From our news tab, via the Times Online:
For thousands of years India’s ethnic Gujjars have been looked down on by much of society, as they were traditionally pastoralists who raised sheep, goats and water buffalo.
Now, as India approaches the 60th anniversary of its independence, the Gujjars have had enough, and are demanding that their social status be changed. But in an unusual example of how caste works in modern India, they want to be downgraded to the lowest level so that they can benefit from an affirmative action scheme.
Tens of thousands of Gujjars have blocked roads and railway lines in the northwestern state of Rajasthan since Tuesday, accusing the local government of reneging on a promise to lower their status. At least 15 people, including two police officers, have been killed in rioting when the Gujjars repeatedly set alight police property and attacked government offices.
They’ve deployed the Indian Army to regulate this hot mess, especially since it is now affecting tourism.
The violence has fuelled criticism of India’s affirmative action scheme under which lower castes are given preferential access to government jobs and education…
I have heard of Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes, but I hadn’t heard of Scheduled Tribes. I await your scathing declarations of how I am a stupid ABCD who knows nothing about India and should therefore shut up. Whatevs, yo. I just found the following paragraph helpful, since the entire reservations/caste furor IS confusing for this bear of little brain.
The Hindu caste system, which enforces a strict social hierarchy from brahmins at the top to dalits at the bottom, was outlawed after India became independent in 1947. But to correct its injustices the Government divides the lower levels of society into Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC). SC includes untouchables and others at the bottom; ST consists of ethnic minorities and OBC comprises other people who were traditionally discriminated against.
Regarding the “downgrade”, the Gujjars want to switch from OBC to ST status.
::
Now be honest girls, how many of you are thinking of a certain commercial since I’ve used the term “downgrade” excessively? 😉
Speaking of things in XS, that website is excessively LOUD. I was wearing headphones when I discovered it; I think I’m partially deaf now.
Another example of downgrading.
Absolutely wrong. The ABVP in fact backed the Mandal implementation. It is only a few chatterati (like those at MIDS) made some clueless statements about who was supporting the students protesting against the Mandal implemetaion in Delhi in 1991. The BJP had just then grown overnight in the 1990 elections from 2 seats to a over a 100 very largely because of taking over the OBC votebanks in large parts of the North. By the time Weepy announced implementation of the Mandal recommendations (to counter Devi Lal’s proposed kisan rally; and to grab the key OBC votebanks including the Jats’) the BJP was already a significant player in the OBC votebank. Most of the BJP’s present leaders are from the OBC groups, although from the less powerful ones (Kurmis, keoris, Lodhs, Meena, Gujjar, Bishnoi, and many others).
That is where modern scholarship gets it wrong (with grave consequences for the polity). It is a meaningless to define Hindu – the construct you have devised – in terms of social structures and worship practices; historically or otherwise. All that historical evidence shows is that different groups in India and the neighbourhood follow different practices. All that modern “scholarship” has achieved is to construct an essential Hinduism based on doctrinaire religions and start clotting communities within and without that framework. This ignorance and absurdity manifested.
This doctrinaire framework Hinduism is ideological and has nothing to do with people and their lives.
What makes the case of the Gujjars interesting are its implications:
When the British started their caste censuses and hopeless attempts to classify jatis all over India in terms of a fixed caste hierarchy, they faced a similar phenomenon: all kinds of jati groups wrote letters and started petitions to argue that they belonged to a higher echelon of the hierarchy. The many jatis of which it was totally unclear whether they were ‘Kshatriyas’ or ‘Shudras’ or whatever were indignant when they were classified at a low level. Today, we see the reverse phenomenon: because it has become economically and politically more interesting to belong to the SCs, STs and OBCs, leaders from the same jatis argue that they are way down in the caste hierarchy.
This shows how the caste system is not an empirical structure in Indian society, but just a classificatory system that can be used for all kinds of pragmatic economic and political goals. That is, there is no fixed caste hierarchy in society, but it is an image that plays an important role in political discourse. Hence, according to the goals one intends to reach, one can easily switch from arguing that one’s group belongs to the so-called ‘upper castes’ to insisting that it is really a ‘lower or backward caste’. One can go from ‘Kshatriya’ to ‘Dalit-Bahujan’ if this helps one get reservations or scholarships. There are no social criteria to decide to which echelon a jati belongs in the ‘caste system’ (except, of course, average income and such like, but that just tells us the current socio-economic status of a particular jati, rather than its location in the ‘caste hierarchy’).
Therefore, it becomes very weird when people speak of ‘Dalits’ today as though this designates a social group or a unit of a social structure in India. There are hundreds of jatis that belong to the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order.
These do not together make up a clearly delineated unit in the Indian society. They are a group only in so far as the Indian Constitution makes them one and in so far as certain political leaders and movements intend to create a sense of shared interests among all jatis in the constitutional schedule.
Yours,
Jakob
GB, thanks 🙂
I understood the point, and I personally think this point is a) untrue, and b) irrelevant to the content of the post at hand.
Look, I didn’t bring this up to get into a huge conversation about Affirmative Action in the U.S. I took objection to the rhetorical device of presenting the two as analogous. Such an analysis is completely specious. Whether or not they are “similar in principle and spirit” (also debatable), they are not nearly similar enough to warrant comparison or analysis by analogy. Not only is affirmative action (in the U.S.) designed differently in its policy, effect, and implementation, it is treated in a legally different manner than it is in India. Furthermore, it extends much higher than higher education. If you’re going to look at the net effect on desis, then you’re going to have to look at the effect for desi women, low-income desis, desis in advanced degree programs, desi businesses who gain contracts, etc. The same argument or analysis doesn’t work for the Indian (desi) reservation system.
