[Urbanstudy] On business and caste in India

[Leo Saldanha]

  Please find enclosed a note on an interesting study recently conducted
  on caste in India.


Leo Saldanha


  http://economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9983028


  On business and caste in India

Oct 18th 2007
 From /The Economist/ print edition


    India's labour divisions

SIR -- Your briefing on business and caste in India claims there is "no 
strong evidence" that companies discriminate against /dalits/ and other 
members of the lower castes ("With reservations 
<http://economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9909319>", 
October 6th). Our two-year study, which we will soon present, found 
widespread discrimination against highly qualified low-caste 
individuals. We sent out 4,800 applications in response to 
advertisements for graduate jobs in Indian and multinational companies. 
These applicants bore distinctively upper-caste names, Muslim names and 
/dalit/ surnames, but were otherwise identical in educational 
qualifications and work experience.

The odds of a /dalit/ being invited for an interview were about 
two-thirds of the odds of a high-caste applicant with the same 
qualifications. The odds of a Muslim applicant being invited to an 
interview were even worse: only one-third as often as the high-caste 
Hindu counterpart.

 

The evidence is solid. Serious policies, coupled with an overhaul of 
India's education system, are required to overcome this pernicious form 
of social exclusion. Maybe then the widespread relegation to the bottom 
of the barrel of India's poorest castes will begin to diminish.

Paul Attewell

Professor of sociology

City University of New York

New York

Katherine Newman

Professor of sociology

Princeton University

Princeton, New Jersey

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