Casteism is kept alive not only by the caste specific marriages but also by immanence of the castes brought up in the occupational caste world view. Just as a person shouldn't want to continue his traditional manual scavenging job, it is equally important that a person because of his Brahmin background shouldn't want to become a priest, scholar or teacher (overlooking the narrowness of that idea in the past) . So any direct or indirect methods to break this uni-dimensional thought process should be welcomed.
It is with this background I find the communists' opposition to FDI in retail sector disappointing. Unfortunately, Indian communists never made an attempt to apply the communist ideas based on the class based European society to the caste based Indian society.
Their love for small scale retailers who I would think never would vote or fund communist parties defies the logic. This is the place where they need to stand by the ideology (that is they want to eradicate caste ideas of traditional occupations). Shouldn't be difficult for them to make this paradigm shift as they appear to have forsaken some of their economic ideas.
I had come across opinions that the cultural revolution in China, even though harmed a countless number of people, was also responsible for a new and liberated way of thinking. I would think these kind of reforms, though hardly of the scope and the scale of the cultural revolution, that could bring down the existing artifacts because of the caste system are always welcome. I'm sure everyone would bounce back from any setbacks because of the reforms as they already have "cultural capital" unlike the huge chunk of faceless population.
It is with this background I find the communists' opposition to FDI in retail sector disappointing. Unfortunately, Indian communists never made an attempt to apply the communist ideas based on the class based European society to the caste based Indian society.
Their love for small scale retailers who I would think never would vote or fund communist parties defies the logic. This is the place where they need to stand by the ideology (that is they want to eradicate caste ideas of traditional occupations). Shouldn't be difficult for them to make this paradigm shift as they appear to have forsaken some of their economic ideas.
I had come across opinions that the cultural revolution in China, even though harmed a countless number of people, was also responsible for a new and liberated way of thinking. I would think these kind of reforms, though hardly of the scope and the scale of the cultural revolution, that could bring down the existing artifacts because of the caste system are always welcome. I'm sure everyone would bounce back from any setbacks because of the reforms as they already have "cultural capital" unlike the huge chunk of faceless population.