Well, I’m glad that you and your individual experiences do not guide public policy in either India or the U.S. I’m not arguing that affirmative action is perfect, but this kind of limited reasoning misses the point entirely — not just the point of the program, but also the fact that many people who think they do not benefit from affirmative action actually do so, both individually and as members of society. Does that mean that these programs are the end all be all in alleviating the socioeconomic inequalities rooted in racism? No. But if you’re not going to come up with an acceptable alternative that better promotes the public good (i.e. a greater equality of opportunity), then stop whining.
But if you listen to the utterly duplicitous defenders of casteism, well-represented here, the well known and much maligned hindu caste system either: 1. doesn’t exist at all (!) or; 2. it exists but is not at all hierarchical (despite its very definition as such!) or; 3. that it is the very epitome of freedom, dignity, opportunity and social security (despite being the exact opposite!).
Check out their atrocious and obscene lies here:
Caste defenders
As Jakob says, caste is not an empirical entity in the Indian context. Makes sense when you consider that caste is classification scheme used by the Portuguese to describe jati and varna – themselves very different from each other. In Tamizh Naadu I know of two v.large and powerful jatis that have an elaborate internal hierarchy most closely corresponding to varnashrama. This is apart from the other communities in UP/Bihar and the South that have an unclear although noticeable internal hierarchy. At this point there is no reason to conclude that there was a common thread linking the development of these hierarchies across regions. Ambedkar himself, although he bought into the Western idea of the Indian caste system, found it so bizarre that he wanted no one to profit from it in any way. Unfortunately Ambedkar was so much in the grip of the poor scholarship of our times that the theoretical failings of the caste system did not make him criticise western scholarship – although he did criticise many other notions of western scholarship that were then being thoughtlessly applied to the study of India – nationalism, race, language and cultural development etc., And needless to say he rejected doctrinaire belief systems completely and believed they went against Indian culture. In recent times the Mahars in Maharashtra have become the Uber scheduled castes much to the resentment of others in the group. The Meenas and the North Eastern communities dominate the ST category in the IAS selections. Again an example of the ahead of the curve dynamics I earlier explained. I hope all parties concerned stop trying to play politics and do a rethink on this disastrous policy of reservations.
BTW AA in the US is very sharply focused on the individual although it starts by looking at the group. This is why you find the top universities and corporate leaders selecting v.high numbers from the minorities. In the US AA is about leveling opportunities rather than outcomes. Even in India where they have tried to level outcomes, it is opportunities that have been getting leveled. In TN for instance, it is common in some households to hear, “You must study like the children of community”. Read about this inspiring example The lorry driver’s son who topped the civil services exam in Tamil Nadu
What nonsense. Admission to college in America is not based on test scores alone (true even before the era of Affirmative Action). Nor should it be. A well-rounded individual who scores above a certain level in the SATs is a better prospect than a nose-picking nerd who spent inordinate amounts of his/her time, energy and family money preparing for the SATs. There should be no affirmative action for rote learning or test-taking skills. Just look at the thoroughly incompetent and corrupt Indian Civil Service which rewards such skills.
Its worth pointing out that these same people who demand meritocracy based on tests are often the same hypocritical individuals who tenaciously defend casteism, which is the very opposite of a meritocracy! The sudra, untouchable and tribal majority of India should demand qualifying tests before caste is assigned. Seriously. Almost all these “brahmins” will then be found to be impostors 🙂
India under the domination of these so-called “upper castes” has been a total disaster. That alone is reason enough for Reservations.
On one hand I’m tempted to respond to GB’s …ah, comment… And on the other hand I wonder if there’s some truth to Camille’s point that AA is off topic.
I initially responded only to Anna’s pre-emptive defence on lack of knowledge on the Indian reservation system. But on this, I shall await SM Intern’s go ahead. If I hear nothing for a day, silence is consent.
M. Nam
Prema,
Time to relieve the tedium. Time for the clown act. Time for Prema
Admission to colleges in the US is very substantially based on test scores. All other things being equal, a candidate with better test scores prevails.
You can scream till you are blue in the face, but that is how it is done. In India merit as I explained earlier (you can read and understand right?) is what counts. You sound silly, no stupid, when you go off at the deep end. Merit is what is used to select winners everywhere. Spelling bee, the Putnam, the Science Olympiads, Latin exams etc. The student who scores best comes out on top. Rote learning does not help you in competitive exams – not the SAT, GMAT, GRE, and definitely not the JEE, UPSC exams etc. In none of these exams can you simply memorise and write from memory. Test taking skills may be overrated. But science prize winners as a rule have been great test takers, even if the reverse is often not true. The top schools in the US go out of their way to recruit
There are JEE toppers from India who have laterally transferred to top colleges in the US. And so with toppers from S.Korea/China/Japan etc.,
More bakwas! TN Seshan – a Palakkad Iyer – who revolutionised elections in India and put politicians in their place, is an IAS topper who supports reservations. The current Chief Election Commissioner T.Gopalaswamy is an Iyengar and an IAS topper, and Mayavati paid him a courtesy visit in his offices in delhi last week for conducting a well managed election in UP! The meritorious don’t defend casteism, they are simply saying that standards shd not be lowered. That is not defending casteism, it is simply rejecting mediocrity. In India there are 100s of people from every community making it to the highest ranks thanks to doing well in entrance exams. This year’s IAS topper is an OBC. So your criticism is directed at every candidate, general class, BC, SC, and ST who works hard and makes it into the Civil Services. You know what? Nobody gives a damn for your opinion.
