The Great Indian Bias  

Discrimination lurks everywhere, inside our offices, businesses and educational institutions. Little has moved beyond tokenism despite the enormous economic and social costs.
The Great Indian Bias  

At a national conference of academicians, Prof Partha Sarathi could not help but notice the distance that some of the attendees were keeping from him. The usual lunch session camaraderie in groups rarely included him and whenever he was part of a conversation, it swiftly switched to academics. It was only on the second day that he could fathom the reason when a fellow participant checked upon his Tamilian ancestors. “I realised then that owing to my name, they had confused me as a ‘Tam Bram’ (Tamil Brahmin) and labelled me as a snooty intellectual.

I had to explain to them that I was from Bihar and since my parents lived in Chennai for long, I was named so by one of their close friends,” explains Sarathi, Associate Professor, Physics, Delhi University. This incident has played out more than once.

“Often my name becomes my identity for people at my workplace. The bias has played out in both positive and negative ways. Someone may favour me with the tag of an ‘intellectual’ and someone else will think that since I am from Bihar, I would have cheated my way up in examinations. It’s surprising how a name evokes different reactions among different people,” he adds.

Unlike what Shakespeare said, a name is not merely a name in India. Zoya Afzal would know. “Corona has come,” said a nurse from a leading Mumbai hospital, pointing towards Afzal, standing at the paediatric ward. She was visiting the hospital for the Hepatitis B vaccination of her one-year-old daughter. “I stared him in the eye. He scornfully looked away. I waited for an hour before asking the lady at the reception the reason for the delay. She said I would have to ask the nurse on duty—the same person who had mocked me,” says Afzal, a 30-year-old horticulturist. “He said, ‘Corona toh nahi le aye’ (hope you haven’t got the coronavirus infection with you). I was flabbergasted.

When I told him to mind his business, he said, ‘Jao, kisi Muslim chikitsalaya chale jao, apne jaison ke beech mein’ (Go to some Muslim medical establishment where there are others from your community),” she adds.

The year was 2020, and the world was waking up to the pandemic, and in India, the rumour on the corridors was how the Tablighi Jamaat (a Sunni Islamic missionary movement) was spreading the virus because their congregation was held just at the start of the outbreak in Delhi.

It’s 2022 and biases have only taken new meanings. As the Hijab row played out in our courts for several weeks and women fought for their choice of wardrobe, what has often been brushed under the carpet is how biases exist in all corners of the society—most prominent in its institutions of learning and workplaces. “There are 250 biases that exist in the society. It manifests in different ways in our institutions,” says Kalpana Tatavarti, the founder of Parity Consulting and Training, a Bengaluru-based organisation that works with training corporates on diversity and inclusion (D&I)  

In a 2020 survey conducted by employer rating platform JobBuzz, it was noted that 33 per cent of Indians faced age-related bias at the workplace followed by 17 per cent because of physical appearance and 15 per cent on the basis of their religion or culture. “Biases exist all across the world. It is human nature to function under biases,” explains eminent sociologist Dipankar Gupta. And often when it rears its ugly head, it goes unnoticed as it is a norm now.

“People let biases to creep in because they allow them to follow a set pattern of thinking. Biases become useful to them as they cut out time. People don’t have to think and it becomes a matter of convenience,” he adds. According to Evolutionary Psychology, there is a stronger negative emotional and avoidance reaction toward unfamiliar—compared to familiar—older adults.

March 1 is observed as Zero Discrimination Day, to lead a life with dignity, by the United Nations. And yet gender discrimination, ageism, LGBTQ+ prejudices, stereotypes against physical appearances, language and regional barriers continue.

The Caste & Creed Closet

One of the oldest and most visible biases in the country is against religion and caste. In 2017, Pew Research Centre had ranked India as the fourth worst country among 198 nations in the world for religious intolerance, only after Syria, Nigeria and Iraq.

Abu Sufiyan would know. As a media consultant for a government organisation, all was going well with him. His digital strategies were being hailed and he was on the verge of getting his contract renewed. Except for when the project in-charge in the ministry paid undue attention to his name. “We were in a gathering and the moment I was introduced to him, he said, ‘Oh, he is a Talibani’. I was shaken up but politely explained to him how my Indianness isn’t any less than his. After death, I will be buried and his ashes will be immersed in the Ganges. That’s the only difference,” says Sufiyan, 28-year-old Delhi resident. The explanation didn’t bode well with the head. Predictably, Sufiyan’s contract wasn’t renewed.

Social structure and caste hierarchy are entrenched in the Indian milieu. When six years ago, Rohith Vemula, a PhD scholar from the University of Hyderabad, wrote “my birth is my fatal accident” before taking his life, it shed light on the indignities the Dalit community faced. The incident encouraged Yashica Dutt to publish her powerful memoir Coming Out as Dalit in 2019. “Nothing has changed. The narrative of resistance continues,” says Dutt, now based in New York. The book won the 2021 Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar. “In India, it is the upper caste which is writing the policies. Do you think biases will pause unless it is called out?” Dutt asks.

