Caste at Work

11 Jan

In this episode, Sujatha and Deepak are in conversation with Pratap Tambe and Christina Dhanuja about caste. Caste is a subject conspicuously absent from conversations concerning workplaces in India, although it is a historical reality and continues to pervade our social spaces - this must be acknowledged to make any meaningful change possible. Pratap and Christina shed light on their personal journeys, professional experiences and engage in a powerful discussion on discrimination, social justice, disruptive innovation, employment practices and much more.

Image Credit: Wandering Indian, Unsplash

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About Pratap and Christina

Pratap Tambe is a Consulting Partner (Cyber Risk) in Tata Consultancy Services UK. With a Bachelors from IITB, Masters from IISc Bangalore and almost 30 years of IT experience, Pratap is primarily known for his expertise in (re)insurance, blockchains, cybersecurity and sustainability through his blogs, articles and projects delivered. He is also known for being a digital Ambedkarite presenting Ambedkarite viewpoints in forums like Linkedin as well as designing technology solutiins to improve outcomes for vulnerable bottom of pyramid populations. For the rest of his life, he plans to focus on enabling individuals and enterprises manage cyber and climate risk better in their ways of living and working.

Views presented here are his own and not those of Tata Consultancy Services.

Christina Dhanuja consults with corporates, non-profits, faith-based institutions, and academia advising on leadership development, caste diversity, equity, & inclusion, and accountability frameworks. She was formerly an external relations advisor at the Shell Headquarters in the Hague and the business advisor to the country chair of Shell China. Christina is also the co-founder of the #DalitHistoryMonth project and the convener and founder member of the Global Campaign for Dalit Women. She is currently working on her first non-fiction book on Dalit women and the fullness of life.

Resources

The Ambedkar Principles, IDSN https://idsn.org/wp-content/uploads/user_folder/pdf/New_files/IDSN/Ambedkar_Principles_brochure.pdf

Caste at Work: The Myth of Talent https://www.theswaddle.com/caste-at-work-the-myth-of-talent.

Christina’s website on Caste and DEI https://christinadhanuja.com/caste-dei/

Pratap’s presentation on Diversity Data for Indian Institutions https://youtu.be/DqOlF20AWXs?

Pratap’s LinkedIn post on Caste and DEI https://www.linkedin.com/posts/prataptambe_i-am-preparing-for-a-key-conversation-about-activity-7255675039478403075-kA1p/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android

An MIT Sloan Review Feature (for which Christina was the consulting editor) https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/what-managers-everywhere-must-know-about-caste/

Financial Times article on how DEI initiatives in India do not address caste https://www.ft.com/content/b0a7eb5e-2f03-4855-81ea-3d8fd07e4b26

‘Does Caste Matter When Doing Business in India?’ by Vidu Badigannavar, John Kelly and Manik Kumar https://research.aston.ac.uk/files/46066333/Does_Caste_Matter_When_Doing_Business_in_India_AIB_Conference_2020.pdf

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Caste at the Workplace

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

caste awareness, workplace discrimination, social justice, business case, caste consciousness, occupational hierarchies, religious sanction, pollution and purity, untapped talent, affirmative action, diversity benefits, caste-based skills, employment practices, community impact, disruptive innovation

SPEAKERS

Deepak Menon, Pratap Tambe, Sujatha Rao, Christina Dhanuja

Sujatha Rao

Hi, Deepak,

Deepak

hi Sujatha,

Sujatha Rao

hey. I thought today, before we get our wonderful guests on board into the podcast, that it may be useful for us to set the stage a little bit right in the sense talk about why we are talking about the topic that we are exploring today, which is cast at work. Just so, you know, it's a topic that people approach from different perspectives. There are many varied lived experiences of caste, and we've always been, you know, a podcast that's looked at workplaces. So you know, why cast and why workplace. So just to help our listeners understand the context of this podcast a little bit more and why you and I in particular, wanted to do this, this particular topic, right, and explore it a little bit more so Deepak, why have you been keen to talk about caste at work?

Deepak

Big question. So my own, I would say, realization how caste operates in India maybe happen very early in my life. Luckily for me, I studied in a school which was a public school, so had certain a lot of friends who didn't come from privileged backgrounds. And I think I was still not aware of caste, but all over the time, when I moved from corporate world to the nonprofit sector, I realized that still there is not aware, not much awareness about caste itself. But caste comes into conversations during, for me, election time, right when you're talking about who's voting for whom, which caste group was voted for, which political party the you know the need for appealing to certain caste groups, etc, etc, and over time, you one realizes the unfortunate role that caste plays in our lives, right from education, from marriages to, of course, elections, as I said before, but also at workplaces I didn't hear anything you know, and the silence, As they say, sometimes more deafening than if something said about it, and over time, when started getting into coaching and organization development, started interacting more with people from the DEI community, and that is astonished that there's No talk about caste, the conversations are about other disadvantaged groups, and they are also important, women, queer, you know, people with different disabilities, etc. And I'd seen that that is almost mandated from somewhere else. There's the big issues in India are about religious fundamentalism and caste and di in India is not talking about it so. And I'll be very shocked to somebody call me a DI professional. I hope nobody ever calls me that. But at least the lack of awareness even di communities who are supposed to be championing these, top these issues in the organizations and with, obviously conversation with leaders, this, hardly any talk about caste in at workplaces. So when you're talking about social justice at work, and then, obviously. This. This topic is something that we, Sujatha, you and I have been wanting to do for some time now, you know, and you know, we've come here, so I'm very happy that we are here. But what, what's your interest?

Sujatha Rao

No, very similar to yours, in that sense, Deepak, that there is a, there is a, firstly, a lack of awareness and ignorance is really not the answer for, you know, any form of progress. Secondly, I think a for some, a cast, may be a difficult topic to address right difficult because of its complexity. For others, it is a difficult topic to address because it people's emotions. It's not an it's not an easy conversation to have, and you are confronted with difficult, you know, situations that are not, not just the situations of today, but have come to us, you know, through many centuries of societal organization and decision making, etc. So they're complex, and I find that often, many people stay away from the conversation because they think it is too difficult to do, right, or there is a certain arm’s length approach to thinking about caste. But I also think that for a lot of people, caste is inherently personal and very painful, because it is prevalent all the time and sometimes that also makes it difficult to have the conversation. So firstly, I think just being able to create a space in which we could have a conversation. And dialog about it for me itself is extremely valuable and useful to do. And the second sort of reason is we've always been talking about, fundamentally, the question of creating flourishing workplaces, right? Our tagline is, how do you make workplaces more equitable, more just, more fair. And I was reading up, you know, sort of in preparation for the cars for this particular podcast, but also out of general interest in understanding and educating myself more about cars, something that Dr Ambedkar had said right in his sort of essay, annihilation of cars. He had said this, and I want to sort of just quote this verbatim, because it means, for me, this is the angle that I am hoping to take with the podcast. And he had said, and I'm just quoting him, it seems to me that the question is not whether a community lives or dies. The question is, on what plane does it live? There are different modes of survival, but not all are equally honourable for an individual as well as for a society, there is a gulf between merely living and living worthily. I think the same question applies to organizations, right? You can grow, you can survive, you can scale. But are you doing it worthily? And I think that are you? Are you as an organization, living to your full potential? Necessarily means is or every human being in that that space living to their full potential? So that's in some sense, where we are coming from. And hopefully in the conversation today, we are able to unpack both aspects of this. You know, what is caste? Why are we talking about caste in so called modern India today? But also, more specifically, about caste at the workplace. And therefore, so, so excited to have Christina and Pratap, you know, steering and helping with this conversation today. Christina Pratap, welcome both of you to this, this podcast. I want to, I want to start straight away, like we've got a lot of things to unpack. What is caste? How can we think about and how can we explore it beyond what may be many people's idea of caste right in India today. So Pratap,

Pratap Tambe

so a cast to me, you know the it's a mode of association between people. It is a it is a root of it's a particular identity route, right? And there is a something called caste consciousness. So as I think Deepak was saying, he was not aware of that of the cast in the beginning, and then at some point of time that caste consciousness developed. My journey is similar. At the by the point of time in my life, I was not aware of that of caste, my caste, and then I became aware of and that that consciousness grew, and the gravity of it turned on me. So there is caste is a particular. Consciousness. It is more of association. And it is, it is kind of tends to identify. It's a root of identity, and it tends to divide people. And as Dr Bucha says, there are various planes, and, you know, different people. It's a divided house where, in the classic sense of Abraham Lincoln, where there are multiple people on the floor.

Sujatha Rao

Christina,

Christina Dhanuja

thank you so much, Pratap for that. And thank you Sujatha, thank you Deepak for having me here. And such an interesting question, depending upon where you're coming from and how you're approaching it, right? Generally speaking, caste is a Portuguese derived English word, and we know this, right? We've heard several debates. We've read several debates around the terminology of caste and the system of caste, and so let's start with the term itself. It's derived from the Portuguese word Casta. However, that is just a terminology, and it can be used to refer to the system itself. It can be used to refer to an individual persons cast. It can be referred to, you know, describe a hierarchical structure, a mode of association, the root of identity. It can be used contextually and in a very multifaceted way, from an Indian perspective, however, and I'm being very specific here. It's not a generic South Asian perspective, but from an Indian perspective, we do have words like Varna and we have Jati. And Varna is essentially the order, the four orders that we are more familiar with, which is Brahman, Suja and Vaishya and Sudra and panchamas, who are all outside of that system, right? So Varna is essentially that order, and Jati is the smaller groups that are present within these varnas. But when we say caste, we are, we are talking about all of this. We are talking about the Varna, we are talking about the Jati. We are talking about the segregation between the four orders, as well as the untouchables. We are talking about untouchability itself. So we are talking about a whole bunch of things when we all encapsulate encapsulated within the word caste, and so therefore the word itself demands a more expansive definition as well as a specific connotation to it. I am more comfortable in defining caste as a socio religious economic hierarchy that has been in place in South Asia and has found its way within different societies and countries and regions, depending upon whether South Asians are present there or Not. So you will find caste in its own version in, say, a country like Nepal, in its entirety in India, because different states, you know, practice it differently. So you'll find different way versions of caste within India, but in its entirety it's present in this country. You'll find caste as a version in Bangladesh, in Sri Lanka, in Pakistan, even as well as in the diaspora. And not just the Western diasporas, not just the first world so to say, diasporas like the US and Canada and Europe and UK, but also in countries where indentured labour labourers have moved to you'll find it in Singapore. You'll find it in Malaysia. You would find it somewhere in Australia, where you have a bunch of South Asians staying there. So caste is a socio religious economic hierarchy that is also extremely multifaceted and has a far reaching effect and uses South Asians as its vehicle to spread it. Yeah,

Deepak

thank you, Christina. So I'm glad that you're locating the conversation in for South Asia, because I've also heard that caste is also prevalent in Japan, for example, that where it is not Indians or South Asians going there, but also their own social, economic, social, what you call social religious hierarchy, you know, just to for my own clarification, it's do the. Every religion has a form of caste. In India, does caste flow even when one changes religion, or it's there in other religions as well, I say, mostly associated with the Hindu religious context.

