This is a TVS. I and the world. I'm John Bachelor. I welcome my colleagues Saturn-Doume of the American

Enterprise Institute and his column at the Wall Street Journal

answers the question I didn't know to ask. Where did the caste system that is

used in hiring and the academy in India.

Where did it come from?

I learned from you, Saddam, and it came from a good intention

to give an opportunity to the Dalits,

famously known as the Untouchables,

and Tribals, this sometime after the republic

was formed in 1950.

What happened after that, the good intention. Good evening to you, Saturn.

Very good evening to you, John. Well, you know, as with affirmative action programs around the world,

they usually start out as a very limited promise to provide redress for past injustices.

And then they quickly kind of, you know, tend to either become permanent or in India's

tapes not just become permanent but expand dramatically. So what I point out in my

column is that when this whole thing started basically there was about about more

than 80% of government jobs and more than 80% of places in government funded

universities and colleges, medical schools, and the like,

were based on an examination, right? So everyone takes the exam and then

whoever, you know, you get in based on merit and around 18 percent, it was 17.5% was based on whether you were born into a Dalit

family or a tribal family and then you kind of you got a leg up. But if you look today, the situation is quite dramatically different

and only about 40%, only about 4 out of 10 government jobs or seats in colleges are based on merit and 60% is based on some kind of identity-based quota.

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