The Caste System in Present Day India

True. India is a vast country. Its population exceeds 120 crore. It has thousands of languages spoken and written. The caste system which was prevalent widely is no longer widely affecting life. Scheduled caste and tribes are given special concessions in school/college admissions and also in job opportunities and promotions. People of SC and ST are well off and sometimes forward caste people tend to think that more than what is required is pumped to them. I belong to forward caste. Among forward caste also lakhs of people are living below normal living conditions and there is no scope for helping them. we will have more views. we will see.

I am an Engineer, 62, now living in a village to serve the rural community which is mostly deprived of even the most basic facilities of life like clean water, electricity, health services, education, justice etc. I would like to quench your quest on caste system in India. There are hundreds of castes in India, and since marriages are arranged within castes only, each one remains a separate partition within a society. There used to be untouchables in the country but Mahatma Gandhi worked hard to change their lot and feelings of others about them. The system of untouchables is fading gradually. Reservation policies of the governments in education and government employment also helped in bringing power to the earlier down-trodden classes. At many places, they have become the bosses. I belong to a Hindu family of upper caste - Vaish, the community that traditionally runs economy of the society through trading activity. My father was a staunch Gandhian and so my family does not have ill feelings about lower castes. For my studies of religions and spirituality, I have become a well determined atheist. In-spite of government and people's support to the earlier down-trodden classes, they are not taking enough interest in changing their lot and have become too much dependent on government aids to them. Most of them still don't send their children to schools, don't live cleanly, and don't work hard, just because government provides them a lot to survive. For this reason, they maintain their lower economical status to remain always on the list of weaker sections and keep on getting free aids from the government and the society.