Christina Dhanuja

Well, the way I would see it, and Pratap please chime in the way I would see it, and the way I do understand it, and have read about it, is that the caste system is rooted in Hinduism. So without the laws of Manu or the manusmriti, with this, which is considered the single most authoritative source of you know, everything about caste. Like, if you want to understand caste, you go to the manuscript. You go to the translated. If you're unable to read Sanskrit, you go to the translated the laws of Manu book, right? So the caste system is rooted in that text. It's rooted in the Hindu texts of Manu. However, because caste is what it is, right? It is not just something that is caught, that that you can trap within a text, and it's not just something that that you can just say it was ancient, and therefore it sort of died off the way it has been adaptable and pervasive and also very subtle in the way it operates. It has flowed across religions, regardless of whether you've converted into a religion you continue to practice us. For example, I grew up within the Christian tradition my great grandparents, on both sides, converted into Christianity, partly also because they wanted to escape caste, right? And yet, you know, it was a very while that conversion itself helped us. In many ways, it was also sort of a futile journey, in the sense that the caste discrimination aspect of it never quite died, because you come into the church and caste is very much alive within the church. And funnily enough, my first experience of caste happened within the Indian church, right? And it's really embarrassing thing to thing to accept, but I wouldn't ascribe that prevalence to the religion itself, rather than to the nature of caste, because it is so adaptive, and it is so pervasive that it can work with any system. It can work with Christianity. It can work with Islam. It can work with colonization, colonialism. It can work with capitalism. It can, you can bring any system to caste, and caste will be fine to work with it because of the way it is structured, because of the way it is so you know, if it wasn't this serious and this this atrocious, I would say it is a very intelligent system in that it sort of just spreads across systems and religions and interventions, regardless of how global those are.

Pratap Tambe

What I would say is, you know, sometime back few years ago, I was talking to one of my friends, who's a Light Christian, and he took, he took a lot of efforts in explaining to me that his origin, you know, his ancestors, were Brahmins, right? He took a lot of effort to explain to me. I hadn't asked him any question, actually, but he took all that effort. And that's when I, I realized that this is very typical, you know, like even you are the Christian for any stage effort to tell me, in the eighth century, we were Brahmins. You know, so many centuries have passed, and you know, then you still have to do this. So that's how deep the roots are. And the roots of, you know, basically, because many, in many Indians, many Indian from different religions, were originally, you know, part of the whatever was the religion. Now, nowadays they call it Sanatana Dharma, or Hinduism, or whatever, whatever was the name in that type. So belong to that culture and so on. So the roots, or in the minds of people, right, the roots in the minds of people, whether it is a Muslim, in Muslim also, there is brotherhood. But in Christian and in mazhabe, six are there. And, you know, in Muslims also, there are. It is especially clear in Pakistan. I think there is much, much publicly documented thing in India. In India also, there is a lot of literature on in different regions. This thing has spread. Because the roots of this stuff are deep in the minds of Indians. And I think that my own journey tells me that figuring out the roots, finding the roots, and basically eliminating them, is not a simple task to do, whether it is for the oppressed person or the privileged person. You know the roots are so. The and as Krishna said, it has this tendency to spread and more, you know, adapt to various other systems. So, you know, people find fancy ways. You know, I attended a talk by a Sikh. The Sikhs were very, very anti cast in the beginning, but late, early 19th century, there were a set of, you know, the takeover of the Sikh religion by the upper caste Sikhs happened. And I attended a talk by potohar Sabha in the UK, where one of the speakers, invited speaker spoke about this in, in greatly, it was, I think, the 500th anniversary of Guru Nanak. So in you know what happens is that when many anti caste religions started in India, but these institutions were captured, captured is the word. And even though their original intent was anti caste, some of them, whether it is Hinduism, Christianity, whatever, in Christianity, there is Dalit Christian, Dalit theology. I have a book on Dalit liberation, theologies, right? I have spoken about it to one of the CEOs of life intelligence in suratha, who was interested in that topic. So, there are, there. You know, there are in every religion, whenever people have tried to go there to get liberated, at some point of time, the privilege has entered, captured the institutions, and made the status quo remain as it is. That's the state in most of the Indian religions, whether it is Ashraf, Ashraf and whatever the pasmanda, whether it is mazhabe, six versus the others. And there is so much pride, cast pride, even then in the Sikhs, you know, there are songs on coming on radio and TV which are about caste pride and their advertisements about in different regions. Is not limited to

Deepak

such kind of it's a very complex and resilient system, social system, in that sense, right? So, how does this translate to workplaces? Because we are focusing on workplaces, how does caste move, or caste or lack of caste consciousness move to corporate work, corporate workplaces, or workplaces in general. And why does it matter? Talking about it?

Sujatha Rao

Deepak, before we move into that question about why does it matter? I think it may be useful to just unpack maybe two or three characteristics of caste like Christina have started talking about it, but I think maybe just sort of unpacking that a little bit more, yes, useful, because then I think people will be able to see why it matters in the workplace as well, right? Because those characteristics will come in.

So we will, we'll start a little bit back with that question that Pratap ended. So we can see that caste is, is complex, it, is. It seems to be like an undefeatable beast in some ways, right? Like you chop a head down and there seems to be 10 heads sprouting about. But grass can also be sort of confusing for people to understand, right? Like, what is it, right? So if we unpack this beast a little bit and say, what could be some characteristics that define this skeletal structure, right, this fundamental infrastructure that we are calling cast right? One, I'll maybe list out a couple. And Christina Pratap, you know, would love to see how we can build this out a little bit more one we know that caste in the in the way that we are looking at it in India is, is inherited, right? You inherit the place in society through birth. So there's a permanent ranking about where you stand in society. So I guess inheritance is a is a characteristic of cars. The second would, would we say that there is the there is a rigidity about this structure? So it's not, it's not that the structures themselves can. Move around, even if there is a hierarchy. The hierarchy itself is rigid, right? So my position is fixed and the hierarchy itself is fixed, right? So, I mean, I can see that there are these two characteristics. But what about sort of, I mean, we've touched the religious topic, but is there, is there an association of, sort of, like, divine will and caste? Is that? Is that one of the reasons why we find it so hard to challenge caste is that a belief system that this is written by God, you can't challenge it. So, is there a divinity AROUND, AROUND caste, like, what are the other characteristics that one can use to think about caste. Please go. I

Christina Dhanuja

think, Sujatha, you have Yes. Thank you. Sujatha, you answered a lot of that question already. But to your pointed question about religious sanction, a divine will, I think that's what makes the caste system rooted in Indian Hinduism. So unique, unlike you know, the example that people gave about a system being in place in Japan, for example, which marginalizes and oppresses and considers the burakumin as untouchables, we do have the serf system in Britain. We used to have the surf system in Britain, we have a similar sort of a system in Nigeria, we used to and Anand Teltumbde, one of my absolute favourite scholars of caste, has written a book called Dalits, past, present and future. And he explains in excruciating detail, what are the types of systems that you can compare the Indian caste with, or Indian caste? And again and again makes this distinction. The caste is very unique because of religious sanction. And it's not just Teltumbde Who makes that you know distinction, but pretty much it's an accepted understanding that it is because it was written in the manusmriti, because Manu believes that he, you know, he's God's voice, and he has written this book. And if you read the manusmriti, you will understand how this language is created, and how authoritative the book itself is in terms of saying that this is how it has to be and there is very little you can do to sort of challenge it when an entire country is based on this religious sanction, we of course, covered the aspect about caste being adaptable and pervasive. We've spoken about how it can move across religions and countries and regions and communities. One other thing that I think we often miss out is going back to what the laws of Manu puts down is this aspect of pollution and purity, right? It's very much. The entire system sort of thrives on pollution and purity. And the moment you bring in this aspect of pollution, that is what is considered dirty, and what is considered, you know, yeah, what is considered polluting, and, and I'm sure there are more powerful words in regional languages to describe what I'm talking about, but if the moment you bring that in, then it becomes easier for the system itself, and the people who are authoritarians of that system to determine which tasks are polluting, which types of labour is polluting, who are the ones who are doing that polluting work, and why are they considered polluting? Right? So it just becomes so much easier, because it's a matter of it's a matter of opinion. It's subjective, and which is also why it's so hard to sort of strip ourselves from this kind of thinking. And you'd often find even in middle class Dalit households, although they are, you know, they have a history of untouchability, you would often find that they themselves have bought into this pollution and purity, you know, binary and what we would consider, you know, for example, you know, cleaning toilets is just polluting, like you don't do that, like you have separate type of people who will come and do it, you know? So, so I think cast really thrives because of these sort of frameworks that have already sort of been integrated into the way it is conceived. And as Pratap rightly pointed out, has been rooted in people's minds.

Pratap Tambe

You know, this is a this is, long ago I read an essay by Gayatri Spivak in which there was this term structures of violence and violation. We in the third world inhabit structures of violence and violation. So actually, you know, if you see there are When, when, some of you know if, if, deviance is butchered, right? If you are supposed to stay on the periphery of the village, if you enter the village, you are butchered. You, if you don't follow, don't do things and you butchered. You know, you you're raped, or you're basically, something is done to you, right? So that the problem is, the issue is that those who do this do not think that they are doing wrong. That is the issue right to those who enforce the structures and take out the do those violence and violation activities, they do not have feeling of, you know, they're they feel they're morally correct. That is the root of this whole thing. And this, this corruption of the human mind. You know is this corruption? You know something, if you were to think at a using modern value system, then something that is not correct. These people find it correct. There was an instance of a father killing one of his daughters because she did an intercaste marriage, and he readily going to jail and ready to be to hang because he believed that what he did was right. Now this is where the where this religious section it is. It is deep in people's root, people deep in people's minds. The roots are very deep. Some people have come out it. And this is true on both sides. You know, there are lot of privileged people who basically have come out of it. I have a friend who is a Brahmin, a very, you know, very, very pure breed Brahmin whose father had received, you know, one of the big awards from the French government and all that. And he's always been liberal. So there are, you know, he, I mean, I've never had any problems with him. So there are pure, very, very open minded people who do know, who look at it for what it is. And, but there are some people who, basically, for whom they, they look at this as a really sanction to indulge in this structures of violence and violation, and they don't feel any guilt for committing what would in modern times be morally corrupt activities. That indeed is the case.