This sounds like gibberish (even by your standards). So let’s try to unscramble it. qualifying tests to determine what? whether a person has brahminhood or some such thing? So you, after all this bluster, think that brahminhood is some lofty ideal, and that brahmans don’t live up to it (they are ‘impostors’?) Interesting! Many a brahman would endorse the idea.
Prema, you shd simply pipe down and listen.
Camille (Post 54: “Furthermore, it extends much higher than higher education. “
In Tamil Nadu, reservations are not only for college admissions, but also for jobs in government undertakings, and for promotions in jobs in government undertakings.
54 Camille “Whether or not they are “similar in principle and spirit” (also debatable), they are not nearly similar enough to warrant comparison or analysis by analogy.”
Camille, you have stated several times that the two are different or not similar enough. Can you be specific and give three or four reasons why they are essentially different? The few characteristics of the AA program cited in #54 seem to be merely operational and logistical in nature, and those obviously will not be identical to the AA program of another society. By the way, I am not posing a trick question. I am truly curious and interested in hearing your opinion.
As an aside, American AA may not be completely off topic. It is the only analogous experience the commenters here have to India’s SC/ST programs.
Whatevs, yo? Its always amazing how Indians suddenly think they are black. Whats funny is while African Americans are busy taking advantage of society Indians are too busy fighting amongst eachother and working too hard to care.
Do you know why India is still in such a bad condition? Blame your parents ABCD’s. I am one too so get off my back.
Its called brain drain. All your parents left instead of actually trying to create a strong independent India. They became posers in other countries. And now they all sit down at dinner and complain about it.
As for the Gujjar problem, it was always there but until we get a real leader, not a waif like Manmohan Singh, maybe someone like Prithviraj Chauhan, Shivaji or Ranjit Singh, these caste problems will still come up. People need a strong righteous leader to look up too.
If you can’t make your point without resorting to personal attacks, don’t make one at all.
Personal attacks? Where? Is this your way to silence actual intelligent dissent. Dissent of those who have actually been around India? Maybe the author should actually spend some time India and learn about India instead of shooting her mouth off? Thats my point.
Thanks for proving my point, exquisitely. There’s a way to dissent intelligently which doesn’t require being rude. How about discussing the issue, instead of the person who blogged it?
That’s called survival. The beauracracy in India even today still makes it hard for nurse to earn good money or for a scientist to get a project off the ground.
PG, almost every other country in Asia has had the ssme problems, but even the ones without the advantages that India had – Excellent English speaking, strong literary history, European features in the Northwest Deccan and Northwest India; have done better. Look at Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore or even China and Pakistan. Indians just don’t have pride when they leave India, they are all about money.
interestingly, the concept of “well-roundedness” (ie, sports, music,etc) originated as a way/justification for keeping jews out, since it favored the cultural predispositions of wasps. in fact the ivy presidents were very blatant about these reasons at the time (read it in nymag a few years back, if you want to try to get the original source)
Jyotsna
Our friend Prema is a well-known quasi-troll, so I wouldn’t get too excited with her gibberish. The clever thing about her(?) act is that she slips in a few sensible sentences and then begins the nonsense about fascist brahmins, racist indians, caste-obsessed nri’s etc. etc.
Nick
Huh? Prema may be a sophisticated troll but methinks you are the real thing….
How the heck has Pakistan done better???
I was going to comment on Prema’s crap comments, but seeing as they’ve been addressed…
Amitabh #49,
I’m not sure if imagining that desis in desh instantly identify people/peoples with some caste is a uniformly ABD thing or not, but it sure seems like that (Amitabh, I don’t know if you’re ABD. If not, then my inference about ABD’s maybe incorrect, though there remains a predisposition on this forum)
Desis in desh as far as I have observed, identify/try to guess/assign castes when it’s to do with worship (though not always), food, rituals, matrimony, education/reservation, and such things. A bunch of herders going vernacular in New India is rather uniformly taken as pain-in-the-ass-village-bumpkin-morons, and not with castes.
In fact, urban environments in India pretty much universally create non-caste identifiers for people, or at least identifiers with caste as a nominal component, until you hit upon any of the above situations. As a kid growing up, and as a youth in college etc., there were many times when I was aware that a person was baniya, or kayasth, brahmin etc. but didn’t have precedent to guide me in differentiating my behavior for each. If anything, the precedent was to NOT differentiate. This also applied to people of other religions. Heck I didn’t have ‘life-learning’ for interacting with non-reservation castes etc. differently either. Given the city, its economic and physical reality, ensured we all interacted with each other largely as peers, no matter what our parents brought to the cities from their smaller rural areas. The difference was mostly class, not caste.
All of this to say that caste is not a dominant identifying characteristic in civic situations in urban environments.
What’s with many of you people on this thread? Trying to actually address Prema’s comments with seriousness? Please, wake up and smell the troll.
What part of my statement: “Admission to college in America is not based on test scores alone” couldn’t you understand, that made you so foolishly attempt to “correct” me with a similar statement?
What you have jumped in to defend is Moornam’s asinine insinuation that minute differences in GPA and SAT scores trump any other considerations. In other words a strict meritocracy based only on test scores is the ideal. That is not how Princeton etc choose their freshmen class. If they did they would simply use a machine. Instead, all the top colleges have large admissions staff. Why? Because they decide not just on GPA or SAT scores, but also on recommendations, essays, extracurricular achievements, underprivileged minority status etc.
Thats a dumb statement. You obviously have no idea how the process works. The other things considered are usually intangibles that cannot be equated numerically to each other.
