depending on the
injustice and inequities already present, capital and industry can deepen preexisting social privileges and discrimination, which seems to be the
case in India.
As many historians of caste have noted, caste in the urban milieu has morphed to
behave more like an ethnic community, whose members not only harbor
notions of “ethnic” distinctiveness but also a strong consciousness of
rank vs. other caste communities. This continuing lack of egalitarianism then
poisons urban civic life. It impacts hiring decisions; access to rental
housing, health care, and public services; response from law
enforcement; judicial verdicts; etc. In our age of economic
liberalization, even the Indian private sector oozes discrimination from all its pores. If this is a surprise, a
recent and extensive study, Blocked by Caste, should decisively dispel the
belief that the private sector is mostly caste-blind and hires based on
‘merit’. It shows that equally qualified Dalit and Muslim résumés are much less likely
to get picked than upper-caste ones, and exposes other “hidden nuances of caste prejudice in the language of globalisation that
contemporary India speaks.”
Below are two reviews of Blocked by Caste. The obvious
question this study raises is: shouldn’t affirmative action be part of the
strategy for equalizing opportunity in the private sector? I’ve included another related study (and here is a story about housing discrimination in Delhi).
The economics of caste inequity
“HR bosses, one and all, swore by merit in their choice of candidates and were dead set against reservation of jobs. But, the commitment to merit was voiced along with the conviction that merit tends to be distributed by caste or region! Such stereotyping, [the authors of the study] found, made it impossible for highly qualified, low-caste applicants to be hired for their skills and accomplishments. In sum, employers were not “caste blind” as they claimed.”
“There is a myth, however, that caste does not matter in the urban milieu and that, with the anonymity of the big city and with education and associated job and occupational mobility (assisted by affirmative action), traditional caste-based discriminatory practices disappear.” … “Caste discrimination not only persists but has taken new forms and penetrated into new systems.”
Dalit is a Dalit even in a ‘free’ market
“Sirswal, 75, had started off as a sweeper but is now one of the oldest businessmen in Panipat, Haryana. He quit his sweeper’s job once his handloom unit was on its feet. His success, he says, came largely because he hid the fact that he was born a Valmiki Dalit. Customers who discovered his caste origins shunned him. Banks would not give loans because caste matters to them too, and Dalit entrepreneurs are too few and far between to work the system as a group like the upper castes do.”
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