Sujatha Rao

So it's also a process in that sense of dehumanization, right? I'm able to, I'm able to do these things to individuals and communities, because I can, in some sense, distance myself from the very idea that they are human and deserving of equal respect. And in that sense, I can also withhold respect, right? I am able to do that sort of in a way that maybe aligns with whatever are those belief structures that I have constructed about people and their place in society and why they need to sort of form there. So, I mean, we can see that this is, this is complex, right, that the terrain is complex, and it's not easy to navigate. And I think Christina, you've already sort of touched upon occupational hierarchies right within, within the caste, the structure or the arrangement of caste itself, where I think it was, and correct me if I'm wrong. But Dr Ambedkar said something along the lines of not division of labour, but division of labourers, you know, hinting, I think, at that very idea, right? That the car, the jobs that are seen beneath you allocated to a human being, and therefore the human being is beneath you, right? There is, there is no difference. Maybe they sort of brings us to that fundamental question Deepak that

Deepak

Pratap was talking about, is the people who commit this crimes don't feel as if they are committing a crime. It feels that they are doing the right thing, even if it might be illegal in today's context. Yeah, so I'm see one is occupations, for sure, but versions, it doesn't have to be murder. But what are the things that I see at workplaces that people do in formal workspaces, corporate workspaces, where I think people think it's the right thing to do, it is not a wrong thing to do. Is a way that certain. And jobs are allocated for Dalit communities, or certain jobs are kept away from people from certain caste groups. I think for many of many of us, it's an actual extension of that same thought. So in our minds it's the right thing to do,

Pratap Tambe

absolutely, absolutely. See, you know, there is, you know, caste at work. There are various dimensions to it, right? There is caste in our industrial disputes act. And, you know, there are shops in the study there. There are companies are supposed to keep track of their employees cast they don't. Initially, the problem was more acute in the past, where work was assignments were in like the prison case, which is in the public domain right now, that some work is given to some caste and other work this was, this is a practice in prisons even, you know, even now, and the Supreme Court went off pretty simply, but this was indeed the case much before. And discrimination in, you know, recruitment, discrimination in training, promotions, there are glass ceilings which operate. So all these things are problems, you know. And these problems exist. And it is not only cast, you know, the these discriminations happen on gender, they happen on caste, they happen on religion, they happen on others. So caste is just one more, one more dimension to the whole mix, what, why, and by that itself, there is a justification to talk about it along with other dimensions. Caste is a dimension of by which discrimination happens in workplace and the social optimum does not lie in discrimination, and therefore caste is a material thing to speak about in the workplace. That is probably the easiest and simplest justification, because if we were not to discriminate in recruitment, training, promotions, and we were not to do the put in this artificial glass ceilings, then organizations would be better off. Should ought to be better off. That's one perspective. My own journey was, you know, in in thinking about caste from my college days was, you know, it started with reservations, then it went into affirmative actions. But still, I was not very comfortable because, you know, the and the theory, which is now kind of coming into being because of the US paradigm changing about the backlash against Dei. So, you know, there is the whole idea is that you know when, when you basically discount merit, and how much do you have to discount it is the challenge, and when it when you, for example, somebody has to spend, right? You have to, if you're, if you're, if you're not to discriminate, and you not to preferential treatment, then you have to increase the number of seats. So if you, if you were to, basically, you have to compensate for the past, and you know, you have to be fair to everybody, then there is a pressure to increase the number of seats, and then that requires investment. So fundamentally, affirmative action, if you know so that that dichotomy between what is, what is, the balance between merit and value, has been there for lots of time. It was only when I looked at, when I came into contact with diversity, literature, di literature, that I started understanding the business case for diversity. And that frames that, to me, is a much better framing than this, reservations and affirmative action and diversity generates value. There has been literature since the 1990s I have been in touch with the literature since literally 1990 I followed that literature. So there is a lot of evidence of correlation between diversity and value, business value, but there is slightly less clarity on how to generate business value using diversity. Now, whether it is, if you look at the I work on this, I've done some work related to suicide, and in that context, I read literature about suicides in academic institutions worldwide. So worldwide, whether it is academic institutions or other institutions, hitherto underrepresented communities are coming more and more into the educational world as well as into the workflows. And these issues are front and centre in different you know, they may in different communities. You know, diversity can generate business value, and there are lots of examples. My wife is an academic in this area, and she basically, there are lots of examples I can quote, but, but there is a lot of value that can be generated using diversity. But how to exactly generate value is not very well known, and I have no doubt that this would be the case for caste as well. Caste, caste diversity, there is, there is. Caste is associated with lot of skills also, you know, caste, because when we talk about these occupational assignments, so most of the skilled work are done by the barab baluted in Maharashtra, for example. And each of them is skilled, you know, and that skill is a defining feature. The returns to those skills were poor because the benefits were cornered by privileged communities was the real issue. But you know, these the skill base, you know, cooperatives and other mechanisms to basically enable these skills to survive and thrive in the new era. And of course, now, with AI and IML coming up, you know these people who have been left behind, you know, not having the relevant digital skills to survive and thrive in the new era. I don't know what that outcome is, but if we do not, you know, if we do not think about how this underrepresented minorities, the caste operas, are going to participate in to the mainstreams, then I have no doubt that not only is it, is it not only moral. It is not only morally wrong. We are depriving ourselves of a lot of value. My best position about this, which is published in an article recently, is that even if you were to look at the talent among the excluded, bottom of the pyramid, people, you know, the oppressed caste people, I don't know how many Ambanis and Amartya Sens are hiding among those population. If we were to five, find a five of them, five Ambanis and five Ratan Tatas and five Amartya saints and whatever you know as Chandra shakers in them, that would transform our country tremendously. Unfortunately, we don't do that. So we our country is growing at a very slow rate, because, in my opinion, a slow rate because we are not tapping the talent at the bottom of the pyramid. If you were to tap the talent of the pyramid, we have the capability to grow much faster. All those people who have left India because of reservations, many of them are coming back now. Many of them are coming back because reservation has improved India tremendously. So I think there is a lot of value that reservations and affirmative action and diversity can deliver to the businesses of India, which they are not liberating, and they need to leverage it.

Deepak

You mentioned couple of points, and I was just trying to frame your thinking. One is the social justice angle, and the other thing is the business value of diversity, right? You touched upon and because in the earlier conversations they have had leading to the podcast you've been balancing board, you know, talking about the business value of diversity and also the need for social justice, affirmative action, and, you know, things that we feel are important to be done, because it just needs to be done. Christina, what's your take on this, the social justice versus the business case for that, for diversity?

Christina Dhanuja

Well, I think for me, I mean, generally speaking, I think I, I've now, I feel like the question about, you know, the business case for DEI itself is, has just gotten a bit boring, and I think we must move beyond talking about the business case for Dei, because we already know that there is, there exists a business case for Dei. And I think it's important to specify that we are talking about a specific type of workplace, a specific type of jobs, right? We're talking about the formal sector. We're talking about corporate jobs. We're talking about public sector jobs. We're talking about actual, you know, people commuting from their homes to a workplace and sitting at their desks and, you know, generating revenue type of jobs, right? Profit for profit, jobs. So within this space, I think it has already been established that DEI has a business case. So I would like to move on from that place and start talking about, why? Why not? Why? I think, start talking about the absolute non negotiables when it comes to representation and represent, and this is also saying that representation is just the first step of it. Right for me, affirmative action and reservation is a non-negotiable, like you absolutely need to have representation of caste, marginalized communities within all works, workplaces. It is a human right, and I wouldn't even look at it. I wouldn't even go to the step of calling it social justice, I would say it's a mandate. It has to be mandated by law. It has to be mandated by governance systems, because it simply is a human right. If you have a certain percentage of population, then that population better be in all levels of management, better be represented across workplaces. So to me, that's a non-negotiable business value. And what kind of you know, profit can we generate out of a specialized talent force is secondary to that, at least that's the way I see it, and I want to be a little bit careful. Full with respect to cast based skills, because again, and I know there have been some recent conversations around it, you know about how pottery, for example, is stuck within a cast, like it's only one cast that knows how to do excellent pottery, right? There's only one cars that knows how to stitch the best form of slippers, for example, or footwear and, and my problem with seeing cast based skills must be sort of invested in. Yes, they should be. But what about the people who are in these cars, who are wanting to escape these caste based professions. So are we saying that they should continue to be in these caste based professions because they are revenue generating, because caste based professions for my caste based because the caste based profession for my family is to essentially dispose the debt. That's what it is. If someone's dead, they would call up, call our people. They would have to go to that house, you know, just sing and dance and do the drumming, lift the dead body, you know, do all of the funeral rights, go and cremate them or bury them, whatever the requirement is that's all that is, what sort of a caste based skill is that? What, what skill based training is being derived out of it? How constructive is this profession? How productive is it and to expect our cast folks to be in these professions simply because we are the experts at disposing of the debt. Just sounds so inhuman to me, you know, but I agree with Pratap in the sense that I just want to finish this one point. I agree with Pratap in the sense that there is untapped talent. And the reason why you know we are where we are is very much true, because we have, we have disallowed, we have, we have prevented people from realizing their fullest potential, whatever that fullest potential be, especially folks who've been trapped at the bottom, who've not been allowed to do anything productive, who've not been allowed to resist the system, who've not been allowed to invest in themselves, in the way they feel best. But do we want an Ambani and an Adani from our people? I mean, is that the is that the standard is that the, you know, order of, I'm not so sure of it, you know, I can do without an Adani and an Ambani. Honestly, sorry,