Very funny. India is the perfect example of how a strict meritocracy of dedicated rote learners and test-takers can have disastrous consequences. Just look at the Indian Civil Service. Is that something to be proud of? At least in America the SATs measure IQ, and the results are far, far better. Anyone who boasts of Indian meritocracy has to be a delusional idiot. What the hell has this system accomplished? Its record is shamefully pathetic.
An ignorant comparison. The Spelling Bees etc test specific skills and there is no nuance involved in judging the winners. A glowing recommendation by your spelling coach; or your musical or athletic talents etc will have exactly zero influence on whether you win or not. That is obviously not the case in college admissions, especially in the top colleges.
Thanks for the laugh. You now stand exposed as a silly, irrational, tambram bumpkin. What the hell does any of that prove? An “untouchable” lady pays a “courtesy visit” to some “brahmin” and you are nutty enough to triumphantly claim that it proves that I am wrong for saying that: Its worth pointing out that these same people who demand meritocracy based on tests are often the same hypocritical individuals who tenaciously defend casteism, which is the very opposite of a meritocracy! Get real pal, and grow up already.
What standards are you boasting about? The “high standards” that led to upper caste domination in India for so long has had worse than mediocre results. It has been a frickin disaster. Pragmatism teaches us that when something is an abject failure its time for a change.
Where did these brahmins pop out of? Didnt you claim that there is no such thing as the caste system? Get your story straight, you confused liar.
Prema,
Actually glowing recommendations and extracurricular activities of every sort cannot get you anywhere unless you have good test scores. You are simply screaming. Try not to look stupid, it’s enough if you sound stupid. The reason Princeton or any school employs armies of admissions officers is because they get huge numbers of applications clustered around a score. You are simply blabbering. Cut offs are set by test scores, and GPA (where they know about the school district concerned).
No simply a dumb conclusion.
The Civil Services exams go far beyond the SAT, and being meant for different positions are not comparable. check out earlier posts on the subject, and try to understand. You can read right?
These are all tests. They only test for different things that vary in scope. The key here being that the better one scores the higher you stand! Simple. But for an incompetent like you that is hard to accept.
You stand exposed as an unthinking, ignorant, blowhard with some severe reading comprehension problems. Clearly a merit-challenged sort!
And worse still a caste obsessed nut!
No the low standards that ensure a ruffian becomes a minister, and a minister’s daughter who can’t write her name gets into medical school.
That’s what would happen when a sub-par intellect is admitted. But a merit based system in India ensures it doesn’t happen. Sorry Prema, you can’t wreck the system, try as you might.
You should make a habit of reading things over a few times before you post. Read what I have written a few times and let it sink into your head. Don’t be disheartened because you lack the abilities to understand an argument. Just accept your current lack of competence and work harder. Merit rules. Get used to it.
Floridian – I’m a little rushed now, but I will definitely follow up later to your question. Copacetic? 🙂
jyotsana, while you’re generally right (that applicants tend to cluster around a test score/GPA bracket), Prema is also right in saying that a test score alone is not the prevailing factor in whether or not you get into college. This is especially true of colleges/universities who recognize that one’s SAT score means nothing more than whether or not that person is good at (or took classes to become good at) taking the SAT. It is especially relevant for traditionally underrepresented students (both socioeconomically, regionally, racially/ethnically) who do not always have what we think of as “super high” SAT scores, but are incredibly qualified when assessed along other metrics.
Manju’s also right in saying the “holistic” approach to admissions was originally intended to keep out Jewish applicants, who apparently were “too qualified.” All that said, I think we need to reassess when we think that the SAT — or any admissions-oriented standardized test racket, for that matter — is an objective measure of “merit.” The admissions system is so fucked up, even with all their attempts to make it “more open” or “more accessible.” It absolutely is biased towards elites, i.e. people whose parents have a college education, people in the upper middle/upper tax brackets, etc. Given that the U.S. is all about buying into the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” myth, it is amazing that inherently unmeritocratic admissions are cloaked in the language of “equal judgment before your SAT score.”
Sorry to totally divert the thread. I got caught up in the politics of U.S. college admissions and forgot that I was the one arguing to keep this on topic re: Gujjars. I’m sure we can all take this offline/onto email if it is too off topic.
Fair enough. There is no way for me to prove that the conversation took place – such is the nature of anecdotal evidence. But there’s one place where you can find proof of my observation that 2-gen desis by and large have been sold on AA. The place is….right here! Apart from Manju, I’ve yet to come across a single 2-gen poster who debates against AA. Now this too is anecdotal evidence of another scale, but I’m assuming it has a lot more weight in this debate.
Actually, the conversation continued for a long time after I got another helping of samosas, and centered around this very issue. Don’t worry – I won’t retype the whole thing! Here’s the jist of my argument.
If someone says that AA is not as bad as reservation in India – my answer is Yes – in implementation and intent, but No, in spirit. AA is not state-mandated quotas unlike in India, and is very small in quantity – less than 5-10%, unlike 70-80% in India. So the effects are not largely noticable, much like the effects of Social Security or Medicare in the 1950’s. But as everything else, any entitlement starts growing exponentially after a while, and once granted can never be taken away.
You say that those who work in academia are not close-minded, socially insensitive pricks. I agree. And that is the double-edged sword that I’m afraid of: AA is a system that’s largely dependant on the integrity and good intentions of a select few people.
