CASTEISM, RESERVATIONS, AND ONLINE ECHO CHAMBERS

 – A. H. Bose 

Whenever one approaches the topic of university admissions in India, they are bound by fate to strike the topic of caste-based reservations. The views of such reservations may be positive, or, as is unfortunately the general case, overwhelmingly negative, accompanied by feelings of disgust, disdain, and hatred.

 The arguments against such reservations have been repeated ad nauseam – that caste based reservations are killing the futures of General category students, that reservation should be on the basis of economic standing and not caste, that these reservations are being misused and abused by the economically well-off members of the Depressed Castes (that is, the “creamy layer” argument.)

 Thus, we must inspect these claims, which are of prime social importance, and examine how much truth is in these claims, and how much of it is founded on logic, reason, and data (or lack thereof).

 Students and parents from upper-caste backgrounds complain about the seats in Government institutions being reserved for those belonging to the Scheduled Caste (SC) or Scheduled Tribes (ST) or to the Other Backward Classes (OBC), which are in their words, being robbed from the General category or “merit” students (so as to imply that those who benefit from reservations do not have any merit of their own). These ideas are generally formed by the upper or middle class urban savarna notion that casteism and its corresponding social evils do not exist anymore, or do not exist outside of a few odd incidents. Reservation, therefore, becomes a system that has been kept alive by politicians to milk vote-banks. Upper caste families go on to practice their enlightened conscience and prove that casteism doesn’t exist by allowing Dalit sweepers to enter their kitchens and wash their dishes, as written by Nivedita Menon. 

 Indeed, if casteism truly is dead, not only would the attacks against people on the basis of their caste cease to exist, but also the systematic oppression of the lower castes. The possibility of jobs which require rigorous, manual labour in unsanitary conditions (which the lower castes have been forced to do for millennia) being dominated by the lower castes would not arise in an equal system, let alone one in which all members of the Depressed Castes abuse their “privilege” of reservation.

 Yet, the data says otherwise. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment partnered with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in 2023 to launch the National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem (NAMASTE), which covered 38000 workers across 29 States and Union Territories, and found that 92% of those engaged in cleaning sewers and septic tanks belong to SC, ST, and OBC communities, and 69% are from the SC community alone. On paper, the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation act, 2013 prohibits hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks, but 471 sanitation workers have lost their lives due to cleaning sewers from 2019 to 2025. This, however, is in all probability an undercount – most of these workers are hired on contract, which makes it easier for authorities to not claim responsibility. Those belonging to lower castes are often forced into entering sewers, either directly or due to lack of other livelihood options. Local corporations and private contractors exploit them, profiting off of the cheap labour they have been forced to perform, which has much lesser cost than using machinery. At the same time, when Dalit parents try to educate their children by sending them to school, hoping that their children are not subjected to the same coercion, they are forced to clean the school washrooms and remove the corpses of dead animals. 

 Furthermore, one is born with a caste, which they cannot escape no matter their economic standing. Casteism has slowly embedded itself in the Muslim and Christian communities in India, which do not have a caste system like Hinduism (instead, explicitly advocating for the equality of all human beings). Thus, with no way out, even IAS/IPS officers face the burden of discrimination. IAS officer Rinku Singh Rahi resigned in 2026, citing systemic neglect in the Uttar Pradesh government. Senior IAS officer Ashok Parmar resigned in 2023 due to harassment and intimidation by the Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory administration because of his Dalit caste, who was thrown out of high level meetings and humiliated in front of other officers. Given the discrimination against high level government employees, one can infer what the condition of lower and middle class, urban and rural Dalits is like. It is not uncommon for villagers to not meet a government official for work if the officer hails from a lower caste.