Pratap Tambe

you know what? Just to build on this. You know when, when liberalization, before liberalization happened, the affirmative action and reservations theory was very well established. From liberalization onwards, the government has always, kind of tried to push the responsibility to market mechanisms. And slowly, slowly, market mechanisms have, you know, initially, when the market was opened, it was undoubtedly, there was no doubt that it would be the privileged communities who would launch the initial enterprises and make big money. So it is not surprising the that the, you know, the privileged communities have launched lot of enterprises, and now we are the now we are in the third and fourth generation of reservation beneficiaries. And given my particular context, you know, I know so many entrepreneurs all around the world from oppressed communities, doing excellent work, and it have no doubt, you know, there are people topping left in multiple places and doing excellent work. And, you know, I'm sure the momentum is building up, and I'm sure that there will be more of this. So the untapped talent that I was talking about, the second generation, third generation, you know, they have to start talking is and, you know, there are people in the top 100, in the IIT, JS and so on that I am talking to people like that. So there is no doubt in my mind, there is a lot of pent up talent, you know, and we have been denied the benefits of this talent as a country for a long time. And that's, that's one, one important point, just to talk about that social justice angle. You know, we have this Karman police. Just look at how exploitative it is. I mean, if, if I do my if I do my work at my in my respective profession, and you will not even give me my reward. I mean, I understand the theory that the theory is for the more people, abstract people, abstract thinking people. It is a great theory. I love the theory. I mean, the Karman say, is not about the material, it's not, it's about, it's about a much more. Sophisticated. But when you talk about people who are not very smart, you can see what they can use it to justify. They will use it to justify exploitation then, and you know, there is there so it they'll use it to justify unfair and rent seeking behaviour. You know, you are going to get your redemption at the end of your life, so you serve me as it is, you know, so that that's and when you look at all these beautiful man monuments that we have had, you know, I don't know what you feel about all this old, beautiful man monuments, but I think about the people who are made this intricate carvings because they had to feed their families and there was no other route for them to do anything else. They were denied positions in the court. They were denied positions in whatever other thing, and they had to, the only way was to learn some skill and make your living of it. And you know, that was, that was how it was. So, you know when, with all these monuments that we have, are reflections of the pain inflicted, or, you know, of people who basically were suffering like that, talking about the you know, the you know, the, if you take the example of the other thing is about the economic and market lens, right? So if you from the from an economics point of view, this caste is highly inefficient, because you take the two tumbler example, if you go to a chai shop in a in a village and you see two tumblers, one for the lower caste and one for the upper caste, then to serve a market, you need more infrastructure. If every shop, every there were two tumblers for different communities, you need more infrastructure to service the same community. This is what is India. We are operating in an inefficient economy because we have such kind of infrastructure everywhere, right? So if there are, you know, so many tumblers will need to serve people. You know that that's, that's basically the thing. So if I will not use your infrastructure, and you will not use my infrastructure, obviously the cost is going to be high. That is what the reason, that was the reason for the Hindu rate of growth that we had now that the limitations have gone up, are, you know, have reduced. That is why, what, why we are growing. That is why India is growing. Because, basically, we were denying we were operating in a cost. And there was no incentive to motivate to improve your own lot in life, because you were limited. There was a glass ceiling. So slowly, slowly as these things have that is how, basically, we got away from the Hindu rate of growth, the Hindu the these things were limiting the growth of India, economic growth of India. And because we have slowly, slowly come out of the shackles. That is why India is growing in the past. All the glory that we had for lots of years was based on exploitation. You know, the sonic India. India was based on exploitation. Now we are now coming into India where, basically there are, you know, some of the gains are sleeping. Lot of people have phones and so on. But we, unless we, basically, if we, if we, you know, we have a talent. We have a dividend, demographic dividend. If we don't train that dividend, then we will not only lose it, we'll have a, we know, demographic time bomb. So you know this, these things are not we need to in the workplace, find a play way of addressing caste and integrating people from the bottom of the pyramid, because there is a lot of value in this.

Sujatha Rao

So after Christina and Pratap, fairly passionate, you know, conversation about this, let's do a little check about where we are, right? So we're still talking about how cast works. We've not really entered into cast in today's modern workplaces, which we will get into, I think, after this. But we can see that the way that one can engage with caste is necessarily multifaceted. One can approach it from, you know, Christina, you were arguing about it being a fundamental from just a fundamental human rights approach right? Let's not, let's, let's start with that right as a foundation. One can look at it from this sort of insidious nature of caste that creeps into every aspect of, certainly Indian society. And how does one tackle something that is or prevalent everywhere, but perhaps is invisible to a fairly significant section of society and always visible to another section of society. How do you then look at caste at work in that space? Pratap has been making the argument about not just social justice, but there is, if you look at the context of modern societies, that is tremendous just economic sense in thinking about caste very differently, and that is value in exploring it in from that Avenue, and of course, all of the conflicts that go navigating any of these terrains. It's not a homogeneous concept. People within oppressed castes have different ways by which. They negotiate cast themselves. There are different identities that come into play, and maybe some of these are worth thinking about when we ask that question, what does caste have to do in today's modern corporate workspaces, right? Like, how does caste work when we are talking about so called professional spaces, right? We when we move away from traditional occupational based division of labour, in which people were associated with untouchable cast work, right? And how do we, how do we differentiate that from the professional workspaces of today? And I think that's, that's where we should, you know, sort of head next.

Deepak

So what I wanted to bring attention to is that there is definitely a history of caste oppression in India and South Asia. How does, how does this translate to workplaces? What happens at workplaces? And when we see more workplaces, we are looking at modern workplaces, modern corporate workspaces, or professional workspaces. You know,

Pratap Tambe

I want to go first on this. You know, this is something that, you know, I've been really wanting to engage with. So when I started my journey, my career, I was not, you know, I had gone to a slightly traumatic experience at my bachelor's and somewhat better experience in my masters, but I had lots of scars. You know, I had a very sharp consciousness about, you know, I had feelings of inadequacy and all I should not have had, but I had, and in psychology, there is something called over compensation. So I had done a lot of over compensation in terms of moving myself to myself, right? I did lot of that. And you know, it was a professor at is Bangalore who told me, this is what you're doing. And I had lots of tangible achievements to show and then I started feeling good about myself. And throughout my career, you know, I have purposefully tried to, at every second, every minute, try to basically prove myself to myself. I wasn't really trying to do anything to anybody else, but it was proof that, you know, we it was always proof that we can do things and whatever. I've always tried to do that, and for good amount of time, I was not writing publicly on cast for being very. Open about my identity at the beginning of my career, but I started writing a blog, and it was, I think, blogger on which I wrote that, and I used to share my views to a form, you know, and I whatever on, on things, and I used to be very open about my views, you know, very, very clear interest. And I've always been reasonably good at writing. And so one privileged colleague of mine in 2012 or something, told me that I read your views, I read your news. I had I, you know, we were working together in the UK, and then I went to India for a visit, and I met him, and he told me that I read your views. And while I may not agree with some of them, you know, I never get to hear this perspective. So that was very insightful. And, you know, you should write, is what he told me. And so I started writing, but I was very scared initially, because, you know, my, some of my people like me, there was a friend of mine who was not, you know, two examples I want to give, who are not open about their identities, right? One guy had changed his name, and, you know, when somebody else was discriminated against, he told me, why did he tell that he belonged to this community? That's why this happened. And the other guy basically was living in fear of his name being mentioned anywhere and so on, you know, and his association with this identity being mentioned, and that was long ago when I decided that I didn't want to live like this. I didn't want to be in daily fear of being outed, right? And so I wanted to be open about my identity, like, you know, I have a long hand, or a, you know, a blue, whatever blue colour eyes, or whatever it should be, like that, you know, I said aspect of identity. Yeah, it is true. It doesn't matter. That is how I wanted it to be, but it wasn't like this for me. Also I I'm not even talking about what other people were saying or doing. I'm talking about what I was feeling about myself. And in that sense, you know, I was always working with us. You know what? I think that people who belong to this identities, they live with you know, this fear or slights. You know socialized, socialized helplessness or, and I've observed this in many contexts, socialized helplessness or socialized, you know, less merit. And so, you know, there I ask it less capability, and it takes some effort for people to come out of that. And that is one of the dimensions why, basically, birthplace, you know, last in the workplace matters. If you want to leverage the oppressed population, then you need to make it comfortable, to basically bring its best to work, which is the standard DEI stuff, right? So I actually have gone through that. So the slowly, slowly, I started writing on, you know, I started writing a blog on, blog on I kept writing my political views. Then I started writing a blog on insurance, which was quite successful. Then on blockchain, I used to write, then I started, like on cyber security. It's all, it all was very successful. And what I used to do for many years was to write three articles on blockchain and one, one post about cast, you know, whatever, good work. And then slowly, basically, you know, I developed a following and my confidence about who I was and the component this did not make a single difference in my organization. In fact, I was delighted that, you know, it was my biggest fear when I started, and that fear was unfounded. India is a much more better place than many people believe it to be, right So, but the fears that I had, you know, I can, I managed to confront myself and overcome them, and I have a I bring my best to self to work every day, and I'm delighted to be working where I am working. However, just to clarify, I know this is something that I should have probably said at the beginning itself. Any views that I'm expressing, here are my personal views, and not those of my employers, right? However, one the you know now that I've travelled this journey, there's something I want to share with you about many organizations. In many organizations, inevitably, it is a privileged people who are in and they have done a podcast on that, you know, I have a video on YouTube which talks about how there is a preponderance of certain communities and the tops of various organizations, whether it is education, law, industry, you know, boards, this, that, etcetera. I have a video on that, even YouTube, you can look at that, and I give you very interesting, very justification about this. This is not surprising. You know, the people who are privileged, obviously have got their up, got up there. And but how do we want this, India to be, is the important issue. How do we want India to be? And what I noticed, you know, initially I was thinking about it. I was observing that this is indeed the case that, you know, one type of Brahmins are in top in one organization, and Brahmins are in top in other organization. So, and, you know, and I kind of started observing, what are other people doing or thinking and looking at. Can doing about it, because behind the scenes, you know, while this might not, there might not be adequate public data about it, the grapevine, you know, and especially because of people like me who talk about this topic. You know, people feel free to share their news with people like me. So the you know, behind the scenes, there is a lot of conversation about some of these topics. So when gets to see and know, observe what other people are doing about it. So what I have noticed is that if in an if a particular community, a sub segment of a particular community, is in power in a particular organization, the right counter action to it is not for another sub segment to argue against. What I notice is there is a broad swell of a more diverse competition. So the basically, if there is an opposing formation to it, then that takes, tends to take a broad based form, a more diverse form. So in the what I am, what I am trying to say is that it is true that today, at the top of certain organization, there is a kind of feudal structure still, which is that some particular sub segment of privileged communities are in power. But I think based on what I have observed, at least in some organizations, there is a broad based form of formation which is relatively diverse and not as you know. I mean, diversity is a journey. Of course, it's not like in all, all, all diversity cohorts are represented from day one, right? So it is a journey. So, you know, instead of one particular caste, there will be two caste or five caste, or whatever, you know. And instead of one Varna, there will be two varnas and whatever and three was actually, that's the journey that we will need to undergo. So I believe, based on my observation, that this journey, you know, people are counteracting one hegemony of one particular caste or an organization with basically a broad based formation consisting of multiple varnas and caste. And this journey is already underway in India, and I think it is only going to accelerate. So my appeal to anybody listening to this podcast is that within your organization, try to promote a broad based formation, try to support basically a broad based value system, which, which basically, you know, so that that, because that is the kind of India we want eventually, which is what Christina also said before that, you know, we need at all levels, all segments, to be represented. And this is something that we can, you know, we like, I like to say you have to earn. You have to scale the forts and open them from inside in order to be able to do this. But once you get those sports, don't build one more car, one more hegemony of a single casting. Today, if Brahmins are in power, doesn't mean that Dalits get in power and then basically they make a Dalit on the organization. That is the wrong approach. So what we need to do is get into the sports open the sports Summit, and make them diverse Sports. Thanks. Christina,

