This is not news.

I had not heard about that …. so it is news to me.

Whether it is newsworthy is another matter.

Perhaps that is what you mean. The information is not newsworthy to you?

That then becomes a matter of opinion.

Newsworthiness is defined as a subject having sufficient relevance to the public OR A SPECIAL AUDIENCE to warrant press attention or coverage.

The way I see it then is that this is not of special interest to you.

I have no interest in car acccidents. I can do without routine type of car accident reporting until I intend to drive outside of town and the accident closes a road in the direction I am travelling at the time that I will be travelling. Jst as a foR instance… ;-)

BTW, the fact that this is not of interest to you or that accidents are not of interest to me is not newsworthy …. but they are sharing of opinions …. which brings us back around to the name of the site … opinion 250 … :-)

rainy out this morning, isn’t it?

“the boards of India’s top 1000 corporations are almost completely filled with traditionally “upper-class” castes that make up only a small percentage of the country’s overall population.”

Remove the word “castes” and keep “upper class” and I think we are talking about a system that is consitent with the rest of the industrial world, are we not?

Peter Newman wrote about that for Canada in 1975 – the Canadian Establishment.

Bloomberg News had a rather shocking story about India on their web site a few days ago.

Poor in India Starve as Politicians Steal $14.5 Billion of Food

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-28/poor-in-india-starve-as-politicians-steal-14-5-billion-of-food.html

Thank you for that Charles.

To me thatwould be the real story – connecting the upper cast running of corporate boards to the failure of the delivery of a bumper crop of food to the tens of millions of poor in India. The question of whether this is the source or the prime cause of corruption that the Bloomberg site describes.

I do not know whether the UNBC study goes there, or whether it is just a comparatively useless sociological study of corporate culture in India.

It does state that “the more ethnically divided a society, the less able it is to provide public services and infrastructure on a cooperative basis”. But does it point fingers at such a major crisis? Even if so, I would think that would be relaively useless to cause actions before millions starve to death.

Why do WE not care more about India? Perhaps Dr. Dayanandan can shed some light on that.

There is a definite class system in India, CBC did a great documentary on it. The difference between the top class and the bottom is disgusting. Killing someone from the lowest class won’t even bring the police to investigate a majority of times.

All countries have a class system.. There will always be those that have and those that have not.

I did a few searches on the Times of India web page and it tells me that “there are no stories on Ajit Dayanandan”.

When I put “rumblings” into the newspaper’s search engine, there were quite a number of issues over which there are rumblings, including this one:

“We had started the biometric attendance of group-A officers at health secretariat from April 02, 2012, as a pilot project. Initially there were rumblings against the move amongst all the officials, but with time we found that all were complying.”

So these are people who are no doubt from the upper class castes and they are rumbling about being fingerprinted. Not about people in the country starving. Also not about the upper castes ruling the major companies.

The new biometric id system for India is a good thing IMO. Highly relevant to the work done by professor Ajit.

How I see it is you have little in the way of rights when you are not a recognized citizen. Ask any Palestinian about not having rights in your own native land because you are not recognized as a citizen.

With the new biometric ID system being implemented in India it will in effect recognize the citizenship and the rights that come with citizenship (there is risk of abuse too and one would hope that is pointed out by a strong opposition). This recognition of citizenship in turn will provide clear statistics on the health of society, and where the disparities are most glaring.

With foreign recognition of the slanted board rooms in India, and new data coming out on the verifiable make up of Indian society, it is then another milestone on the road to a free enterprise society where the economics of the country relies less so on ethnicity and backroom deal makers… and more so on transparency, openness, and equality of opportunity based on merits.

One thing India does have going for them though is their reluctance to allow monopoly capitalists to do business in their country. Being the birth place of monopoly capitalism under the horrible East India Company hundred year corporate rule, from which India has never recovered, they are a country that now knows the value of free enterprise… and so long as they don’t lose sight of that I have no doubt they will over take China in the long run (maybe 50-years from now).

IMO professor Ajit is pushing in the right direction on this issue and voices like his will carry weight in a third world country like India when it comes to recognizing imbalances in their political system.

If I was a leader in India and I was looking at the data, then I think the priority should be a quality primary education system for everyone that enables the best and the brightest to move on based on their personal merits alone. In time things will come to an appropriate equilibrium.

Time Will Tell

Are my tax dollars funding this university research on the upper caste in India?? Really, they cannot find something relevant to Canada? Waste of money in my opinion.

“a quality primary education system for everyone”

The prof’s study is of corporations. Corporations have little to do with education. That is normally government’s role.

The quality of education is relatively easy to ensure. The access is the problem, not only in India, but even in other countries. If the government departments and boards are in the same state of rule by the elite as the corporations are, then there is no hope in hell that the lowest castes will receive the education they need for their children to be given the tools to move up in the world. Of course, if I understand the caste system, one could miraculously have a PhD and still be subject to extreme prejudice which affects your work and living opportunities.

“they cannot find something relevant to Canada”

Just look around and see how many union members are on corporate boards. Worse still, how many aboriginals are on corporate boards. Then we have the case ofr women on corporatte boards. At least they seem to be making some headway.

