[hammerdr]

FWIW, IIT is an extremely prestigious school system in India that has historically been geared toward the upper echelon of Indian society like private and ivy league schools have been in the United States.

There have been some efforts to rectify that through quotas, though from anecdotes of colleagues it sounds like it hasn't really been solved (e.g. no proper support system leads to disproportionate dropout rates)

https://www.quora.com/Do-you-think-Scheduled-Castes-SC-Sched...

[aravingd]

Don't rely too much on quora on the caste question. It is dominated by the privileged. Please read other material that like http://ambedkar.org/ and http://roundtableindia.co.in/ . There a lot more sources as well. The problem of our country is that how hounded we will be if we talk in support of the caste system where the majority are from the upper caste. See the recent trouble with starting a ambedkar-periyar study circle at IITM for an example. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/educat...

[hammerdr]

Oh, for sure. I picked a source that had a lot of opinions that differed from mine as to consciously oppose my bias :) Thanks for the other links!