BLOCKED BY CASTE: ECONOMIC DISCRIMINATION AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION IN MODERN INDIA, Edited by Sukhadeo Thorat and Katherine S. Newman

review: Caste & the labour market (The Hindu)

“There is a body of research on discrimination in rural areas and on the continuation of caste barriers to economic and social mobility in village India. 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. This book explodes that myth in a set of chapters that focus on the formal labour market. These chapters use methodologies developed in the United States to study racial discrimination, and are written in collaboration with scholars from the U.S. [...]

“In another chapter, Jodhka and Newman report on detailed interviews with human resource managers of 25 large firms in New Delhi. All the managers insisted that hiring was solely on the basis of ‘merit,’ and old practices such as hiring kin or members of the same community did not exist.

“At the same time, every hiring manager said ‘family background’ (including the educational level of parents) was critical in evaluating a potential employee. This is clearly discriminatory, for Dalit applicants may not have the same social and educational background as those from the upper castes. As the authors note, ‘one must take the profession of deep belief in meritocracy with a heavy dose of salt.’”

BLOCKED BY CASTE: ECONOMIC DISCRIMINATION AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION IN MODERN INDIA, edited by Sukhadeo Thorat and Katherine S. Newman, Oxford University Press