Christina Dhanuja :05

yeah, no, I think couple of things here, one Pratap could have, might as well have told my story. So because it was, it was very similar to me too, like, you know, I started off, you know, despite having pretty good qualifications and despite having finished my finished two masters in chemistry, one from the National University of Singapore, despite having all of those credentials pretty much lined up, I suffered from a deep sense of inadequacy, and For the longest time, my struggle was all about proving myself to myself and fighting against this default assumption that I'm not good enough from the external world, as much as it was, as much as it did influence my internal voice. And then eventually I started writing very much like Pratap did. In my case, it was blog sport, but I started writing about a whole bunch of things, and then eventually, you know, I started getting into, you know, proper corporate space. I work for an oil giant for almost close to a decade, and it taught me so much about myself and as well as how people respond to someone who's quote, unquote marginalized within a mainstream sector, right? And but I have to say that it was only when I moved out of India that I was no longer working within an Indian workplace, that I was truly able to breathe free, and I was able to truly understand how good I was at what I did, and how much potential I had, and how far I could go, all of that. Me only after I moved out of India and I was able to work with colleagues who are non-Indian and who are, or, you know, international enough to understand that you should not be, you know, asking people's caste origins, or trying to find their caste origins, or making them feel inadequate, or, you know, talk about, you know, it's very uncomfortable when you when you have these conversations, both formally and informally, within caste countered workplaces, the kind of questions they ask, the kind of condescension that they subject you to, The type of microaggressions that you experience, all of it plays a role in the way you, you become this, or you, you want to be a very thriving person, but then you end up being this really, you know, small person. They make you feel really, really small. And that, to me, was a, was the predominant experience when I was working in India. Of course, today, looking back in retrospect, I feel like, wow, I made a whole bunch of sacrifices in order to create some wealth and create a context in which I can truly thrive. And this was a context that that I had to create for myself. So today I'm a I'm an independent worker, I'm an entrepreneur. I do what I want. I had a non-profit initiative. I I'm doing things the way I wanted, and I'm really, really proud of it. And it was only after I moved out of India and quit my full time corporate role, I was able to talk about cast openly on LinkedIn till that time I was writing, but I was using a different surname, hoping that people won't find out. But then again, people did find out, and like in breath outs case, a colleague came to me and said, You know what, I read your article and I'm going to share it in the, you know, work WhatsApp group. And I said, please don't do that, because, you know, I have no idea how people are going to be reacting. I mean, it's not just about reactions, right? It's also about perceptions, and how perceptions are going to influence decisions, and the number of promotions you're going to get, or the number of opportunities you're going to get, it's just going to be a whole bunch of things. And I also talk about it in my in my recent piece to the swaddle about the myth of talent. And this was an experience I did not mention in that piece, but I will be eventually, is when I got this really high visibility role outside of India, people in the team simply could not believe that that could happen. And there were so many conversations behind me, with me, how, how did you manage this? Like, how could this happen? Like, what, what did you pull you know, there was, and for a minute I was like, why you guys sounding so surprised, you know, that I got this role. But all of this, I say, with, with, with a lot of amusement, simply because it is an in it, simply because it is in retrospect. But while I was going through it, it was extremely horrible. Like it was a horrible experience, like I would wake up with anxiety. I would, I would detest Going to, going into the workplace, and having, I hated going for lunch, being at, you know, at the lunch table, and having to talk about regular politics, like regular, you know, day to day things that are happening that you read about in the newspaper. I was so scared of all of that. I think, I think that's just the personal part of it. But generally speaking, I think there are four major buckets, the types of discrimination that happens within an institutional, formal space, right, not just within, but also outside of the institution. But if you're going to take the contour of an institution, the of course, employment practices, and all of what I have described and all of what Pratap described fits pretty neatly within the gamut of employment practices, right, like, what kind of culture are we building within workplaces, what kinds of recruitment practices are in place? The representation you know, Dalits and Adivasis, for example, like caste, marginalized folks are overrepresented when it comes to contract jobs are overrepresented in low managerial, not even managerial, low secretarial, type of roles, you'd find a lot of them doing that work. You would also find a lot of them in housekeeping jobs. You know, they are still part of the formal workspace workplace, but they are doing, you know, jobs that are menial and you won't find their representation in managerial positions and senior management positions, pretty much, okay. Almost always by Brahmins and baniya. So 97 to 98% of corporate jobs in India are occupied by Brahmin and Bania those of Brahmin and Bania locations and public sector. Of course, we know how that works, and we have affirmative action, so that percentages would be different. But there are also sectors where affirmative action is not followed is very purposely not filled, and therefore the percentages are still skewed. So these all of this type of discrimination, all of this manifestation of caste, will fall within employment practices, and of course, you also have community impact. And this is more evident when it comes to utility and, you know, utility company companies and energy companies, as well as companies that are multinational in nature, and they want to expand in India, and they tend to choose a rural location. They tend to choose a semi urban location where you have a lot of Dalit populations residing there. So there's a lot of impact on resources. You're taking up their land. You're not compensating them. The community engagement is really poor. And again, you are recruiting all of these populations in the name of job creation, but you're putting them into Menon jobs. It's just all about giving them very low compensation, but in in exchange for jobs that are, you know, extremely unconstructive and menial and repetitive and all of that, the third bucket that we need to take into account is, of course, the partnerships that we are having with third parties. And I think this becomes really important. You know, we may have all heard of this case of TTCU, which is Tamil Nadu textile union. basically it's about this third party that that works with fast fashion companies that had a massive problem of Dalit women going through caste based sexual harassment. And it took a huge amount of intervention from that union to be able to bring in laws into place, like bring in, you know, proper standards into place that will prevent and that will protect Dalit from Dalit women from being sexually violated and harassed by upper caste bosses and upper caste managers. And these are third parties that are having partnerships with, you know, fast fashion companies. And these fast fashion companies essentially fall within the corporate formal workplace, right? So I think this is also a bucket that we need to take into account when we are talking about cast at work. And finally, what sort of products and services are we putting, putting forward, what sort of marketing, what sort of branding methodologies and strategies that we are taking, that companies are employing, for example it would be as innocuous as, you know, saying We only rent out a vegetarians. And this is integrated within their product. It's integrated within their service. But unless and until you're looking into what that vegetarian is a signal for, then you are putting forward a cast. When you're a cast is product or a cast is service? The same goes for, you know, social media platforms, if you're not paying attention to what people are saying, what people are talking even if you have to put down raise a complaint, then they don't take it seriously, because they don't have cast. They're not cast informed, we've had several casters, ads come out in the recent past, marketing, branding, all of these fall within products and services that are external to the organization, so as an opportunity space itself. And going back to what Pratap spoke about DEI and conversations around Dei, I think, as an opportunity space, there is so much for knowledge creation. There is so much that that we can do in terms of providing the right kinds of information. And, you know, provide visibility into how cast operates across workplaces, both within and outside, to management teams, to, you know, work populations, to people who are making decisions about these organizations.

Pratap Tambe

I want to bring in slightly different perspective on relevance of caste in the world. Place, right? One is, you know, something that I've noticed a lot I've said completely on LinkedIn before, but you know when, which requires sharing more widely, Clay Christensen's theories talk about disruptive innovation right now, disruptive you know, innovators from oppressed caste. You know underrepresented minorities, they are used to rejection, right? So whenever you try to do something disruptive, you are going to face more rejection than the people who is who are not doing disruptive. You know, they are doing sustaining innovation. This is, of course, reference to place. So what happens is that you know, innovators from you know some you know, innovators from privileged communities are better at sustaining innovations, while innovators from disruptive communities have a natural tendency to gravitate towards blockchain and so on. Which are, which are, you know, slightly more disruptive and you know, difficult to do. And if you will notice this, I some of the most talented people that I know in from the office caste communities are in in these kind of things, you know. And this is, this is the I initially used to think, no, this was a fluke. But now I ever, I really see this as a very natural thing, that if, if we want more disruptive innovations, then you know what happens is that, you know, there is, there is literature about how people from oppressed cars tend to be more resilient. You know, those who survive. You know the if we if there is an entrepreneur from the oppressed cars, if, basically, their business survives for the first few years, then there is a very high likelihood that it will survive for a very long time and grow. It may not grow very spectacularly, but it will survive very it will be very much more resilient. So there is a survive once you survive for the first few years, you know, because you have to get from zero to one and to a particular scale, then it survives very well. So that is a very typical the observation. And similarly, I from my personal network, I know that many, many of the opera cast entrepreneurs that I know they are working on very disruptive things. So this is another thing, and this, this is one of the unique values that oppress cast people can bring in India. Another important thing is there are lots of products and services to build on what Christina was talking about. You know, there are lots of unique features, you know, legal provisions for oppressed people. And nobody has basically built products and services or companies targeting them. I, for example, work in insurance. So, you know, I have tried to do work basically because the locations of oppressed caste houses tend to be in geographically segregated locations. And so the risk profiles tend to be different from the risk profiles of the houses within the main, main segment of the houses in villages. So obviously, there is a possibility of taking a different approach to that the risk profiles of people that because of the occupational profile, there is a different approach. You know, they similarly. It is possible to build various organizations. Now, these are opportunities that I am thinking about, because I can see them, you know, I relate to them. You know, nobody. The people who are in privilege that is obviously want to look at them, and they don't, they don't see them, you know, but, but this is, and of course, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm a single person, and I have a day job and a lot of things. So there are only some things that I can pursue, but did the ability of then I have written lot of articles in 2012 I 2013 I basically there is in an area of insurance called catastrophe modelling. I listen to a speech by one of my mentors, called Peter Taylor, and I wrote an article. I thought about this new platform called Oasis loss modelling framework. I thought, How is it relevant to the last person on the queue or the person in some of the backwaters of India? And I wrote that article. That article was a hit, and that started my journey in writing, insurance blogging. And that article was followed by Lloyds of London. And when I in my company, I told that Lloyds of on London follows me on Twitter, and people were damn surprised. So you know that that was something I decided right for that person, and that start quickly. So being able to think from the perspective of an oppressed caste person, you know, from a excluded person, gives you insight into lot of underserved areas around which business propositions can be built, and valuable business propositions can be built. I haven't yet proved that with my life, but I do hope to, and I'm sure that lot of other entrepreneurs are doing similar things. And I'm sure this will become more and more evident. I have had this kind of discussion with academics, whether basically, oppressed caste minorities do indeed do this kind of things. And, you know, oppressed so the Not if I would have not had the discipline of oppressed cast necessarily, but underrepresented minorities tend to, indeed do, gravitate towards these kind of disruptive things. And they, they are able to see different things. This is a reasonably well established, uh. Fact in the literature. So there is a lot of value that can that is, can be leveraged if the underrepresented talent is given expression. And that is where, basically the we need to do more of that. And of course, you know, the coming back to we, we need to have a minimum standard, you know, the gravy and handling cells and the minimum standards in an organization some kinds of behaviour should be prescribed in the you know, they should be put down strongly, like, for example, you know, like vegetarianism, or, you know, patting your back to see whether you have a whether you have a genuine and all that. So there are various means by which people try to figure out your cast. And they will ask you questions, which you, which organization did you? Where do you live? Where you know, do you, which institution we went to, and which batch were you? And then they will try to figure out from their network for who you are, and so on, all that kind of things, whatever. So the, my approach to this is that, you know, once the finally, there is a suspense about who you are. So what? In my case, basically, I have made that suspicion clear. If you do one Google search of my name, nobody has to ask anybody anything. So it saves everybody lots of trouble. And since I have accepted the like I described, like to describe, you know, there is a particular disadvantage of being, of breathing from oppressed, I have taken it on my chin, and I am dealing with it and living my life with that, with starting from that disadvantage and living with it on a daily basis. And it has ceased to be any disadvantage, if at all. I see more advantage in in it. It hasn't hurt me in my career in any way, as yet, at least

