Wednesday, May 02, 2012

India and the Caste System

Via Tyler Cowen, a post on the Indian caste system.  What's interesting to me is the way the whole structure of society enforces the system--i.e., no thought of the household doing its own waste and cleaning, even though the dalit who owns the franchise doesn't do a good job.  To be fair to the writer, I suspect that's partly the lack of supplies and support (no Home Depots in India?) and the difficulty of the job, probably being more difficult than here, but also prestige--cleaning one's own toilet would lose face.

Given the location of the post, some may see it as a conservative take on the system, but even so it's informative.

It's always fascinating to see how humans can contort themselves into knots.

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