American tech giants are taking a modern crash course in India’s millennial caste system, with Apple emerging as one of the first leaders in policies to free Silicon Valley from a rigid hierarchy that has separated Indians for generations.
Reuters reports that caste discrimination was banned in India over 70 years ago, but according to several studies in recent years, the prejudice persists.
Paresh Dave for Reuters:
Apple, the largest publicly traded company in the world, updated its general employee conduct policy about two years ago to explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of caste, which it added to existing categories such as race, religion, gender, age and ancestry. .
The inclusion of the new category, which has not been previously reported, goes beyond US discrimination laws, which do not explicitly prohibit casteism.
Great technology [is confronting] a millenary hierarchy in which the social position of the Indians was based on family lineage, from the highest class of Brahmin “priests” to Dalits, shunned as “untouchables” and destined for menial jobs.
Apple’s main internal policy on workplace conduct, as seen by Reuters, added the reference to caste in the sections on equal employment opportunities and anti-harassment after September 2020.
Apple confirmed it had “updated the language a couple of years ago to enforce the ban on caste-based discrimination or harassment.” He added that the training provided to staff also explicitly mentions caste.
“Our teams evaluate our policies, training, processes and resources on an ongoing basis to ensure they are comprehensive,” he said. “We have a diverse and global team and we are proud that our policies and actions reflect that.”
Note from MacDailyNews: Reuters reports that several tech companies do not specifically refer to caste in their main global policy, including Alphabet, Amazon, Dell, owner of Facebook Meta, and Microsoft, owner of Google.
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