Barkha Dutt: prediction

Transcript context

…If I look at top CEOs in India, very often they might come from, say, Gujarat, and very often, they’re not Brahmins. If I look at the top CEOs outside of India, say in Silicon Valley, it seems most of them are Brahmins. Why that difference? I know that Silicon Valley has been grappling with questions around caste discrimination. I know California, in particular — I actually know one of the women who first raised it, wrote a whole book — Yashica Dutt — about growing up as a Dalit and then living as a Dalit in America. Yet I can’t say to you that there is a coincidence between caste and technology and success. I think what I can say to you is that there has been an overlapping coincidence of socioeconomic backwardness among marginalized groups, so that is Dalits, that is Muslims. There is a coincidence because of the jobs and professions that these groups are typically employed in. If you’re, let’s say, a leather-skin tanner or your job is to cremate bodies — I’m giving you professions that are typically so-called lower castes — you’re not going to earn a bunch of money to educate your children to do something else, or it’ll be tougher for you. Therefore, that coincidence that you point out between Brahmins and success abroad possibly came from the fact that if you’re marginalized on the basis of your caste, you are most likely also earning less than other groups, which means that your ability to, let’s say, go outside of India is diminished compared to other caste groups, so there will be some coincidence. It’s a little bit like if you looked at the same CEOs in India — most CEOs are men. There are coincidences, interrelated factors that explain why certain groups are able to access resources and opportunities in a way that other groups are not. I don’t think it means that somebody set out to make all the CEOs of Silicon Valley Brahmins; I think it was a series of factors about access to opportunity and resources and education. Plenty of Whites in the United States have resources, education, but is it possible the Brahmins of India who come to America — they’re better at cracking foreign cultural codes, they’re more used to diversity, they’re more used to strange environments? The complacency is taken away once they leave their country. Because it’s not just that they have done well — they have done especially well as leaders in a particular kind of leadership roles.…

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