Deepak Menon

fascinating. Ah, Christina, I really love the way in which you put four the four lenses. You know, I wanted to go more, but I'll allow Sujatha to ask the next questions. But Pratap, I had one clarification, the innovation, the natural tendency, if you said there's some literature, I would love to have that literature been, you know, put out there. Because one question I wanted to ask you check to also reference what you said about the tendency of oppressed classes, people have been Oprah to overcompensate. You know, do you feel that the tendency for Dalit entrepreneurs to go for real, to innovate outside of what perhaps necessary to be successful, comes from the over compensation?

Pratap Tambe

No. What happens is that if you know there is a lot of competition in the regular things, they will probably be denied the opportunities which are easy to obtain. So it is only when they look at the more exotic things with more difficult things, that is when n they will get funding. You know, that's kind of what I'm saying.

Sujatha Rao

I think, I think I really like the way she brought out some of these elements. I think you could go more there, or we could ask some other questions, which many I would leave the choice to use that I'm fairly intrigued from both Pratap and Krishna come from different viewpoints, and it's enriching my learning, for sure, but also I'm just thinking, what is like? It's already been 245 248 you know,

Sujatha Rao

we've only scratched the surface of this topic, what do we want to do? Do we want to go deeper into this? Because we haven't actually entered the workplace very deeply. You know, we've still entered but I see Pratap viewpoint and Krishna viewpoint are both very enriching, but we haven't opened up many of the things.

Pratap Tambe

No, I would like to say a few things which basically will probably kick start this the next level of discussion. So in my view, you know, basically, you know, caste needs to be handled in two ways within an organization. One is basically from a minimum behaviours, you know, perspective, you know, there are, there are some regulated characteristics of employment contracts, you know, like, you know, gender and so on, and gender and religion and so on. So there are the where, basically, for example, there is annual training. So obviously, cast needs to be part of that annual training. That what is acceptable here and what is not acceptable behaviour with the risk of being removed from the organization or disciplined, if you basically, because the and this, this needs to have foundation in law. While it does have foundation in law in India, at least, you know, especially outside India, the awareness is very low, but this annual training sensitization, you call it whatever you call it that needs to be, that is some one of the things that needs to be there, because that is a that is a minimum, behave, minimum environment that we want in our organizations, that I think is non-negotiable, but, but. You, once you step outside that, then, Lord, we, we enter into the more voluntary elements. You know, which is where the business case elements come in. But more than you know which, which is my, what bulk of what I was saying that, you know, how do you stop discrimination in recruitment and training and promotions, and how do you make sure the glass ceiling so there is, there is a voluntary element to that, that to that. And, you know, you can't really dictate to private organizations what they should do and what they should not do. And they, they're basically, it has to be, you know, I think there is an element that every office class person has to travel. You have to basically prove yourself and get into those things and change the culture and so on. So it's a that that I think is going to be a slow, slow moving change there. But the but the other, the most important thing that we need to do is this culture change and how the problem is that, you know, how do we articulate these policies about whether it is a mandatory or the voluntary aspect of caste in organizations. But this viewpoint has been with me for a long time, that lot of people, there is a lot of consensus that we need to do something. I have spoken to a lot of people in my whole in my nearly 30 years of career about this, and there is a significant consensus we need to do something. But the question is that most people are basically stuck there, and when you actually try to have spoken to a few people, I have mentioned it before publicly that I have spoken to a few people in very leading organizations, as to your organization talks a lot about diversity in the US, but in the in India, you don't seem to basically recognize caste diversity. Why is that the case? So what they say is that we would like to, if there is a consensus, then we will basically put caste into our policies. But there is no consensus in the there is a consensus as to, you know, there is a hidden consensus in terms of something needs to be done, but what needs to be done and what exactly the wording of the policies will be is very difficult, and anybody who takes leadership in defining and articulating what such a policy should be is going to be called out by it is going to be victimized by politicians and social media and everything. So that is why nobody wants to be the first. So the only way you can get cast on the agenda, and whether it is the mandatory elements or the voluntary elements of caste into the DI policies and so on, is basically through building a broad based consensus first and then communally adopting regulations. Sorry, these practices. And for that, the challenges, and I have really tried hard, you know, I have that there is no written policy, what a sample policy should be because, so I think such a policy is non trivial, because some people don't want to share their caste. Some people will be offended if you discover their caste. Some people are happy for their caste to be shared. So , you know, some people have changed their surname, so you can't even guess it. And there is, there is a lot of people who fudge their caste, and there are false caste certificates. So it is a non-trivial challenge. It is not merely a question of wanting to do something, but the mechanism to do something is non-trivial. I think lot of people who work in the DI community, you know, everybody says we should do something, and I agree with we have always agreed that we need to do something. But doing something tangible requires framing a policy where, and if there is a written up policy, which is a framework, which is a best practice framework for the policies from which people can adapt it. There is, of course, the Ambedkar principles, which is a good, good document, but basically actualizing the Ambedkar principles in practice is where basically the gap is. So the you know that that's basically at a principles level, we have it, but changing those principles to policies is where the gap is. Ambedkar principles, I hope you are familiar with this is from the IDSM

Christina, since you work with organizations in the DA space from the DEI angle, what's your experience been

Christina Dhanuja

towards? Could you be a little bit more specific?

Deepak

What Pratap is saying that certain things, for example, a policy, for example, needs to be like, needs to be initiated. And he's saying it's a non-trivial task. You know, do you find examples of organizations attempting it, done something around it?

Christina Dhanuja

Yeah, I think I agree with Pratap in the sense that it's not, it hasn't been attempted to the detail that we wanted to be attend, attempted having, for example, caste based policies must cut across several. Uh, areas of work, right? Like, for example, do companies have a Recruitment Policy wherein you have a commentary on caste, or you have some sort of a some sort of a boundary condition on caste? The answer is, predominantly, they don't, however, our organizations becoming interested in it, yes, but which type of organizations are becoming interested in it is a question. And in my experience, as far as corporates go, particularly corporates who are who have an MNC parent, and who have, you know, some sort of an operation going on in India or in other parts of let's just talk about India like, you know, having some sort of an operation in India. They are. They are the slower runners, like they are. They are at the most they are interested in a in a DEI knowledge session on cast, but that's pretty much it. But media companies, on the other hand, media houses, are a little bit more interested people who are working within the nonprofit sector, not profits specifically, but those who are in the interface, for example, nonprofit consulting, who are between, you know, worlds, they are a little bit more interested. Of course, we do have, you know, publishing houses, we have come, I mean, non-corporate, but not full blown for profit, MNC driven corporates who are much more interested, and it can be as simple as having including caste as a term in your code of conduct. Now, most of MNCs, most of the MNCs, even if they operate in India, they will have a code of conduct, and as part of the code of conduct, you'll often find, you know, no sort of discrimination needs must happen on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, you know, ability, etc, etc. But you won't find cast in it, despite the fact that caste is the foundational framework of how India operates. So from that sense, it's not that difficult. I would not place so much difficulty to the point that, you know, it's not we need to have a full revision of all the policies, and we have to make an industry out of it. The first and the easiest, low hanging fruit, I think, is to include caste in the code of conduct. That said, the process to it itself is, is unlikely to be, you know, easy, because first Are we even in the room, because we are having a podcast here, but there needs to be people within as Pratap was talking about consensus and communal decisions, like, are they folks in decision making positions within these organizations who are having a conversation about it? And one strategy that we've tried to employ, is talk to the parent organizations that are situated in the UK or US or somewhere in Southeast Asia, having conversations with them, and, you know, asking them, have your Indian counterparts? You know, have you had a discussion with your Indian, Indian colleagues? Why is your India DEI team not talking about cast? You know, that's one strategy that we've tried to employ, and to some extent, it has been successful, in fact, perhaps not in not to the stage of actually drafting a policy, but the fact that some of these India based companies that have MNC parents have even been interested in cast, I would ascribe it to some pressure that is coming from the US and UK, from the US and UK parents, because there's a lot of noise that's happening in US and Canada. In fact, as we already know, the Seattle ban happened, and with that, there was a lot of for around it. There was a lot of conversation around it. So some of these strategies are being helpful, but I agree with Pratap like in the sense that to actually draft a policy that needs a lot more work, and what type of policies also a question that we must ask and that and the answer to some of that is we need to have more people like me and like Pratap, who are specializing in this space you know, who are talking about not just who's not just specializing in providing knowledge based sessions, but also actual consulting assignments with companies where they are able to get into the nitty gritties of how that company itself functions. And be able to draft a policy for them, grievance redressal mechanisms. For example, we've had, you know, somebody named Vivek Raj who committed, who was killed, really by suicide in 2023 and cited caste based discrimination as a reason and that that that should have cost of food. Sadly, it did not. But ideally, how that should have happened is, if a person has experienced car space discrimination, there should have been a grievance redressal mechanism in place that companies don't have a grievance reducing mechanism is what leads to such extreme steps by employees themselves.

