I hope things work out for you without you having to start a porn site. There are enough of those already. Plus if you "frankly dont want to be associated with porn" maybe you shouldn't get into porn business.
Ok, will keep that in mind. I thought so too at first but then decided to post anyway as I found the ideas involved in making the arguments interesting.
I was looking at the Stanford videos (specifically the David Rothkopf) mentioned above ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=344141 ). I just noticed that the online video has a subtitle option
The scarcity of their everyday lives means they have to hack together innovative uses of what we would consider junk, or do without many of our strictures.
For instance, I bet you've probably seen the youtube video of rush hour traffic merging and crossing on an Indian street without stoplights, signs, or road markings. Maybe even witnessed it first hand if you happen to be Indian. I saw a lot of this kind of driving.
You'll also see interesting combinations of car, bicycle, and motorcycle parts. Someone created a bicycle version of the ubiquitous rickshaw, v. useful for the crowded inner city such as around mosques and temples.
The street food vendors often have constructed their stoves out of random assemblages of metal.
That's about what I can remember right now. Sorry I don't have more instances. I mainly took away the overall impression that the Indian populace, at least in New Delhi, are pretty innovative. This impression of the general Indian psyche is reinforced by people like Ramanujan.
Thanks for elaborating. Yes, I'm Indian. I was just wondering b'cos what you said is different from what I've heard more often (which is some variation of "can't think for themselves/need lots of guidance/need to be told what to do" which I don't buy. But then, I'm biased :) )
These are contradictory. I think you need to pick one and make up your mind on who to blame.
By "full of brahmins" you are implying the that the forward class controls the power, has a strangle hold keeping down the lower castes. But if that were the case the SC/STs - the lowest of the low per the caste system - wouldn't be there. The presence of SC/STs implies that the system of reservation (whether you agree with it or not) is working and the forward class doesn't have a strangle hold (esp considering that OBCs also have reservations).
By "full of SC/ST" you are insinuating that the place is full of people who are there because of reservation (ie affirmative action) who don't really deserve to be there. But the presence of brahmins would imply that some people are actually getting in because of merit because the brahmins don't have any reservation whatsoever anywhere. So again, the system, albeit flawed, seems to be working.
If these places were somehow oscillating between power hungry brahmins trying to keep everybody else down and undeserving SC/STs I doubt that they would be a cohesive group doing good work which they seem to be.
Maybe you are just missing people of your background/religion/caste/language/area? I presume you are neither a Brahmin nor a SC/ST?
You also mentioned in your follow up post that these institution are in the south and casteism is always a problem there as if in comparison to the rest of the country. Casteism is a problem all over India and the following is not to justify it in any sense. But if anything I would say the south is probably better off than the rest of the country. The population of forward castes is below average overall so the lower castes have a much bigger voice democratically. This is also why TN had till very recently a 69% reservation and anti-reservation riots are a bigger deal in the North (remember the Mandal protests?) than in the south. Communal polarization too is in general higher in the North. Bangalore is usually considered a very cosmopolitan/diverse city and having lived there (and not being a native) I agree.
From a comparison of the different regions ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_states_rankings ) the south overall seems to be doing better than the rest of India. The southern states are doing above average (and in many cases close to the top) economically, in literacy, infrastructure etc. The three top "technological centres" of India that one hears about mostly - Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderdabad - are also in the south. This inspite of the fact that India has mostly has Prime Ministers from the North (except for two - one of whom - P. V Narasimha Rao - is considered instrumental for our economic liberalization along with our current PM who was then the finance minister). So seems like these states have managed to have better governance. None of these are direct indications of casteism rates and I'm not trying to say that things are just fine in the south and there is no casteism. In general, it seems to me that economic growth/quality of life/good governance etc are indicators of reduced polarization. I don't have numbers to back that up, just an impression. My general impression is that while casteism definitely exists in the south, things are probably better there.
I understand pretty well what I am bringing up here. If you did follow the saga during the protests against quota system - there are two broad categories GM & OBC. No government entity can deny admission to OBC. As for as GM goes - in some institutes where applicants have to go through interviews or they are recruited on a demand basis there is always a huge influence of clan - which makes the concentration of Brahmin clan.
Regarding distribution of castes in the entire population - it is of no interest. We are speaking only of the institutes - IISc, ISRO, DRDO and that it is skewed with Brahmins and SC/ST. Additionally, existence is not same as power/ influence. I can bet the environment looks better at any of the IITs or RECs. That should suffice as a response.
Please follow up offline (Again I think u joined yesterday just to fire this debate with no info on profile) if u do want to fire a debate or do some follow up or walk into IISC or ISRO. I think HN is not a right place.
I think you are too coward to even expose your identity and falsely blaming this as a random prejudice when you are incompetent of understanding what is written.
> this should not have been raised here in the first place.
I am not a coward and I expressed what I strongly feel about and have seen first hand. I am not taking it back nor am I continuing this wasteful discussion trying to get some sense into people like you and below commenter (I guess its the same person). Existence of you folks is what forces the brain drain.
> I think you are too coward to even expose your identity
Ah, yes. Rational arguments. Nice.
> .. below commenter (I guess its the same person)
and conspiracy theories to boot. I don't know who the "below commenter" you are referring to is, but as I mentioned, there is a created field in the profile so you can see if my profile was created yesterday just to bother you. You ignored that. But then I guess that would of course be dealing with facts.
The point of my original post was to give you something to think about on two fronts : "full of either brahmins or SC/ST" and regarding the south that "casteism has always been a problem here". The population talk was regarding the second point (as I also mentioned in the original post). But again, you seem to have missed that.
