Demographic Segmentation

By IVAN L, the insensitive analyst.

Whats the news from India?

Gujjars protest seeking ST "status" in Rajasthan

They block the capital city of Delhi


In the west, In Maharashtra
Thousands of people discover Buddha


In the south in AP
Malas protest against classification of SC'c into A,B,C,D


Further south in Kerala
More ridiculously a supposedly famous Guruvayur temple officials cleanse the temple performing their notorious purification ritual after a non-Hindu wife of some congress leader stepped in for her grandson's feeding ceremony


The common theme along all these is "caste/religion". Probably India's biggest problem, after hunger. And going by the news, unlike with hunger, we don't even seem to be heading in the right direction. Far from trying to erase these differences we are actually nurturing and feeding them. Political parties find it very advantageous to strengthen the caste identity and use it to create vote banks. They call it social engineering, which I think is squarely insulting us poor innocent Google worshipping engineers.

Gujjars in Rajasthan want to be included in the ST castes, while Meenas who are already ST's don't like the idea much. In AP Madigas want the SC's to be further classifies as A, B, C, D s thus ensuring that they get their fair deal in reservations. Malas who are supposedly relatively affluent, understandably don't like the idea. All this if anything shows that the backward/scheduled castes aren't different at all from the forward castes. It is just that they never had an opportunity to exploit earlier. If they have an opportunity they are as competent as any forward caste to put it to good use.

A lot of people belonging to the forward classes who find themselves disadvantaged in the new social structure, would love to see the caste differences evaporate. Much the same way, the underprivileged classes must have felt for several centuries of brutal exploitation. While these liberal thinkers belonging to forward classes profess that there are no backward classes, most of them would still want to marry their offsprings within the caste. This has been the secret of the huge success of the segmentation of the population based on castes. They all inbreed and thus keep their caste identity for longer than they live.

I believe defeating the well evolved caste system is actually easy and needs only one generation of "committed" youth. All it needs is for a whole generation to fall in love. And no, not manage to fall in love with someone from the same caste, as it so often happens, but genuinely fall in love. (Even by random selection some will find themselves with a partner of the same caste but they would be a negligible minority) That should break the spine of the caste system irrevocably and spare my India many a trouble.

The love marriages do come with some extra domestic friction due to the lack of lubrication that the caste is so well designed to provide. An Indian arranged marriage within the caste is, more often than not, between two families rather than two individuals. The fact that both the families belong to the same caste ensures that they are n-th order cousins where n<=5. This makes the potential barrier to break the marriage very high. (That coupled with the many years of brainwashing of the Indian female with concepts like "paathivrathyam" and stories of the great "pathivrathas" ensures the divorce rate in India is ridiculously low)

Now what is actually so bad about the caste system? why should we destroy it? Don't we have many other segmentations among ourselves? Men will always look for identity and tend to associate themselves with like minded people. True, there are many other demographic segmentations of the society. Like lets say based on ones profession. The doctors obviously understand other doctors better and tend to keep their company. Similarly lawyers, engineers, IT professionals, artists, sportsmen, designers everybody have their own well knit professional circles. They even have professional associations, conferences etc. Well actually that's how the caste system started too. Except back then the profession was inherited. So a lawyers son would always be a lawyer. And to make things more interesting, he can only marry another lawyer. A smart thing to do. Since the profession is already decided, they are only trying to supply the most suitable genetic material for success in the profession. Its the awesomest thing to do if you were a Japanese automaker. But well we are humans and tend to believe in our "right to choose". Caste is bad because people are born into it and have no choice but to live with it. It is like race, you cant even convert. Probably the caste system was a well designed segmentation for its day back in 3000 BC. But since then mankind evolved, and maybe caste system also did to an extent, but didn't really keep pace. I think man will continue to differentiate himself based on his work unless we all reach the idealistic stage of Marxist society. Until then, the least we can do is come up with a better designed segmentation with a choice for everyone to choose from.

I find US fairly similar to India when it comes to population segregation. In US we see people segregated by race, nationality, language. I have seen places so full of Indians and Chinese that the probability of finding a white American is greater in Warangal's mandi bazaar. Their professions are also fairly differentiable. Take any modern company with a very diverse workforce. You'll see that all Indians work in IT, Chinese are statisticians and data analysts, Americans are in operations, Hispanics in building maintenance and support, African Americans in catering services. There are as always some exceptions but this is predominantly the trend everywhere in US.

And what about the Indians in US? Surprisingly they seem to be fairly conscious of their caste identity. The telugu speakers have two huge associations in USA, ATA and TANA. I never quite understood the logic of it and thought it was probably the Telangana and Andhra divide. But then a visit to their websites made it all clear. Here's the Tana website with its 1000 executive members in a well defined hierarchy. And here's ATA's board of trustees. One quick read through all the names and you should notice that one last name is very prominent in ATA's list is absent in the other. That very well explains why we have 2 associations. It's the same reason why Gujjars want to be STs and Madigas want the ABCD classification. They all want their identity.

PS: IVAN L (pronounced IVAN the 5oth, L is the roman numeral there and not initial) likes to state that any inferences on his personal life are stupid, unsubstantiated, irrelevant and will attract a call from his lawyers.