In several American universities, including Harvard and California State universities, caste is now a protected category against discrimination. Over here, millennials and Gen Zers have taken their battle on to social media where hashtags have become a popular form of resistance.

Last year, a professor from IIT-Kharagpur was allegedly caught on camera hurling abuses at students belonging to marginalised castes during her online English class. It led to a mini furore on Twitter with the hashtag #EndCasteisminIIT.

Then there is Deepa Mohan, a Dalit PhD student from Kerala who sat on a hunger strike for a week last October, over caste discrimination. It took the social media by storm. She ended her fight only after Mahatma Gandhi University in Kerala replaced the official who had kept her away from finishing her doctoral research.  

Gloss over Gender

Just like religion and caste are put in the boxes, women haven’t had it easy in the deeply patriarchal Indian institutions. In January, the State Bank of India (SBI) came under flak for its controversial circular terming pregnant women “unfit” for recruitment. Social commentator Santosh Desai terms pregnancy as “one of the biggest sources of prejudice in workplaces”.

The Delhi Commission for Women issued a notice to SBI, seeking withdrawal of the revised guidelines that prevented women who are over three-month pregnant from joining work. Even though the country’s largest bank was quick to retract the controversial part, that such a regulation exists in 2022 hasn’t come as a surprise to those waging a battle against gender inequality and a lack of pay parity.

This circular brought back “painful memories” of her pregnancy days to Tarini Iyer (name changed), an HR professional from Bengaluru. Three years ago, this “star performer” of her team saw a shift in attitude when she announced to her supervisor she was pregnant. “The company asked me to cut short my maternity leave from six months to three months citing staff crunch. Since I had no backup at home, I couldn’t but they guilt-tripped me to working from home while I was officially on leave. I worked many hours from home, and still, when I joined back, I was not considered for a long-due promotion,” says Iyer.

As per Article 16 of the Constitution, all citizens have a right to equality of opportunity in relation to matters of public employment or appointment to any office under the state. Last year, the High Court of Kerala invalidated an employment notification that invited only male candidates to apply for the permanent post of Safety Officer. The judgement, which determined that women cannot be denied employment on account of the job involving work during night hours, is a significant step in fuelling true empowerment. Even though legal stipulations exist, employees taking the course of law are few and far between.

But pregnancy and childcare continue to be the most common prejudices against women in workplaces. When manpower consultancy firm Teamlease conducted the ‘Maternity Benefits (Amendment) Act 2017: Revisiting the impact’ survey in 2020, 48 per cent of male employees cited increasing gender bias as one of the biggest reasons for the attrition of women at the workplace. Around 54 per cent of the male respondents stated discrimination at the workplace to be the root cause of women not progressing in careers.

It was women’s high attrition rate that led Sairee Chahal to start SHEROES in 2014, a one-stop career and entrepreneurial destination for women. Chahal has observed how women entrepreneurs continue to be denied access to credit by financial institutions. “And yet research indicates that women are better borrowers, and more likely to pay back loans on time, and in full. We are seeing this statistic playing out in our sister company Mahila Money, a financial products and services platform for women in India,” says Chahal, CEO and Founder, SHEROES and Mahila Money. Even though Chahal believes positive strides are being made in D&I, the stereotypes are yet to be shunned. “Especially when it comes to supporting women with entrepreneurial goals or those trying to build remote careers.” 

The ratio of women’s participation in the workforce has always been skewed. And it has its ramifications. Prof Ashwini Deshpande, Director, Centre for Economic Data and Analysis, Ashoka University, Haryana, puts it succinctly, “When women don’t participate in paid work, the country’s GDP suffers. Increasing women’s participation in paid work will increase national income.” Deshpande, who introduced a course on the economics of discrimination in Delhi School of Economics over two decades back, explains: “For women, urban labour force participation rates in India have always been low and continue to be low. Depending on which data set one uses, the picture of the decline varies.

Using the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy data, which looks at labour force participation on a daily status, we see a decline in rural and urban areas since 2016. My estimates (with co-author Jitendra Singh) show that women enter and exit the workforce several times over short periods of time and these movements are not related to childbirth or cropping cycles or any other standard reasons. This suggests that women are unable to find work on a continuous basis but do work when it is available.”  
As is evident the economics of gender discrimination in the everyday world plays out in myriad ways. Even just being a woman is enough to be treated differently than a male counterpart.  