Gus I don’t think you get it. You can’t just use the South African model to make progressive change and start at the top… its something society has to grow into and accept through rule of law that respects everyone’s rights and through earned merit enables true and lasting change.

True corporations are not concerned about having an educated population… this allows them to abuse and control society for their own greed and power. We see the move towards that even in first world countries like Canada under Harper. An uneducated society undermines the whole concept of an informed electorate in the democratic model.

My solution doesn’t fix things overnight, or possibly even within a generation… I used the 50-year rule for a reason. It takes 50-years to institute and normalize a population to the free enterprise principal of free primary education for everyone that enables the values of equal opportunity in society based on merits.

Its only when the population as a whole is educated and able to critically think and ask the right questions of their political leaders that the society can demand and force the changes needed to make society more just and reflective of demographics.

If one wants to change the corporate culture of caste prejudice then how does one propose to do this in a free society where it is imposed by government from the top down without undermining the economy and trampling on the rights of existing shareholders? The South African model was a dismal failure as is clear for any and all to see.

Change starts with respecting the universal rights of citizenship that enables a proper education system where leaders of tomorrow are allowed to grow into the roles they will earn in society… over time.

India is recognized as a democracy, so the people of India have the power to make their own change in time with a proper education regardless of the machinations of the power elite caste. That is the upside of living in a democracy. Furthermore… who says a central government has to provide the education… it takes a community to educate and that is no different no matter where in the world one lives.

The authors of the UNBC study have provided in part a step towards civic education that can be used by people back in India that understand the power of information in a democracy… and that my friends benefits Canada if we are to nurture a population of over 1.3 billion people to reflect more Canadian values in a hostile world greatly influenced by regimes like the communist party of China that would trample on the values of our society given the opportunity.

Large universities across the country study geopolitics an a world of increasing globalization… so it is somewhat relevant to Canadians to see studies like this done IMO.

“Its only when the population as a whole is educated and able to critically think AND ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS of their political leaders that the society can DEMAND AND FORCE the changes needed to make society more just and reflective of demographics.”

Give me a break. We go through election after election and the people we elect typically do not get it. And then they do, the people do not get it and just sit around.

Sure we have it better here, no doubt about it. People are not exsactly starving for food. The things we “starve” for moves up the scale as we “progress” and it is doing better for some of us than for others. So, inequality continues to exist whether based on race, etthnicity, gender, age, financial wealth, health, education, etc. etc.

The hundreds of millions who are starving in many countries around the world should not have to wait for 50 years. We all have a responsibility to make sure they do not.

“regimes like the communist party of China that would trample on the values of our society given the opportunity”

Sort of like the conquering Europeans trampled on the values of the people they found occupying this land?

Again, old line thinking. When enough people are shown that they are being trampled they will rise up. Look at all the countries Great Britain left behind from their Imperial days. The only “success” stories were countries were the population was sparse and unorganized into contiguous communities. The New England colonies, Palestine, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt all the way down the eastern part of Africa to South Africa, Cyprus, Sudan, Nigeria India, Burma, Iraq and other Gulf states, and several others all feel apart when the power of the sword could no longer rule. The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, Tito and untold others could not hold their large, small, long-lived and short-lived empires together. Neither could the Russians.

Looking at all those failures, I continually marvel at the Swiss which started their confederacy in 1291 that grew over the centuries and bonds distinct ethnic and language groups around its alpine country.

While there were two standards in the British Empire. The ones considered a success where the ones that had responsible government from the outset. The others were given to the Rothschilds banksters to govern as they see fit for maximum profits and the societies were decimated in the process.

You can not compare the experience of Canada, Australia, New Zealand… to the experience of Nigeria, India, Sudan, and Burma… constitutionally they where as similar as night and day. The only part ethnicity played in this was the recognition of citizenship rights, education levels, and a right to responsible governemnt.

The 50 year rule applies to the maturation of a society to be able to effectively self govern itself based on the ability to educate a mature electorate. It in no way excuses a government from its responsibilities to its people, in fact if a nation is not meeting its responsibilities to its people it will never get to its goal of an educated representative society.

South Africa is a modern day example of a failed state that tried to do everything all at once before the population was ready for full democracy and now the dispossessed are worse off and the country as a whole is in free fall.

The East India Company run by the Rothschilds banking cartel is the far end of the extreme and has no place in humanity (its why the Americans had their revolution). Their modern day examples would include places like Burma, most of Africa, North Korea, Kazakhstan, and to some extent even China.

On the other end of the spectrum we have some great successes of countries that educated their people, nurtured their people, and in time brought them up to be modern first world democracies… South Korea, Taiwan, Poland, Chili, and Argentina are countries that achieved the gradual transition over a decades long process… and Turkey, the Philippines, and India are countries well on their way (likely the fastest growing economies in the world over the next decade).

And Gus you are right that Canada is no shining example of how a democracy should work… that apathy rules the day. We are a country blessed with vast natural resources so we can get away with it. You have no argument from me when you say our democracy is failing our society… mostly because it can barely be called a democracy. IMO Canada is at a tipping point and could go either way… its why its so important for Canadians to educate themselves and use what limited tools we have in our democracy to start demanding that we take it back for the people and not for the corporations.