tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33471133.post4793390281911720719..comments2023-05-05T03:59:08.045-07:00Comments on Diplomatic Musings: Ocean of caste consciousnessAditya Prateek Anandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09207617380246858002noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33471133.post-36973500070253925952010-08-28T20:19:03.584-07:002010-08-28T20:19:03.584-07:00Very well written piece, and draws very good paral...Very well written piece, and draws very good parallels from mythology.<br /><br />I am particularly against gathering of information related to lineage (castes) and beliefs (religion) in a census. For only one reason: Its personal. I do not have my privacy encroached upon.<br /><br />Aren't we doing the same mistake which was done ages ago? A mistake that we have been trying to rectify for all ages since? India will record information pertaining to the type of cooking meduim, availability of toilets, etc, as a measure of economic status of her people. And also, castes, which to begin with, at its inception, was a measure of ones economic status (profession). Are we not in a way legitimizing the caste system that Gandhi sacrificed years to do away with?Zaheer Zaidinoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33471133.post-69115740679200608452010-07-15T13:13:24.555-07:002010-07-15T13:13:24.555-07:00A very informative and entertaining article. Parti...A very informative and entertaining article. Particularly enjoyed the 'mythology bureaucracy' in the third paragraph.<br /><br />It is always worrying when a powerful agency like the government itself starts maintaining very very detailed data on its citizens. There's a risk of becoming a police state, and loss of privacy and freedom of the individual. Hope that where possible, data is summarized at a generic level to provide a useful overall picture, and individual details are then dispensed with. There also better be some extremely sophisticated security around this data, as one hack would expose information of the entire nation.<br /><br />In terms of providing a unique identity with attached detailed, this seems to compete with the <a href="http://uidai.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Unique Identification Authority of India</a>. Perhaps regular bureaucrats taking revenge against the the non-UPSC managers like Nandan Nilekeni being inducted as chairman to head the department.<br /><br />As for caste (India's own equivalent of racism, apartheid, elitism, oligarchy..), one hopes that solutions are pursued that don't exacerbate the problem. One needs to highlight qualities that are common among everyone rather than discovering and dwelling on the differences (scientifically null). Wherever this data is institutionalised and acted upon, casteism will persist.<br /><br />To help the less priviledged, other systems for their identification and selection need to be used. But then, that may not be a political scoring point in India these days.Aditya Prateek Anandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09207617380246858002noreply@blogger.com