India threatens to fire hundreds of docs (Affirmative Action)

[varun]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060530/ap_on_re_as/india_affirmative_action

NEW DELHI, India - India's government threatened Tuesday to fire hundreds of government doctors striking to protest an affirmative action plan for low-caste Hindus and said replacements would prop up crippled medical services.

The Supreme Court warned doctors to end their two-week strike, saying patients were "at the mercy of God."

...The government's plan would increase the quota for low-caste students in state-funded medical, engineering and other professional colleges from 22.5 percent to 49.5 percent.

Backers say the policy would help undo centuries of oppression and continuing discrimination. Hinduism divides people into various castes and, while the system has been officially outlawed, discrimination remains common...

[manic expression]

1. One thing

"Hinduism divides people into various castes"

That's a bunch of crap. The caste system is a mechanism of Indian society and NOT religion. Ask yourself, how can Hinduism thrive in societies without formal castes? Try to find me ONE justification of the formal caste system in Hindu scripture. You won't find it. Also, the system itself simply ensured the passage of occupation from parent to child, something that has been done EVERYWHERE.

Furthermore, the caste system is mostly gone, and discrimination along caste lines almost exclusively happens in very uneducated and impoverished areas.

Oh, and what about the Mexicans who mow White America's lawns? Are they not "outcastes" as well? Don't even get me started on a big chunk of Europe or the rest of the entire world. It is absolutely pathetic when people who live in completely stratified societies bemoan the oppression of the caste system in India.

:rant:

[Boomer]

2. So why are the doctors on strike?

If the caste system is "mostly" gone, why would these doctors rebel at this ruling?

Not sure why you think European social class stratification somehow absolves the Indian system. Isn't it possible to deplore both?

[manic expression]

5. Well,

because they think the ruling is unfair. As the article says, they don't like that AA in the same way a lot of privileged people like AA here. That doesn't change the fact that the more "advanced" parts of India have very little discrimination.

You can very effectively deplore both. However, saying stratification is a "Hindu" trait is patently hypocritical. The thing that gets me is the concentration on one injustice and not the others, especially when those same critics are living in societies that are full of injustice.

[Bhaisahab]

3. The caste system is not "hindu"

its a millenia-old cultural quirk. even Indian Muslims and Christians have caste sensibilities.
Regarding the reservations, the argument that is being made by concerned citizens - of which I am proud to say my father-in-law is one, having filed a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court - is that reservations benefit only the "creamy layer" of backward classes. Really impoverished families belonging to lower castes have no hope in hell of meeting the minimum academic criteria for entry to the elite Indian Institutes of Technology or Medical schools. What is needed therefore is affirmitive action at the primary education level.
The "creamy layer" consists of families where at least 2 generations have availed reservation, and thus are morally wrong to seek reservation for their progeny. Why would the daughter of a low-caste bureaucrat or doctor need reservation? Is it not better to provide reservation to the daughter of an upper-caste farmer who lives below the poverty line?
its all a load of bullshit really. polishitians target castes because these are assured vote banks. providing reservations based on economic criteria is no vote bank, because poverty in India does not discriminate between castes.
democracy - its all about getting the math right.

[sweetheart]

4. Yes, its pretty much global

Every culture has its untouchables. In America, they are called "ex-prisoners" and
are the poor who've under the screw of the man; mostly black and of the poorest
educational and family backgrounds. As they've been criminalized, it rationalizes
the caste system in the minds of the upper castes, who see them as dirt, they can't
vote, often can't travel outside of a state, and can't get jobs that pay well.

Is a caste system based on systemic poverty any different than another caste system
based on systemic poverty? Not really, and i agree with you, that the change can be
made in public schooling to enable equal opportunity, but not based on some sort of
reverse-birthright. It all comes down to economics, and if you get jobs and income-earning
power to those folks, they'll make their own equality. The stratification of US society
is getting more and more rigid, that a comparison with indian castes is sadly in order,
to the same of both nations, both peoples, and a planet of persons who wished we'd be
more advanced in our collaborative development by this 21st century.