Despite a strong academic record, the 31-year-old graduate student said he wouldn't have gotten the post without government-mandated quotas. "People don't want that you sit with them," he said. "At the moment they know your caste, they create barriers."
India still struggles with vestiges of an ancient and discriminatory caste system, even as it emerges as a potential 21st-century economic power.
The system, which dates back more than 2,000 years, divides the population into higher castes, which include priests and warriors, and lower castes, such as laborers. At the bottom sit the "untouchables," known as Dalits.
A recent government push to expand college admission and job quotas — an Indian form of affirmative action for the lower castes — has run into stiff opposition. Students have taken to the streets of New Delhi several times to protest the plan.
The clash pits the winners in India's ongoing economic boom against those who have been left behind.
While a burgeoning middle class snaps up automobiles and the latest appliances, 327 million Indians — about 30% of the population — still live in poverty on less than $1 a day, according to the Asian Development Bank.
Some low-caste families have risen to the middle class, thanks in part to quotas, but most remain poor, said Nandu Ram, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and author of several books on India's lowest castes.
India sets aside 22.5% of its government jobs for the lowest castes, and an additional 27% for what are called the other "backward" castes, the next step up in the caste system.
'Divide in society' evident
The debate over quotas was intensified by the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, which was elected in 2004 on a promise of spreading the fruits of economic growth to the poor.
Singh wants to introduce job quotas at private companies and expand quotas for college admission.
The uproar over quotas is "the sharpest expression of the divide in society between the classes," human rights lawyer Colin Gonsalves said.
Students worry that higher quotas will make the competition for limited slots even tougher.
The All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, for example, has only 50 slots a year for graduate students, 11 of which are reserved for the lowest castes.
Donning white lab coats, undergraduates who expect to be competing for those spots marched in New Delhi last week to protest any quota increase.
Gonsalves remained unmoved. "These are elitist institutions," he said of the universities, "that need to be beaten on the head."
The anti-quota camp accuses the government of advocating quotas to seek votes from the lower castes. The backward castes make up about two-thirds of the population.
A better solution would be to ensure that the lower castes have better access to education, quota opponents say, something they blame the government for failing to provide. "The government can't provide primary and secondary education," said Peeyush Kumar, 20, a student who has protested the quotas. "That's why they are imposing this (quota), to increase the number of votes they are going to receive."
Business and academic leaders also warn that quotas could erode India's competitive advantages in a global economy.
"The only way we can compete with global players is by hiring best-in-class people from India and the rest of the world," said Azim Premji, chairman of software outsourcing giant Wipro. "We are an organization that requires selecting people on merit."
Freedom from humiliation
Blatant caste discrimination is on the wane in big cities but persists in rural communities, where Dalits must live apart from others and take water from separate taps.
In extreme cases, Dalits who violate caste codes are beaten and their houses destroyed.
Some offending women have been stripped naked and paraded around as a humiliating lesson to others, according to the New Delhi-based National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights.
As a young village schoolteacher, Hansraj Dugal would bring sweets to share with his colleagues at tea time. They remained uneaten. Not one of the other teachers would "pollute" themselves by touching the sweets of an untouchable, he said.
That kind of treatment drove Dugal, 45, to leave the village for the relative anonymity of New Delhi.
He changed the last name of his children to try to conceal their low-caste background.
Proudly describing their school honors, he hopes they can get through life without the benefit of quotas.
"I want to save my children from such discrimination," Dugal said.
Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-05-07-caste-barriers_x.htm?csp=34
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