The school administrative folks in America are presently composed mostly of liberal whites and Jews, both of these groups being well disposed to Desis and Asians. Hence, these incidents like the one in Princeton are just small pin-pricks that don’t matter in the long run since smart Desis and Asians will kick ass no matter where they go. Unless…
Unless of course, in time, the school admin is replaced by a group of people that are largely hostile to Desis and Asians. Then, my friend GB/Camille, the shit will hit the fan verrry quickly. It is a well known fact that most African Americans and Hispanics are, quite sadly, resentful of Asians and Desis( and Jews) – in matters of immigration, jobs, wealth, college admissions and the like. And these two groups are also the fastest growing segment of the American population (may together be 30-40%). Do want to bet that for your children’s generation (20-25 years from now), a large percentage of college admins will be individuals from these two hostile groups? What do you think will happen then? The subjective criteria stipulated in the present by a select few gatekeepers can be easily manipulated to keep Desis and Asians out. For a very long time. Like two or three generations.
That’s why the criteria for admissions should be as objective as possible. GPA, SAT scores and essays are a pretty good indicator of a person’s abilities to excel in college. The person’s subjective emotional intelligence (friendliness, non-confrontational, co-operativeness, risk taking ability etc) are the indicators of excelling at work. The flaw is that colleges are using the subjective pretext of emotional intelligence to underplay the objective merit to deny admission to individuals from successful groups. This is Social Engineering. This is playing God with people’s lives.
This will end in pain and tears for everyone. AA was originally intended to bring Blacks into the mainstream – good intentions. But now it’s being used to keep an Asian out solely because of his race. It’s one person now, but within a couple of decades the trickle could turn into a torrent. Distributive Justice will end up as selective injustice.
And it’s happening slowly. There are at least five schools districts in New Jersey alone where high schools have started putting down Desis and Asians on one pretext or another. Alarmed by the near dominance of these two groups in academics, they are putting up walls (or shall I say glass ceilings) based on subjective criteria invented on a daily basis. They are obviously getting severe heat from parents of , ah, non-Desi/non-Asian kids, to “level the playing field”. Asians and Desis are slowly and steadily selling their houses and moving into other school districts.
M. Nam
Firstly, MoorNam, there is absolutely zero empirical evidence for all of the claims you’ve made. Just a fear that if Latin@s and African Americans are in power that they will continue to propagate anti-desi/Asian racism. Maybe we see in others characteristics that reflect how we behave?
Secondly, there is little to no empirical evidence that your SAT score is a good predictor of academic performance in college beyond the first semester. You can continue to repeat what you think, but it doesn’t make it objectively true. The funny thing about “objective” measures is that they are not really objective at all, but they give us metrics that we can say are objective so that we can ignore all the inherent inequalities in the process itself.
Whining or Whinging ( as the aussies call it) is the first step in changing public policy. When enough people whinge enough time to the right persons, policy begins to change. Not that a change in public policy in either USA or India will make a difference to me or my offspring. So far, AA in Australia is almost non-existent. I hope it stays that way for the next few decades.
The reservation quota system in India is a fairer way than the ambiguous diversity criteria. Simply, it takes away subjective criteria. After all, everyone in the sub group competes on an equal footing. And it is an objective selection within that subgroup. So if you are a ST, you are competing with other ST candidates and you need to only outscore the other ST candidates. If you are an ST, it is relatively easy to gain admission / find a government job. Several government jobs go unfilled each year due to lack of ST candidates. This happens despite entry cutoffs being lowered to the bare minimum possible.
A key question from many in India has been – Should the son of a top government bureaucrat be entitled to reservation. How many generations of reservations are necessary? A similar question in USA would be “Should the children of Obama be entitled to AA”. I dont think anyone would claim that they are disadvantaged.
The irony that many FOBs are anti- reservation but their children are pro-AA.
Hey, I am all for AA in every sphere. Let me take the same argument that AA advocates use for Law / Medicine and apply it to Sport.
Sport needs to be representative of the overall community. Why is basketball dominated by one community. A small framed ABD kid who has grown up in a non-sport loving family and plays high school basketball deserves to be selected for a top NCAA basketball college with a full scholarship on the basis of his background. Sport is to be inclusive rather than exclusive the way it is currently now. We should not discriminate on physical ability or background. Dont we need AA in Sport as well?
How is that strong AA advocates consciously ignore such blatant violations of AA in the public space.
Btw, the Indian cricket team has AA. It is based on a regional quota selection. It is certainly a more national game with the addition of players from outside the traditional strongholds. Whether it is a stronger team is a different matter.
hmmmm n i was wondering why a billion cricket crazy fan nation can’t produce and maintain world class cricket players
To MoorNam at @76, who said this
.
‘Attaboy MoorNam! So you can formulate arguments after all. If so, why don’t you do so in the first place, rather than posting, as is your style, either: i) Cryptic three-line comments which sound more like soundbytes; or ii) Vague allegorical pieces such as #26. They make you appear (they make you sound like SpoorLam 😉 ) as though you’re not sufficiently invested in your viewpoint to express it categorically. (Why should it require someone to knee you in the groin like this, metaphorically speaking, before you favour us with a deliberative argument ?)
Moving on to the crux of the matter: I won’t attempt to echo Camille’s rejoinder to your claim of the SAT’s objectivity. I will, however, add a sidenote to this:
which is somewhat nonsensical. Can you honestly say to me that you’ve worked with college-admissions admins ? If not, then please lay off. I was once a part of a departmental committee that worked with college admins, and was surprised at all the parameters — many of them having nothing to do with “emotional intelligence” — that went into admission decisions. The process by which your insurance premiums are assessed would be a partial analogy for how the undergrad-admissions process works.
To be honest, the reason why admissions officials sometimes want to delve beyond the “objective indicators” is because applications sometimes seem too good to be true — the college applicant who fences almost like Lamour, plays the ‘cello alomost like Yo-Yo Ma, and already has a book deal. In my one-off experience, these shenanigans cut accross racial lines, and the only commonality was that the applicants were kids whose parents could afford spin doctors.