Pratap Tambe

I can talk a bit about, you know, some of these, the kind of way cast operates in large organizations. Okay, so what happens is that the risky there are two types of jobs that are pushy jobs and risky jobs. Guess where the risky jobs go? There are menial jobs and thinking jobs? Yes, where the menial jobs go?

Sujatha Rao

Yeah, if you could also just clarify what you mean by risky jobs and menial jobs.

Pratap Tambe

Yeah, risky jobs, basically, you know, if you look at sales jobs, you know, hunting jobs, they are binary jobs. You know, either you succeed or you fail, and if you succeed, then you are there for one more year till you fail. So, you know the those are risky jobs. And you know, while you know, there are basically jobs which are kind of account management and client partnership goals, those are basically, you know, there that is where, basically the fuel system operates, where, you know, the war, the Overlord, the Lord of the thing will parcel out, basically, these farms of lands for farming to client partners, you know, that's an example, basically. But the people, the people who operate the risky jobs, you know, they obviously, you know, there are, and then there may be very difficult projects. This is a this also, is this place to the same thing that I was telling you about difficult innovation, you know, like, if you, if you want to be an oppressed caste where you have to be good at the more difficult stuff, because they are not going to give you the easy stuff. The easy stuff is kept for certain special people. But, you know, the more difficult thing is what you are going to get given, the more fat hour things that you give you, you have to excel at that. And if you, if you are, if you become very good at it, then you will grow. But even then, then you will hit a glass seal, you know, so, but that's, that's what happens to oppressed people in organization. They get given the more difficult things, the more dirtier things and so on, more difficult things. And of course, which, if they survive that, then they will do well, this is, this is a common trend in this is logical. This is something that you will experience. I have experienced it so, but I am not saying this is necessarily always this happens, and 100% time is this happen. But this is the trend, and this is logical. You know, this is what I have experienced. So then secondly, you know, there is the bring your buddy system. Bring your buddy system, when you ask privileged communities to bring their buddies, yes, who comes in? You know, the bring your buddy is a is detrimental to basically diversity, so that bring your buddy system. And, of course, now and then, these caste networks tend to perpetuate themselves in organizations. But that's what, you know, the culture is changing. There are, there are more and more people, you know, which are formed, who are forming multicultural networks and multicast networks and so on, and basically cast. It's, it's, it's, you know, based the social networks in organizations are not necessary. You know, go beyond caste also, but they, you know, it's a competition between caste as an organization and, you know, other kind of binding mechanisms between people as an operating mechanism within by which various coalitions form within organizations and so on. So things are changing, but even now, lot of the, you know, lot of the organizations tend to operate around these mechanisms. So these are some of the examples by which you know some depending on who the feudal Overlord is, there will be the plum position which will be parcelled out to people from the same cast, or whatever, and the difficult things will be given to.

Sujatha Rao

It's interesting. Pratap Christine, I mean, both of you have shared so openly this, this straw. Struggle that I think lot of people of oppressed cast faced in the workplace, not just in the workplace, but I'm sort of focusing on that for the minute, which is this constant need to prove your merit right in a variety of ways. And both of you have sort of spoken about, I'm stuck by two sort of positions, right? So one is Pratap, the point that you are making about this, this, this challenging circumstances that a lot of people are placed in because of their accident of birth that builds in them, in spite of, you know, despite the fear, despite the censorship, all of that, a certain resilience, right? An ability to be innovative, an ability to take risks, etc, that propels them at an individual level. And you are making, in some sense, the argument that there is tremendous value in recognizing some of these strengths that come from, not necessarily the right way of building it, but finding themselves in a position of discrimination, the strengths that they Build right in themselves, and there is tremendous value in in organizations acknowledging that that's a that's a that's potential, right, that that's being many organizations perhaps don't see and don't recognize. And Christina's sort of fundamental position that, because this is not a Pratap and a Christina story. I mean, Pratap and Christina are here today, sharing their stories. But this is and when, in many ways, both of you are outliers in this story, right? You manage to you do something that perhaps not a lot of people are able to do, and so Christina's sort of position with what is it that this workspace itself can address at a at a broader level, right, so that the responsibility of change doesn't really lie through someone proving themselves right, that I'm worthy of whatever it is, but that the conditions for Success that are available to others, perhaps of privileged caste is equally available to someone from an oppressed cast. And I'm, I'm stepping back from this, and I'm thinking, as an organization could and these are, you know, where do how do I, how do I start engaging with this? How do I start building policies. How do I support the individual, and how do I support communities? How can organizations first, in some way sense their own? I don't want to use the word readiness, but since themselves right, like, where are we in this whole, you know, sort of dialog, discourse, action around caste. Should it be from, you know, something that both of you mentioned? Let's take a first principle approach to it, right? What is the first fundamental non negotiables that every organization should have? So if you're taking a DEI lens, should we start by saying, Do we have cast as part of those categories that we look at in our DEI so is that that an organization starts? Does an organization start by saying, is this conversation going back to what Pratap you were saying, right? That there seems to be this hidden consensus, but is that consensus worth bringing out into the open. So is an early step to create safe spaces where people can even have this conversation. Am I interested in talking about caste? Am I, you know, as leaders? Are we willing to tackle it? You know, should we look at that? Should we be doing both right? At one hand, there is this, this broader policy awareness, and one on ones. And at the bottom layer, we are doing these cultural readiness processes right, getting people to start having these conversations. And again, I'm sort of coming back to the value argument that you're making, versus the fundamental sort of positioning that Christina is placing it right this is just foundationally what is required of an extremely prejudiced system that has no right to be there in the first place. So we where are these negotiations that you would feel to them? What would you recommend could be, if you were saying first three steps at an organizational level, what would be your suggested first three steps, right that an organization can take

Pratap Tambe

see? I think organizations have this Johari window. They can't see what they can't see. I. Right? That's, that's the issue, right? So, you know, they may be thinking they are making optimal decisions, but they may not be making optimal decisions because there is group thing, because, you know, which is what, what the DI theory is that if you know when, when you have diversity, there is, you know, your group thing is challenged, and you make better quality decisions. That's basically what the whole thesis of diversity, inclusion, value creation. So I think, you know, doing an assessment, and I don't have, you know, maybe Christina can talk about this, but, you know, they've been doing an assessment of organizations in terms of where this readiness that you spoke about, all you know, what, what is the maturity level about this needs to be done. And the problem is that, you know, until you define a you know, like, because there is no best practice there. There is no best practice framework as to we, you know, as a consultant. You know, I, my day job is a consultant. I do a lot of consulting projects. So consultants always have these frameworks. So, you know, there are maturity frameworks. So cast in organizations, you know, caste, caste sensitivity or caste policies in organization, we need to identify a few dimensions, and then we need to identify stages on those dimensions, and through that, define basically stages in the maturity across groups of those dimensions for organizations. And then we need have an assessment framework that is something that I can help with. But this is not, you know, I would love to do a lot more on this subject. But as I have, you know, I have a very difficult, you know, day job, and it's very difficult to find time for these kind of things, though I, you know, like it's a Raja ki Sawari type thing. We, you know, I can usually make time for these things, but it is difficult to lead on these things. And I, I have this bad habit of committing, over committing and under delivering on some especially these social things. And I have a lot of ideas, but it is difficult for me to do much about it. But I would love to share my ideas if somebody else is taking the leadership on these things. But we need to create a maturity framework, and at each stage, we need to articulate what, you know, objective terms, how we can measure whether an organization is at a particular level of maturity. I don't think such a framework is.

Sujatha Rao

Christina, your thoughts, and then, yeah,

Christina Dhanuja

I think, Sure, thank you so much for summarizing that, Sujatha, so I think you're right in saying that I'm fundamentally taking a different position. I am emphasizing on systemic change. I'm emphasizing at an organizational level, change over, you know, caste marginalized folks having to prove themselves and having to establish their value by virtue of where they belong. Of course, if I can take one minute to, you know, unpack that a little bit more as to why I'm deferring in that position. Is couple of reasons. I mean, yes, it feels really great to think and say and believe that as a lower caste person, I'm exceptional because I have a certain set of, you know, circumstances that have grown up in which has somehow naturally, by accident or by design, I have ended up Having this amount of resilience, and I have, you know, become disruptors, and I'm really innovative, simply because I am for generations. I'm a product of a generational deficit of opportunities, right, and of a surplus of oppression and violence. But I want to be careful in sort of I that that thought is very beneficial for me at an individual level, but at a communal level. I obviously don't want cast marginalized folks to be put under an additional scanner of over performance and exceptionalism. I am far more comfortable in having cast marginalized individuals being considered human. And by that we mean they can be flawed, and they can be not good enough, and they can be great. They can be everything. Because if, if upper caste folks and if caste privileged folks have the luxury of being mediocre. Why should caste marginalized individuals be exceptional? And so if that is the case that we are going to put forward, then there is something deeply problematic about it, and that I'm not saying just for just for now, but. I mean, now it might work. Now we establish that value, and we have, you know, a bunch of people being recruited into these positions because they are, they are amazing, and, you know, and they've done really, really well for themselves, but in the long run, we are making cast marginalized individuals fight for fight between themselves for one position, and they have to fight that much harder, and they should be fighting harder against a certain type of mediocrity that has simply been enabled by caste and nothing but caste, right? So I think these are serious problems that will come into focus once we start moving this route. Now that said, the second thing that you are asking about, like, what are some of the, you know, systemic steps that organizations at an organizational level can do is, to me, both cultural change as well as policy change must happen in tandem, like we can't wait for one to happen so that the other can right, and, and, and I've already mentioned this, one of the easiest and the most immediate and urgent things that one can do is have a code of conduct mentioned cast, right? That is the first step that you can possibly do this. I would recommend for organizations to you know, do that after they have done the code of conduct. Bit is to conduct an honest audit of your percentage of your cast percentage. It's entirely possible that people will not reveal their costs, or it is entirely possible that they will, we don't know, unless you start that step, whether it's going to be an audit. Maybe audit is too scary. So you could start with a survey. You know, it could be an invisible audit, it could be an anonymous survey. It could be, you know, whole bunch of things just for you to get a stock check around, what is your representation like, right? I mean, if we're going to talk about gender based representation, we already know, because we have accepted this whole, you know, gender expression bit, and we say, Okay, we have about 80% of our population are male identity, or are men identifying? And then you know only about 20% are women. So we know that already we can visit, we can visibly see that. And but for sexual orientation, that's not the case. And yet somehow, intuitively, we know that 90% of our population are cis, hetero, right? It's 90% of our workplace populations are cis, hetero, and we are except in a few cases, we are dealing with an invisible, invisible identity when it comes to sexual orientation. But somehow we've been able to make take steps towards that, to the point that today, we have dedicated ERGs for LGBTIQ, a plus representation, and there's hardly any question whatsoever, you know, when it comes to queer representation within our management teams, within, you know, across levels. So how have we been able to achieve that? And there's so much to learn from that process that we have followed. So if we can look at a similar representational audit, or a survey, or some sort of an understanding of how populations are distributed within workplaces that will give you an understanding of, you know, what we need to do in terms of recruitment, in terms of, you know, intentional recruitment, of having more cars, marginalized populations as part of our formal, you know, salaried, managerial, management, workplace populations. The third thing I would do is to have a grievance redressal mechanism in place, have an escalation protocol in place, because this is it's not that cars based discrimination is happening only now, like it's been happening forever, within workplaces, you know. And I'm sure Pratap will agree to it, because I'm sure he has spoken to, you know, his friends and his other caste marginalized, you know, acquaintances, and so have you probably Sujatha and Deepak. You may have heard from your caste, marginalized friends and colleagues that you know, the type of discrimination that they have gone through. So obviously, the typical thing that they would do is that they go through that discrimination, they deal with it, and they just move on, and they would leave the organization, you know, if they are lucky, so the fact that organizations are not having a grievance redressal mechanism in place, right? I mean, the only choices that a Dalit or an Adivasi has provided they have a community certificate within India is to go and file a complaint under the SCST prevention of atrocities act. Right? That is the only provision that's event. Now, if I am a Dalit or an Adivasi, or specifically my if I'm a Dalit Christian or a Dalit Muslim, I won't have a community certificate, and I don't actually. So where do I go to file my grievance? What is my escalation protocol here Do I go to the HR? Do I go to my upper caste boss, who may have himself been, who, who himself or herself would have been the perpetrator? Who do I go to? How do I solve this? So I think there needs to be some visibility into what is that mechanism like. And this is some of the easiest things you can do, and you have enough business case for that. You have enough evidence of lower caste, caste, marginalized individuals going through discrimination. And if your survey is honest enough, it should reflect that that violence and that itself will give you the business case to put an escalation protocol in place, and that would be my three main things that organizations can do right away. Sujatha,

