(PDF) Caste System in India

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How India managed caste system in education and work
Student’s name
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Introduction
The caste system in India exists in the form of social hierarchy. It combines aspects of
both occupation and race class. Removal of caste discrimination is one of the major agenda in
India. There are many positive policies related to employment and education is in place. The
required monitoring is to be done from government side. The caste is something attached to the
person from start. The surnames themselves define the caste of the person. The caste
discrimination plays an important role in day to day decision making of work place as people
caste can create the first impression about people. It plays very important role in education and
recruitment in public as well as private sector. The issue is so sensitive that government has to
consider various related policies before making any decision. The government time to time needs
to defend itself from not seen as supporting one particular group. It is also necessary that HR
employees understand the complexity of caste system and its relevancy for organizations.
Reservation system provides support to lower caste people in their education and public-sector
jobs.
Analysis
Caste is one of the prevalent issues in Indian Society. Many people claim that it divides
society, restrict opportunity for particular group. It also restricts nation to realize its full
potential. Even with the modernization, the Indian caste system has proved itself more rigid.
Dalits or people from the low caste of society were majorly considered for work involving
butchering, cleaning street, removal of rubbish etc. (Abraham, 2016). Also there is high school
dropout rate in low caste families (De Roover & Claerhout, 2015). It is the duty of every state

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and individual to fight this evil of caste system and provide every individual the rights promised
by Indian Constitution.
According to Indian Constitution, discrimination against lower caste is considered illegal.
The government has come up with number of affirmative actions to improve socio- economic
conditions of lower caste of society. These include Job reservations and college entry quotas etc.
The main objective of reservation is the equal progress for all sections of society. According to
article 46 of the constitution, economic and education interest of weaker section of people should
be preserved and shall protect them from all form of social exploitation and social injustice
(Deshpande, 2017). Reservation helps the lower section of society to enjoy humane lifestyle.
This affirmative action helps in compensating the historical injustice (Haynes & Alagaraja,
2016). It was put in place to ensure equality of opportunities. It wants to place backward society
at par with upper classes. Reservation policy is based on the percentage of population of different
castes (Kedia, 2015). Quotas or reservation already apply in government and education.
Significant amount of government job and university seats are reserved for tribal people and
dalits or the low class. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has introduced some measures
that include scholarships for the low caste candidates. The Federation of Indian chambers of
commerce and Industry decides to support poor districts’ entrepreneurs in India.
Education system aims to grow society. So doing caste based reservation in education
and employment sector helps in achieving this goal. Education should be spread to all the
economic sections of society. Reservation is set to reduce the communal gap. Reservation has
helped literacy level of SC/ST communities. Now there is more number of people having access
to education. Better education has leaded them to get more job opportunities. This further has
declined the Below Poverty Line population combining both SC and ST (Amin, 2016).

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Reservation has allowed children from lower caste to acquire language skills in terms of
phonological awareness and letter recognition. They become more proficient on tasks like
addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, sequencing etc. Upper class generally takes private
coaching which lower class does not have economics to go for private coaching. In addition to
relaxing admission norms, the government has asked the universities or schools to rank them on
easy parameters. It is done to boost the confidence of the low class students. This era of internet
is providing education to almost everyone irrespective of any caste, creed and social status
(Vikas & Belk, 2015). These online courses are becoming recognized courses and thus preparing
candidates for the job opportunity. Many of the courses are free like Google Analytics etc.
Many public sector units like Indian Oil follow the reservation system. They hire from
“reserved categories”. Over 20% of the jobs are reserved for low caste candidates. But this
follows the regressive competition to attract the best. They make sure that there is no
compromise on the quality of candidates recruited. But promotion norms are relaxed for these
candidates. Many people believe that there is improvement only in public sector jobs for this
section of society and other areas still needs to get exploited. If there is no reservation in public
or private sector jobs than there is no discrimination but then it will deny jobs to different
sections of society (Jensenius, 2015). This is how reservation justifies itself. However, general
category believes that because of reservation, merit is in danger (Iyengar & Saini, 2015). There
are many claims that reservation is diluting the quality of education. Majority of people who gets
seat does not belong to backward class or are poor. So reservation is getting misused in many
parts of the India.
Naukri.com, India’s biggest online recruitment service has decided to recruit candidates
based on the caste. But there are very few companies which tend to work in this regards. Based