Going back to my comment @ #44, you conveniently choose to evade this:
The only key-phrases that establish a link between your comment @ #26 and Anna’s post are “have no knowledge” and “affirmative action”. But that’s a bit like wanting to talk about toilet paper on a thread discussing sandpaper because of the link provided by the word “paper”. I fear that you brought this topic up merely to peddle these sorts of views:
This is out-and-out fearmongering of the crassest kind that even many self-respecting wingnuts wouldn’t stoop to. I am surprised that, except for Camille @ #77, none of the alleged liberals on this board has called you out on the lack of scientificity — and on the Fahrenheit-911-ish quality — of the above assertion!! Which five school districts, for pity’s sake!?! Can you name a few of them, with op-ed references to the “putting down” that you allude to ?
In summary, a combination of SAT scores and high school grades are consistently the best predictor.
To Manju @ #81: Sorry to poke the reference that you provide. It is authored by people who work(ed) for the same outfit that administers the SAT and, vide Social Sciences Citation Index, it doesn’t seem to have appeared in a peer-reviewed periodical. So I’m afraid it is not very credible. (Furthermore, I recall seeing an article in The Chronicles of Higher Education — I’ll try to hunt down the reference — in 2002 that questions the objectivity of the SAT on several counts.)
That’s one of the images I am going to remember from my stay here forever… same thing, only I wouldn’t know if they were Gujjars or any other villagers. All of them, sarees draped over heads, men dressed traditionally, one with a baby on his shoulder chewing some flower blossom, and three or four cows, all walking past the flashy, blue-glass building I work in (also in Gurgaon).
Can’t get there today though, because all the roads in and out of Delhi are blocked. I called our transport services a few minutes ago, and they said the situation is clear now but they can’t be sure minute to minute, so most cabs have been cancelled and they have recommended me to stay home. I hope the protests stay just that – protests – and don’t get violent like they already have in Rajasthan.
The last time I read of the Gujjars, they were a tribe of thieves who were one of the reasons for the failure of the 1857 mutiny.They looted food supplies to the mutineers in Delhi and simliarly lynched and looted anyone trying to enter or leave Delhi including Indians and Europeans… http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/mag/2006/10/29/stories/2006102900030100.htm
Here’s something from an interview with William Dalrymple in the HINDU paper. It’s clear from the book that the Mutiny papers acquaint us with certain people through their petitions, tell you stories about their lives, provide material to spin some interesting yarns. How much do they contain that actually demand a fresh look at the events of 1857?
Well, if you look at the time when things are beginning to fall apart in Delhi, they provide one with very detailed evidence of why the Uprising failed. And the answer was they [the sepoys in Delhi] were all starving. It was a major logistical failure. It wasn’t because of the British siege of the city. It was because of the Gujar and the Mewati tribes on the outskirts who were lynching everyone coming into the city. So no food was coming in, there was no liberated area as such. The city was under siege only partially by the British, but largely by the people on the outskirts, who had their own agenda. In late July, there were about 1,00,000 sepoys in the city. By the time the city fell in September, there were probably fewer than 30,000 or 35,000 left. The rest had gone off because they were not being paid or fed.
Looks like you want a pissing contest, not a debate.
Let’s try this differently…
Do you agree that AA is a form of collectivism? Do you agree that AA is a system by which an individual is boxed into a particular group-category, regardless of his/her proclivity?
Do you agree that what Princeton did to one person, ie to deny him admission because “there’s too many of your kind around” is stark injustice?
Whether college admissions’ committee are honest, or have integrity or look at applications from all angles etc etc are tangential to the debate. I am debating the system, not individuals.
I’m not sure about libel laws and how they can be applied to comments on blogs. Sorry, I’m not sticking my neck out. Suffice to say that this trend began just a year or so ago after WSJ article on “The new white flight” was published (I think it was blogged on SM as well).
M. Nam
Delhite,
It’s not proper to tarnish an entire community based on the writings of a colonialist.
The present conflict is to do more with elections and how the percentage of districts are reserved for SC/ST candidates. Rajesh Pilot, who is a Gujjar, wants to stand for elections from this district, which is now reserved for SC/ST candidates as per the Election Commission. Hence, he has instigated his people to demand inclusion of Gujjars into SC category so that he can qualify. The Meena leaders don’t want him to qualify because he is the one most likely to win. Hence, they are opposing this.
It’s collectivism in its stark, ugly stage.
M. Nam
I demand special treatment!
Manju, your link was to a link published by the very same test racket that creates, grades, and profits off the SAT. Please, exercise some discretion when you cite “research.” But, if we pretend that this is a more scientific study, their outcome predictor of success was graduation, not “academic achievement” or “academic success.” Their correlation was minimal (0.2-0.24) with an R2=0.43, which is not nearly as strong as whether or not your parents attended college, your socioeconomics, or your race when it comes to predicting your likelihood of graduating. I maintain, beyond the first semester of college, the SAT has little to no predictive strength re: performance (academically) in school. My measure of performance is GPA, etc., relative to the mean. That is, a higher SAT does not result in a higher deviation from the mean GPA.
