Subash Barik
Karl Marx’s call for workers of the world to unite and break the chains of slavery has failed to excite the workers of the Indian subcontinent to unite. Babasaheb has explained casteism as a state of mind and a notion which builds some invisible walls between groups of men, and even within the same groups. These walls prevent mobilizing of a group of people for a common motive, even if they belong to the same economic class.
Our parents and grandparents had witnessed the massive industrialisation, labour exploitation and trade unions in India. The trade unions were political unions. But, until there are social unions of people, how can a political union alone fight for the workers? Men who are already struggling with their birth based chains of slavery, how can they break them to fight the chains of class? All the new things that have come to Indian society, be it printing technology, cinema, western philosophy, foreign litterateur, socialism, liberalism, the privileged castes have always benefitted the most from them. From leaders, laureates to intellectuals: all have been created from privileged castes only. The trade unions aren’t an exception: we all know who have benefitted the most from them.
With the decline of big factories, the information technology sector has been growing at a tremendous speed in the last 30 years. Now we are about to enter the artificial intelligence (AI) era, where machines are supposed to be working for men, and not only just working but are expected to be as efficient as the human brain. Until recently, artificial intelligence was understood by very few students and it was considered as a technical thing which is beyond accessibility or availability for the people in general. Since ChatGPT entered the market, it has made AI an easy to access tool for many. We are here to discuss how the IT sector has successfully adopted the caste system. What will be our position in the AI era?
The great Indian IT sector has always claimed to be ‘Merit driven’. They claim there isn’t any caste based discrimination in the sector, all opportunities are available to all. It is unfortunate that we failed to understand how casteism works in this fast growing sector. The claim of the IT sector to be caste-free is as false as a upper caste communists denying their caste privileges. It is even more dangerous that we are going to carry forward the same casteist elements into a time where machines will slave for men, and men are expected to be slaves of caste.
🔴 Here are some dangerous factors:
Not being too theoretical, I would like to point out a few deadly obstacles in our path towards uprooting slavery:
➡️ Selection – There are various reasons such as child labour, family’s socio-economic conditions, endless reasons have kept most of the SC ST students away from school, from a quality education which also teaches English.
Secondly, lack of information. This problem also comes with the first problem. These two bring the third problem which is, lack of confidence. As an effect of all these, our people seems less preferred in admission. In December 2020, in response to a Right To Information application filed by the student organization Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle, IIT Bombay said 11 departments – including four engineering departments – at the institute did not admit a single student belonging to Scheduled Tribes between 2015 and 2019. Two departments did not admit any SC students at all. IIT Bombay did not respond to a request for comment.
➡️ Work – this stage covers the after selection learning: working, negative interpersonal relations at work.
The same happens while working, which includes various way of casteist insults (direct or indirect) as well. You will know that most of the IT companies work under SEZ (Special Economic Zones ) and it has no same-pay-for-same-work policy. Instead, it has imposed an inhuman policy of NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement). By this law, you are strictly not allowed to discuss your salary with your colleagues, nor discuss your yearly gradation given by managers. Not only this, the law also gives power to the employer to take legal action against you if you say anything on any type of public media even if you have been the victim of injustice. On the other hand, the company has all the rights to Blocklist you from national skill registry (though it rarely happens).
➡️ Growth – Human beings are social animals. No law can stop them from sharing, even world’s top secret things sometimes. A person will definitely discuss career, income related issues.. So basically this unbreakable law (NDA) actually creates interest groups. If your manager does not like you personally (based on your caste), he has various options to cut your wings of growth. As you are not allowed to discuss and organize other employees with the same problem, the options you have is to raise the issue with the bosses is curtailed. It is like complaining to a Brahmin about casteist discrimination done by a kayastha. Also you can’t lodge any complaint with civic authority (labour department, police etc.), because, first of all local authority do not take cognizance of complaints within a SEZ area (until it’s death). Secondly, you have fear of losing your job due to breach of the NDA. Because of your birth in a particular caste you’ve no access to any redressal forums.. There is only one way left to impress your superior, that is unethical overworking, or practicing Begaar, where you are forced to do extra work, sometimes you’re paid extra, but most of the times not, because IT sector does not consider discussing money as “gentlemanly culture”.
➡️ Other problems – Earning bread and butter makes a man dull. The very handful of IT employees from ST SC background are mostly first graduate of their generation, they mostly work to support their family, most of his money drains in house rental of big cities, and rest of it goes to support his family. It is obvious that the person will not have enough hope or money to skill up and grow in the sector, gradually any first generation educated SC ST thinks of leaving the IT industry and go for gov. Job. Thus the way he disturbs his both opportunities, and finally leaves the IT industry. More they leave more the sector becomes an union of dominant caste. We often find problem of high expense in big cities, also a caste based or food habits based discrimination when about finding living place. Often people find local people not willing to give house for rent to the southeast people, tribal people.
🔴 What is future – To be honest, future is very dark.. as we can see new technologies are replacing the older one within a very short space of time. At the rate of technological growth our access to quality education is not growing at all. This thing will create very less numbers of efficient candidate from SC ST, who will be fit for the industry. The less our representatives, more their dominance in the sector.
🔴 Solution – Buddha says a wise man always focus on solution not the problem. As I have pointed the problems out, it’s my duty to find out best possible solution to them as well.
➡️ We should take the technological change under consideration, we must understand that the working pattern will not remain same afte 10 years. People who think a gov. job is enough for his life. They should aware of this fact that, it also can happen that technology replace the working men, as an example it can happen within next 10 years that railway stops hiring people of it’s various works, and start hiring programmers to get those job done by machines. We can imagine this thing with reference to railway signalling system or suppose post office or even banking. So we should never take the gov. job granted for generations. Also there is fear of 100% privatization of railway and other public sectors too. Once the privatization is done government and private sectors will play volleyball with the caste question, none of them will be ready take responsibility of it and push the ball to other each other’s side of net.
➡️ We must force government for the national caste census.. and establishing caste as an official measurement to their employment statistics regardless any sector. We must loud our voice for the caste reservation in private sectors. Not only securing reservation but also We must force government to maintain fair participation of SC ST OBC in every level of education from primary to IIT or IIM for every academic year. There should be no vacant seat for us.
➡️ We must revive the spirit of Independent labour party and make an union of unprivileged caste students, working professionals and fresh graduates. We must build a movement, but waiting for that to happen will be a foolish idea. We must increase our numbers in the sector aggressively. We must create a common point of contact (social media group, website or anything) where we will share affordable and accessible technical study opportunities and various hirings with each other. We must take responsibility of each other as much as you on your personal level and make sure the candidate is selected.
➡️ There can be many other solutions such as weekly meetings of the people, sharing experiences from experienced people to freshers and students, thus will increase confidence and minimise the problem of English speaking. Also we must start different courses of upskilling along with the fundamentals (which the Nalanda Online University have already started).
➡️ We must build movement to force government to stop privatization of education, less gov. schools less opportunities for our students. Also we must force government to start technical studies in the existing gov. schools.
➡️ Most importantly, we must spread ideas of Ambedkar, Buddha, Phule, with a very modern and futuristic approach.
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Subash Barik is from north 24 parganas (West Bengal). He has completed graduation in 2017 ( journalism and mass communication) and is now working in the customer service industry for the last 4.5 years.
