India To Ask Caste Status In Next Census For First Time In Decades

Fuente: International Business Times

More than two-thirds of India's 1. 4 billion people are estimated to be on the lower rungs of a millennia-old social hierarchy that divides Hindus by function and social standing AFP India will conduct its first official caste census since independence, the government announced on Wednesday, a move likely to have far-reaching consequences for its politics and contentious affirmative action policies. Caste remains a crucial determinant of one's station in life in India, with higher castes the beneficiaries of ingrained cultural privileges and lower castes suffering entrenched discrimination -- and a rigid divide between both.