MoorNam @ #85 wrote:
I too am debating the system, not any individual(s). You are perhaps debating Affirmative Action, in which case we will just debate past one another because you are ideologically opposed to AA, while I am ideologically neutral towards it. But one wants to keep this honest; which is why I have to point out your grave misconceptions about the college admissions process. That is the system I refer to and wish to debate about when offering the following comment (pray where, if anywhere, does the following comment at all refer to individuals ?).
i always thought the sat was supposed to be used in conjunction with gpa, as a way of evening out different grading policies in different schools. in other words, i agree with you that gpa is primary.
but in a racist world, it is possible that gpa may reflect the racial prejudices of teachers, in which case a standardized test may smoke this bias out. intuitively, standardization would seem to benefit the disenfranchised, since it gives no opportunity for the establishment to impose their subconscious racism via subjective criteria. the math part of the sat in particular, which would be hard to rig (unlike verbal), would seem to be the best friend of the disenfranchised.
i’m a simple unnuanced man, but this seems almost commonsensical. i recall learning in high school that the Chinese invented standardization as a way of choosing students by virtue of ability rather than family.
if you believe racism is so prevalent in the US, wouldn’t you advocate as much standardization as possible…so at least you know in advance what the rules are?
yet somehow, in our upside down world, advocates for the dispossessed want institutions, who presumably suffer from institutional racism, to use subjective criteria. what gives?
Manju – I dont agree with many of your comments but on this one I completely concur.
AA or Reservation is created to help the weak, it has now been subverted by the bleeding heart liberals to punish the “strong”. Quite a big difference. With regard to reservation, lots of Indians vote with their feet – they go overseas.
The backlash against AA has started – the movement will just get stronger. If college admissions committees are such paragons of virtue, why dont they make the minutes of their discussions public. Quite unlikely that this would ever happen because it would totally defeat their desire to play God.
Legacy in admissions is probably the crassest form of nepotism. Strangely, the ones that rail against AA never argue against Legacy. GW Bush is a classic case of the effects of nepotism is a factor in admissions.
Camille – You said that “they will ‘continue’ to propagate racism against Asians/ Desis”. Does this mean that they are racist today?
You’re not as unnuanced as you claim, Manju (@ #90). It is truly almost commonsensical… but not quite 😉 The non-trivial fact is that the SAT is vulnerable to the effects of focused coaching. And most of the highly “effective” coaching programmes available today are sufficiently highly priced that access to these programmes shows an upper-income bias. I’m not quite sure, however, if correlations with race have been published.
Most of the critiques of the SAT that I’ve seen do not — as you appear to infer — resemble the earlier critiques (and very valid ones too) of IQ-testing. Today’s critiques are mostly about the SAT’s susceptibilities to intensive coaching. The racial/social dimensions are discussed as a corollary to the cost and availability of such coaching.
I owe you a reference to the Chronicles of Higher Education from my comment yesterday — as well as to some of the studies alluded to above. But I no longer live in the U.S., and am having some trouble accessing the usual social-sciences bibliographic databases.
yes, personally i’ve found studying for standardized tests makes all the differnce. i hope students are not going in cold. but a few questions if anyone knows…
Manju, depending on the college/uni, GPA & SAT are used together to create an academic index. This is also weighted with characteristics re: the “strength” of the school you attended, how difficult your coursework was relative to your peers, class rank, etc. When I discuss GPA, my point is that the study you cited uses graduation as a measure of success. I think a much more illustrative measure (although not perfect) is one’s college GPA. And, the SAT has no statistically significant effect on one’s college GPA after the first semester.
If the SAT were some holy grail measure, then the University of California would not have considered dumping it from the admissions process altogether six years ago. Three years ago Berkeley was one vote shy of rejecting the SAT I altogether. Why? Because the test does not measure your intelligence, it largely reflects your socioeconomics. A lot of research has come out showing that for every additional $10,000 a family earns/year, all else equal, a child’s SAT score will go up, on average, 50-100 points. 50-100 points! That is considerable! There are a lot of factors that get conflated a bit with income, of course — folks with higher incomes tend to go to better financed schools and get better “traditional” college preparation. That said, a HUGE part of the “income effect” is that the SAT is a coachable test. Those with more money/resources to afford test preparation, etc., are able to do better on the test. At the end of the day, the SAT tests nothing except how good you are at taking the SAT. It does not help a person demonstrate the multitude of skills that are useful for success (academically or otherwise) in college. I’ll try to look for cites for this between today and tomorrow.
Not necessarily. I think standardization is often (misleadingly) pointed to as some kind of meritocratic equalizer. It isn’t, for many reasons. Not only do standardized tests tend to measure a limited number of subjects/skills, the tests are also biased towards people who are comfortable with taking standardized tests. I’m speaking outside of the race conversation at this point. I grew up knowing tons of kids who were aural learners, tactile learners, visual learners. At the end of the day, most standardized tests are about rote memorization. They don’t test your skills along a wide number of vectors or in a wide enough manner of ways to be totally helpful the way other measures could be. College admissions survived for YEARS without the SAT/ACT. I don’t think that these tests are so tremendous that they plug up the gaps in our preparatory education system.
melbournedesi, 1. Where, in any mission or description of AA (in the U.S.), does it say that it exists to “punish the strong”? The underlying problem here, in my opinion, is that by virtue of one’s socioeconomic or racial privilege there is a mistaken belief that you are ENTITLED to certain jobs, places in college, etc. Equality of opportunity presumes that all have an equal chance to compete for these jobs. I feel like “the strong” (a problematic and inaccurate characterization) are not willing to actually compete in a system that does not already favor them as current systems and institutions do.
I’m pretty sure I covered legacy in my critique. I’m also pretty sure that a lot of proponents of AA address legacy in their critiques. Perhaps this is a regional difference?
By “continue to propagate” I’m referring to the anti-desi/Asian racism that already exists in the U.S., both in admissions, but along other planes as well. I don’t deny that there is racism between communities of color in the U.S., but I was not trying to imply that Blacks/Latin@s are somehow more racist than current (European-American dominated) institutions.