Sujatha Rao

no, I think there's a lot of - Pratap and you are echoing some fundamentals, right? I mean, the lens you bring in are different and equally valuable. And I think the echoes are the same. And this is, you know, at one, at one level, this seems extraordinarily complex, right? Because dealing with a with a, you know, centuries old caste system that has pervaded every aspect of our lives in India. But on the other hand, you know, if you step out of it, it could also be extraordinarily simple way of addressing fundamental human issues, right of who you are at work, how can you be your best self? So I'm coming back to the fundamentals. Right? There are organizations, but the first step is just a willingness right to look at this and start acknowledging it for what it is. And I think then steps are possible, but if you're blind to it, and you seem to say that business as usual, and I'm not interested in this, then no matter what case you put forward, whether it's a fundamental human rights case, or whether, as you know, Pratap was saying, this is, this is fundamental value. You're going to be oblivious to it, right? Because you're blind nevertheless. So, I mean, thank you both for the conversations. I know it's not easy to, you know, to deal with this. I'm also very conscious of time. So Christina, is there anything that you really do want to say that we haven't asked you? Is there a thought that, or, you know, a particular issue, or an idea that you want to share with us that we haven't covered? How are you feeling about the conversation?

Pratap Tambe

And yeah, I there were lot of things that I wanted to say, I think I managed to say most of them.

Pratap Tambe

that's I think that is the issue. This thing had gone down so I had, I had a lot of things to say, I managed to say most of them. The only thing I would like to respond to Christina's point, I think, you know, the grievous you know there are, the primary challenge I see in doing figuring out a practical way ahead, is the fact that some people are not willing or eager to share their cast, the volunteer. You know, the volunteer aspect of work. But for people who are willing to share, and who are basically affected by caste, you know, I think there needs to be a protocol for them, you know, for the people who don't want to share, we don't, let's not worry about them, because if they don't want to be both bothered about their caste, if they want to deal with it on their own, then let them deal with it on their own. If, if they have a problem, then maybe they will reveal the caste and provide the evidence about their caste and so on. But the people, the people who are basically undergoing these difficult times, I think it is high time that there is a, you know, that that becomes a common, least common, practice among all the especially private sector organization, workplaces. But I would be surprised if you know, I mean, if this doesn't already exist, but if it doesn't, then it needs to be. I have not had the opportunity to experience it, but then we come minimum, minimum policies should be enforced across all organizations.

Christina Dhanuja

Yeah, I think it's, it's been a pretty brilliant conversation. Thank you for asking the questions in the way you did that really brought out some of the nuances in this. But I agree with you. I mean, one, one side of it, you know, it is a. Complex issue. It is a complex problem with complex manifestations, but we have to be careful in framing it so complex if we don't have any solutions for it, because some of the solutions are quite simple. Really, we are dealing with an ancient hierarchy. We are dealing with an ancient hierarchy that is still alive and kicking, and there are ways to cut its legs and its hands and its limbs. There are ways to do it, and we are, we are talking about those ways, and several institutions across the globe have been successful in chopping of the limbs of such very, very resilient, adaptive hierarchies, maybe not in exactly that is not exactly the same as cast, but they've, they've been successful enough to do it. And in going back to Pratt point, I mean, today, it's, it's a very different India like we have in the last decade only, we've had so many conversations. The very fact that all four of us are sitting here and have this conversation is a reflection of the work that has gone into these types of discourse creations, and thanks to people like that, thanks to thanks to some of my peers, thanks to people who came before me, thanks to people who have come after me, thanks to several of my Dalit sisters who and brothers who made it to the likes of Colombia and Ivy League institutions, and who are speaking truth to power, right? And thanks to all of them that we are here having this conversation, and we've come a long way, and you know, and it's only going to get better. We only need organizations to and people who are in decision making positions, people who have authority, people who have the capacity to offer, you know, consequential allyship, to see this for the opportunity that is to see this for, for the power that it can bring, you know, and if, if organizations can truly see this, then they can be front runners in this project.

Pratap Tambe

Yeah, one thing I wanted to add, sorry, sorry. There was one point I made before which I want to kind of elaborate. You know, there is a lot of periodically, there is a there are posts on LinkedIn which talk about lot of people have left India because of reservations. But I, I think the number of people coming back to India, obviously are attracted by India, because India has made lot of progress because of reservations over the years since they left India because of reservations, and because of that, they are now attracted back to India. So in my opinion, it is a very simple thing that India has made lot of progress because it has liberalized, because it has enabled, basically the talent to the to the change India. And because of that, basically we are growth rate has changed from the Hindu rate to the to a much better rate, and that is one of the reasons why we are going because in our workplaces, there is less discrimination than it used to be in the in the past. And there is more, you know, you know there are, there are more, there is more diversity and so on. And it is increasing. It is increasing. It is not increasing at it can increase further. So this is an important point which basically does get mixed out. And people just keep talking only about the people leaving India because of reservation, but they don't talk about the people coming back. The lot of people in West, Indians in the West were and there are lot of people investing in India because they believe in the potential of India. And this is the India which is implementing reservation. So basically, obviously, it is a vote for reservation, and there is no evidence whatsoever in formal literature that reservations are spoiling India. That's thing, you know, just this doesn't seem to land with lot of people, and increasing diversity has obviously helped India to grow at a faster rate. And if we basically improve diversity further, India will provide a much faster rate. This is something that I really want to emphasize, and we need to really, you know this, this doesn't get spoken of with the emphasis that it needs to be spoken of. And this is if somebody disagrees with me, I would really like to understand their perspective. Yeah,

Deepak Menon

I'm a bit overawed by the conversation today, so just many of the many of although we've heard it before and with my friends who've expressed them, but also now with a lot of even religious persecution, some of them expressing that as well, but today has been a focused attention, also how authentically both of you have shared. It has over me as a person. But also one more thing, Christina, I was going to say for me as a coach, as a leadership. Coach. For me, dismantling cast at the workplace is a leadership area. You know, it's exhibiting leadership. So when you talk about organization, organization, finally, the people who have more power, who happen to be people from caste, privilege backgrounds. But for me, it's a form of leadership, and exhibiting leadership so and the task of task of dismantling cast at the workplace cannot be left to people who are oppressed by it.

Christina

I agree with you.

Sujatha Rao

I think that's perhaps a good place to sort of bring this conversation, I think, to a close. I mean, obviously, you know, the conversations have to continue. But I'm, I'm taking away what both of you have been saying, right? I think there are, there are steps that need to be taken beyond conversations, and they are not that difficult to take. They are simple, doable things. Many of this is actually being done in the context of other categories, right that we have looked at an organization. So you know, if you look at women in boards, for instance, or the percentage of women leaders, etc. So there are other templates that one can look at and sort of start working at caste. So I want to thank you both for the conversation. It's like Deepak said, so many different ideas and so many different concepts. And you know that is, we are doing time travel as we are talking about it, right? We are simultaneously talking about the past, the present, the potential future. So it does get a bit overwhelming. And I think this is one of those podcast topics where we've tried to address so many things. I'm, you know, not, not convinced that we've done a fantastic job about it, but I think this is perhaps the first of maybe other conversations that we should be having, Christina and Pratap, because I think we've only set the stage for it. I think having some more conversations about even deep diving, Christina, about some of the, you know, the four strategies that you were talking about, or Pratap, the entire idea of entrepreneurship, and you know, we've been talking about that in a variety of ways. I think it sets the tone for maybe having more conversations around these topics. And hopefully we are able to do that with both of you. We are also able to do that with others, you know who are part of this entire journey of creating equitable, honest, just, flourishing workspaces, but equally equitable, just flourishing societies. And let's hope we are able to continue that conversation. So thank you so much. Pratap, Christina Deepak, of course, thank you.

Christina Dhanuja

Thanks so much for having us and having me. Deepak, Sujatha Pratap, lovely, speaking, speaking with you.

Pratap Tambe

Thank you. Thank you. Deepak, thank you. Thank you.

workwise podDeepak MenonSujatha Raodisruptive innovationcommunity impactemployment practicescaste-based skillsdiversity benefitsaffirmative actionuntapped talentoccupational hierarchiescaste consciousnessbusiness caseworkplace discriminationcaste awareness

Deepak Menon

Caste at Work

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Leadership Ascent and Biological Distress: Opening the Black Box of Menopause at Work