Samya Aman Akhtar is a case in point. A bright student, it came like a bolt from the blue when her science teacher, in a compulsory subject counselling session, told her why she should opt for humanities instead of science because it is a “soft subject”. “I wanted to be a doctor but my teacher tried to convince me to choose humanities and become a teacher. This way, I could have work-life balance. She was gaslighting me,” says Akhtar, currently studying medicine in Singapore. When her parents complained to the principal, she too joined the “humanities better for girls” chorus. Akhtar’s parents filed a complaint against both the teachers with CBSE and changed her school so that she could study science.

Dutt believes the mixture of biases against women is deeply rooted in India because it’s a “toxic mixture of Brahmanical and patriarchal values.” She explains, “Though there are biases that exist outside India, such as in the US, this specific misogyny is dominant to the Indian subcontinent. The idea to exert power on a women’s choice is deeply entrenched here.”

D for Different

In the world of biases, nothing exists more glaringly than the treatment meted out to those who are “different”—be it about their gender or appearance. Fat-shaming is as common as discriminating employees on the basis of skin colour because fair is still lovely. Last year, a study commissioned by the Indian Council of Social Science Research on racial discrimination and hate crimes against people from the northeast states found that people from the region “faced an increased number of acts of hate and prejudices against them” during the pandemic.

Also, 78 per cent from the region believed that physical appearance was the most important reason for discrimination against them. Last year, a popular YouTuber from Punjab called an elected leader from Arunachal Pradesh “Chinese”. A few northeastern boys were denied entry into a Bengaluru supermarket owing to their ‘Chinese’ appearance and thereby carriers of coronavirus. Finding rented accommodation is another concern.

In being touted different, the LGBTQ+ community hasn’t had it easy either. The mandate on paper for corporate India is about hiring employees from different cultural, linguistic and socio-economic backgrounds as well as with different physical abilities and sexual orientations. Even after the hiring, biases never stop cropping up.

Shreya Singh Dalal, a 32-year-old transwoman, knows what it means to work in organisations that are still struggling to handle “different”. She has been the target of several uncomfortable questions at her previous workplaces. “I had started questioning if something was wrong with my gender. People like us are judged because of our gender and sexuality,” says Dalal, Marketing and PR Manager with The Lalit, Delhi. Often, clichés around sexuality go unnoticed. “But at The Lalit, inclusivity is part of the work culture. Proper pronouns are used to address people here and your talent and passion for work are valued over everything else. This level of sensitivity was non-prevalent in most organisations that I have worked with previously,” she says.

HR honchos who work closely in developing D&I policies maintain that the movement is slowly making headway. “We have an AI-generated mechanism where the keywords in a job description that are discriminatory or not according to our values are highlighted. We also regularly train our hiring managers. Employees are made aware of the proper pronouns to be used as ‘You Belong’ is our guiding principle. We make diversity and inclusion related objectives a part of everyone’s measurable performance goals and objectives,” says Sonal Jain, Enterprise Head HR and Consumer Health Head HR, Johnson & Johnson India.

Act of Ageism
One of the new-age biases that have emerged is ageism. Young and less expensive talent is scouted for. For Ananya Sood (name changed), it was a punch in the gut when her junior colleague remarked, “Oh, I will be contributing to your pension.” Call it the unconscious bias or uttered in jest, the remark left Sood in a disturbed state of mind. Not to stay quiet, Sood, a software professional from Mumbai, had then retorted, “My income tax has contributed to the facilities you enjoy, so don’t insult me over, age.” The relations between the two soured and the management didn’t bother to counsel either. “In fact, people just laughed over it,” she adds

Discrimination over ageism is real. “Older workers are often liable to encounter difficulties in employment because of prejudices about their capacities and willingness to learn. Also, there’s a tendency to discount their experiences as market pressures to hire younger workers are immense because they are often cheaper to employ,” says Sashi Kumar, Head of Sales-India, Indeed, a leading job website.

For Bhopal resident Apoorv Khare, the reverse scenario led to mental health issues. “Often, my co-founder reversed my decisions citing my lack of experience. He used to impose his ideas and eventually I had to forsake my stake in the company,” says the 28-year-old agri-business entrepreneur. It was a joint venture of a food commodities enterprise that Khare had started with his partner. “Despite my biotechnology degree and sharp business acumen, I was sidelined,” he says.

That start-ups value the young workforce in India is evident from the hiring protocols. “I do believe ageism is very real. In organisations that have tenured and older employees, there is bias against younger people and vice-versa. The intersection of women and ageism is worse,” says Tatavarti.
But an interesting shift is slowly happening as not having an experienced workforce has started impacting output. Organisations like J&J enforce a multi-generational workforce and it is part of the hiring manager’s “key result area” for the year. “We look at the mindset for a role,” says Jain. Innovation has to walk along with experience. “We have created a reverse mentoring programme that pairs young career associates with mid-to-senior employees allowing generations to learn from one another,” she adds. 