Also, the premise of the SAT is that it is supposed to measure your intelligence and is supposed to be an equalizer. Everyone is NOT supposed to do super well at it. However, with the advent of test prep companies (who are hand in hand with testmakers), it has become a business, and the outcome is a child’s score. In theory, everyone should be able to go into the SAT cold and do well. The test has shifted from “great equalizer” (which it never really was) to a complete racket. If anyone can buy their test score, then what does the test really measure?
I can’t answer #2. I’m inclined to say fairly well, though.
Camille My comment re: legacy was not that you did not address legacy. It was directed against those who opppose AA but are in favour of Legacy. Both are forms of discrimination.
The initial objective of AA was help the ‘weak’. Now, it is designed to punish the ‘strong’. Do you seriously expect that any policy will explicitly be designed in such a manner. It is just implemented in such a fashion. I am sure all those wonderful admission officers never bring any of their biases to their jobs.
How come universities never use AA for sports / music scholarships ? After all the payoffs from sport / music are huge. Try selling that idea to the football / basketball coach. If diversity is such a great idea then it behoves its presence in every walk of human endeavour. Your statement “Equality of opportunity presumes that all have an equal chance to compete for these jobs” is correct. Would the same not apply in the fields of music / sport? The silence from the pro AA brigade when the need to bring about AA in every walk of life is raised makes me very wary of their true intention.
With regard to Indian students on SAT – anecodatal evidence shows that it is mostly a good score. But then Desis are outstanding test takers. But I can talk about Indian students on the GMAT. Many score well over 700. Nearly everyone I have known has averaged over 650. n=150. Incidentally, one of the few perfect 800 scores in the paper based era was from India (1992).
I dont buy the argument that SATs favour the economically advantaged. But then I have never taken the SATs only GMAT. SATs test two core areas – both of which are relatively easy for a native born American.
1) English – not exactly a dead language in the USA is it ? In this day and age when folks want to learn english in interior China, choosing not to learn english in the USA is unbelievable. 2) Mathematics – how does background play a part. It is a universal language except that the questions are asked in English.
ABDs work hard to get to the right college. Why should someone who prefers to play basketball and not study hard enough be given admission? I agree training helps. But that is the case in every field of life. If you play basketball every day, you are more than likely to be better than someone who plays but twice a week.
We are both on different ends of the spectrum with regard to AA and unlikely to agree.
I now live in a country with no AA. The Asians and Indians pick up a lot of the seats and so far no complaints from the anglo saxon population.
Created world champions in Squash?
melbournedesi, perhaps regionality comes to play in our differing understandings of AA and the SAT. The SAT is an exam that, on its face, looks like it is “neutral.” When you introduce the test prep industry, it no longer becomes neutral, and it is no longer an accessible test across socioeconomics. It’s up to you whether to believe that or not. When kids are graduating high school with 5th grade reading levels in some places and college level reading places in others, it’s clear that equality of education is not a levelling factor as well.
They do. They just don’t call it AA. In the University of Michigan points system (that was overturned, Gratz v. Bollinger), being black did not earn as many “points” on the admissions scale as being an athlete, regardless of race/ethnicity. I really think folks believe AA is the only factor on which people’s applications get “bumped up.” This is totally untrue — there are many many factors that go into it, and many are biased towards educational elites in our country.
Camille writes:
I think this is crux of the disagreement. I think that socioeconomics should not be a factor in these decisions (neither should athletics etc – more on that below…), because it distorts the process, evetually to the point where anyone with a vested interest can game the system to favor a section of people over another.
Consider this example: A middle class suburbian student where both parents are professionals and equally involved in the student’s studies: (S)he scores 98% in SAT and 3.95 GPA. Another inner-city student in a failed violent school district with a single-alcoholic parent scores 92% in SAT and 3.4GPA.
A common knee-jerk reaction is that the latter is more deserving of the two because he scored pretty well despite accentuating circumstances. This is a flawed process, and will eventually make the process extremely subjective. How does the admin define “accentuating” circumstances? What if the latter had 88% in SAT and 3.2 GPA? 84%-2.9? 83%-2.5? It’s a slippery slope, and minorities who are individualistic in nature and don’t form a voting block (Asians/Desis) will get shafted in the long run.
I undestand the latest fad is “community/social service”. How has the student “given back” to the community? How many hours has she volunteered at the local homeless shelter? Not sure how this helps in one’s career, but currently there’s a racket going on to get false Certificates from shady support orgs to help in college admissions. This is not too unlike the false Caste certificate racket that’s growing in India that upper caste students use to certify themselves lower caste.
M. Nam
MoorNam, I hear you, but often the kid with college educated parents also got to take test prep and the inner city kid didn’t. What would their scores be like if you controlled for all the other factors? It’s hard to say. I think the underlying issue that is disagreed upon is whether attending college ought to serve the public good. As a public university graduate, I firmly believe that there is an economic, moral, and social responsibility for public universities to reflect the diversity of their communities. It helps that this is also explicitly written down as a function of the university in our state Constitution. 🙂 However, it doesn’t seem like that’s a huge consideration for you, so naturally we would disagree on all the things that may relate back to that underlying principle.
Also, this is again a generational issue, but desis/Asians are not shafted by the issue as you describe. Desis and APIs who are the children of ELITES may feel shafted, but these policies are incredibly relevant (and helpful) for APIs and APIAs who grew up in rural, poor, and inner city communities. Not all desis in the U.S. are the children of professionals, after all 🙂