 Caste inequality is visible in patterns of land ownership and socio-economic opportunity, such as in workplaces. According to the 2011 Census of India, nearly 71% of Dalit cultivators are landless peasants, working on the land of the comprador bourgeoisie landlords. Dalits own a meagre 9% of India’s agricultural land, often in marginal plots. This structural oppression creates the cycles of debt and further vulnerability. Dalit women face “triple oppression” at the intersectional oppression of caste, class, and gender. The National Crime Records Bureau report of 2022 shows a trend of rising rape cases against Dalit women, a 44% increase over the last decade. Dalit and Adivasi women are sexually violated by landlords and by the general upper-caste populace as a part of the larger pattern of caste oppression. 

 At the same time, the per capita income of Dalits was INR 47, 124 in 2011 (INR 89,051 adjusted for inflation), while the national average was INR 74,000 (INR 1,39,848 when adjusted for inflation). Dalit households thus lack the capital which can be passed down and thus allow successive generations to escape poverty. Dalits remain overrepresented in informal, low-paying, and insecure work, while being almost absent in formal sector employment and managerial roles. 

 Dalit households are significantly less likely to have formal credit system access, coercing them to borrow from informal moneylenders who impose exorbitant interest rates, which further perpetuates the cycle of debt and kills asset creation. 

 Thus, caste hierarchies have assimilated into every aspect of Indian society – education, labour, bureaucracy, or land and financial access. This, of course, breeds more hate crimes and violence, being displayed in landmark cases like that of Bhanwari Devi.

 In 1992, Bhanwari Devi, a worker from a lower-caste Kumhar community in Rajasthan was performing the government sanctioned work of implementing bans on child marriage in her village. For this she was gang-raped by upper caste men in her village. This violence was intended to discipline a lower-caste woman for going against established social hierarchies. What followed was worse. The Jaipur Sessions court in 1995 ruled that Bhanwari Devi was not raped. The court reasoned: “an upper-caste man could not have defiled himself by raping a lower-caste woman.” The apathy and reactionary views of the Judiciary further exemplify the deep-rooted caste hierarchies.  

 Reservations, thus, seem to be inadequate in the view of larger caste oppression. Primary education becomes available to lower caste communities on paper and in legislation, but they fail to become safely available through legislation. Reservations do not exist in most private sector industries and jobs, and even students of lower caste communities who make it to prestigious Government institutions face immense backlash, are always viewed as “lesser than”, and routinely dropped from or not even considered for skill building projects, further affecting their employment. Sectors such as consultancy, in which entry is largely interview based, show larger patterns of not hiring lower-caste workers. Meritocracy, in such an unequal system, is nothing but an excuse by the elite, which they use to justify their privileges. (Indeed, if they want meritocracy, perhaps more Brahmins should start working as sanitation workers).

 This raises a more fundamental question – if caste-based violence and structural oppression is widespread, why are people from the General category not aware of it? (For the purposes of this article, people who are casteist enough to believe that the lower castes do not deserve education of the same standard have not been considered.)

 A significant part of this can be traced back to online echo chambers, in which people are repeatedly exposed to viewpoints that further enforce their pre-existing beliefs, delivered to them through social media algorithms. Social media platforms allow users to gather anecdotal evidence (which only serves as evidence for an anecdote) and ignore realities and actual data. Students missing an admission cut-off and seeing lower cut-offs for SC/ST/OBC communities becomes the central story and further enforces their viewpoints. False notions such as “real casteism being against the General Category” are spread, and students when asked for evidence ask people to “look around them.” “Merit” becomes estranged from material realities and the idea that monetary investment plays a huge role is largely ignored in favour of Utopian conceptions of meritocracy. With no idea of the deep-rooted exploitation in the country, reservations are thought of as unfair advantages for a select few. 

 This is further intensified by the culture around competitive examinations. In India, due to the large amount of competition (due to the large population and limited seats in good colleges), educational institutions have become increasingly rank-centric, with exams being present for elimination and not selection. 

 Thus, those from families which have enjoyed a much more stringent form of “reservation” for millennia conceive of the most meagre steps towards equality, as oppression towards them.