Policy & Prejudice

At the Government PU College for Girls, Udupi, the epicentre of the hijab controversy, three protesting students missed their examinations costing them a missed academic year. Two years back a professor from IIT-Madras had resigned alleging caste bias and even wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister to look into it. Even as people have lost jobs, missed promotions or cried foul over biased appraisals, the more the rules are made, the more are they broken.

“All societies have biases when viewed from today’s lens. For instance, caste in India has been a very legitimate way of determining itself as a social identity. After many decades we have realised the bias attached to it,” argues Desai. Just like race in America, which continues to dominate its mainstream narrative despite civil rights and stringent anti-discriminatory laws. “The kind of bias I experience in India is very different than what I experience here in the US. Here I am a brown South Asian so I am looked at through a very different lens. In the US, while the bias is hidden, it’s more direct in India,” says Dutt.

The economic cost for a nation riding on biases is hard to ignore. Farishta Dastur Mukherji, a Kolkata-based psychotherapist who works with corporates and schools, terms discrimination as one of the most common reasons for stress and anxiety. “There is a mental illness that arises out of discrimination and there are discriminations because of mental health issues. I have counselled patients of both kinds,” she says. Mukherji explains how the trauma of being touted as different lingers on even after quitting a toxic workplace. “They start questioning their ability to fit in at the new workplace,” she adds.

Even as companies hire firms such as those run by Tatavarti, many believe lipsync won’t help. “We focus on helping workplaces identify biases at four levels—affinity, preference, confirmation and stereotypes. So while affinity is about attracting from a similar social class like a school or college, preference is about working with a template like an extrovert being a better performer. Confirmation is a long-held belief like older people are not good with tech while stereotypes are closed boxes like a receptionist has to be a female. Unless we put checks and balances to address these, it will remain tokenism,” she says. According to Kumar of Indeed, businesses will only cease discriminating when large judicial judgements and settlements make it prohibitively expensive to do so.

Despite the two cents of advice that experts offer, as for Partha Sarathi and Zoya Afzal, they know their names will continue to precede their reputation. “People are taken aback when they realise I topped my university examinations. They think people from Bihar only clear exams by cheating,” says Sarathi. It was after close to three hours of wait that a senior doctor had intervened in Afzal’s case and promised action. “Whether or not that happened, I don’t know. I will never return to that hospital again,” she says.
They both have learnt to retort or retreat. Have you?

Prejudice in Cinema and Politics 

If it’s in the workplace, can politics and cinema be far away which reflect society in a big way? Gender discrimination is blatantly evident in Parliament. The 17th Lok Sabha has 78 women MPs; even at 14 per cent of the total members, it is the highest since Independence. How elections are won and lost on caste is not lost on anyone. A few decades back when a popular Dalit leader was visiting a politician from Uttar Pradesh, the senior leader was shown outward respect attributed to his stature. But the moment the Dalit leader left, the servants were asked to burn away the moodha (cane stool) on which he sat.

Last year, a team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University gathered subtitles from 1,400 highest-grossing Hollywood and Bollywood movies from the past seven decades (1950-2020) to analyse bias in cinema. Even though some biases like dowry, male progeny and consent have changed in the last decade, what has remained unchanged is fair skin and how surnames of doctors portrayed in Hindi films were from Hindu upper castes. Also, Bollywood movies continue to ignore northeastern states in depiction. In January, seven years after the movie Mary Kom was released, actor Priyanka Chopra admitted that the role of the eponymous boxer from Manipur should have gone to someone from the northeast instead of her.

Prejudice exists, believe...

27%  Women
23%  Disabled
21%  LGBTQ+

Diversity and inclusion policies

71%  Employees feel they are found wanting
35%  Say their organisations lacked them
66%  Employers think they are very effective

“We are a country made up of so much diversity, and with diversity also comes prejudice in the form of stereotypes of those who are different.”
Sairee Chahal Founder & CEO, SHEROES and Mahila Money

“The big issue with India is that it is supported by an ecosystem which is comfortable with biases like caste supported by an ecosystem which is comfortable with biases like caste in an arranged marriage.”
Santosh Desai Social Commentator

“Genuine meritocracy is more a myth than a reality. Gender discrimination is ubiquitous.”
Prof Ashwini Deshpande Director, Centre for Economic Data and Analysis, Ashoka University, Haryana

“The only way to put an end to employment discrimination is to speak out about it, file lawsuits, and expose discriminatory practices.”
Sashi Kumar Head of Sales, Indeed, job portal

“We have an Employee Resource Group called the Generation NOW that works on removing the association with one specific generation.”
Sonal Jain Enterprise Head and Consumer Health Head, HR, Johnson & Johnson India

“People allow biases to creep in because they allow them to follow a set pattern of thinking.”

Dipankar Gupta Sociologist

Related Stories

No stories found.
Indulgexpress
www.indulgexpress.com