India’s caste system and the economic catastrophe it has created.

20-30 years back, we all knew some guy who was so good in his profession- be it a tailor, carpeter or a farmer that we still talk about them. We don’t see such skilled professionals anymore. Read on…

India’s traditional caste system divides people into 4 major heads namely;
Brahmins: priests, scholars and teachers.
Kshatriyas : rulers, warriors and administrators.
Vaishyas: agriculturalists and merchants
Shudras: laborers and service providers.

There are some different interpretation of these four castes but for the sane minds, the above division is purely based on the work each one of these performed as also can be understood by the below text from Veda:

Rigvedic Purusha Sukta (RV 10.90.11–12), which has the Brahman, Rajanya (instead of Kshatriya), Vaishya and Shudra classes forming the mouth, arms, thighs and feet at the sacrifice of the primordial Purusha respectively:

11. When they divided Purusha how many portions did they make?
What do they call his mouth, his arms? What do they call his thighs and feet?
12. The Brahman was his mouth (to preach), of both his arms (to fight wars) was the Rajanya made.
His thighs (to sit and do business) became the Vaishya, from his feet (hustle and work), the Shudra was produced.

This divide was relevant in those times, when there was no transportation, schools or any other medium of communication, it was only efficient that a son learnt the skills from his father and continued the profession in the society, ergo, the society could function in a healthy way.

But many have made the interpretation of the caste system in such a way making it more favourable to them. Brahmins were considered as superior and Shudras were considered as inferior citizens and even untouchables.

Historically Shudras were always exploited — Indian Kings, Mughals and then British in terms of making them work and build Mahals, Palaces, roads and paying them low wages and on top of that, they were always considered as second-class citizens.

The caste divide was purely for economic reasons, but It has now become a class divide where Brahmins are considered as upper caste and Shudras as lower caste.

After Independence and after India became democratic, with pressure from world media and improved worldwide connectivity, movements against caste system, these people after facing years of humiliation saw a light and started raising voices.
The education movement in India, the Education system had also ignored skill based professions which are performed by sub-castes of Shudras — Tailors (Darji), Barbers (Nai), Carpenters (Mistri) and so on and glorified only corporate jobs.

A father can live in any condition, can even work as a slave but he would want his child to have a better future where he or she gets both money and respect.

After years of humiliation and living as second-class citizens, these people (Shudras) sent their children to schools in a hope that one day, their children will have a corporate job and will be respected in the society.

These children went to schools. Some did their schooling, some did their graduation and only a few could do a higher education that would make them employable.

The quality of education in India is such that, graduates are not employable. And with the extra population, corporates are not willing to invest in trainings of graduates when they can get an experienced or higher educated person easily.

So these graduates went out in search of jobs and were offered a salary which is as low as Rs. 3,000 a month in many parts of India. After some months of job hunting or even doing a 3,000 job for sometime, they decided to come back and continue their father’s profession cause they can make more money in their family profession.

But now these people are coming into these professions with no skill, thinking that they are doing it temporarily, at an age where they are no more willing to learn and they can not even afford to waste any further time in learning with the added financial pressure and their old parents. And now they are working with even a heavy heart thinking they are educated and doing a what is considered to be a second class work in India cause these professions are still considered as second class work — that has not changed.

These children have spent 10 years of their lives in the education which was of no use to them. Their father also did not teach them their skills hoping that they will get the glorified corporate jobs and THIS has broken the chain of traditional passing on the skill from generation to generation in India. And now their fathers are too old to teach and they are too old to learn.

This whole thing has messed up their careers and we see India is facing a crisis of skilled workers across all the professions.

You can spend your money but you will not get any quality work done.

But why is no one talking about it?

Because old people are happy saying that people and quality in their era were better and us young people are the ones making the quality substandard across all the products/ services.

Another reason could be that we have normalised such things by saying — “Pehle ka quality ab kahan. Ab to sab chemical hai…” But you know what?! This is not happening in developed countries. Quality of their food, products and services is improving.

You know Apple is a foreign brand which has come to India. Okay fair, US is of course ahead of us and we never even thought of competing with Apple.
But do you know a Dry cleaning service company has also entered India?
Aren’t we Indians good enough in even washing our clothes?

National Education Policy 2020 has tried to bring all the professions at par with corporate jobs and I am hopeful.

Will talk about NEP 2020 some other time. Until then…