NEW DELHI, Oct 29 (AFP): India's Muslims and low-caste Hindus have a harder time landing jobs and die younger than high- caste Hindus, even when they have similar educations and incomes, new studies have found.
A Dalit, a member of a low caste formerly known as "untouchable," was about two-thirds as likely as a similarly qualified high-caste Hindu to get a positive response to a written job application, a Princeton University study found.
A Muslim was only a third as likely to hear back, showed the study, which sent out about 5,000 applications for almost 600 jobs from fake candidates with identical qualifications but identifiable group names.
"This study has been done for the first time in India," researcher and Indian Institute of Dalit Studies fellow Firdaus F. Rizvi told AFP Sunday, adding it was based on similar work on racial discrimination in the United States.
Rizvi carried out the 66-week study with economics professor Sukhadeo Thorat, who heads India's public university regulatory body, and City University of New York sociology professor Paul Attewell.
"Minorities were very discriminated against," said Rizvi, adding that the study found discrimination at the beginning of a job search.
Out of 179 responses to applications for jobs requiring a masters degree, 55 went to high-caste Hindus, 46 to Dalits and 32 to the Muslim candidates, while 46 also went to a wild-card candidate, a high-caste Hindu with a bachelor's degree.
In a job search requiring a bachelor degree, 93 responses went to Hindus, 75 to Dalits, 53 to Muslims, while 73 went to the overqualified candidate -- a Dalit with a masters.
In another of the four Princeton-funded studies on labour discrimination, two professors examined the employment expectations and job search experiences of high-caste Hindus and Dalits.
Studies show India's Muslims, low-caste Hindus trail in jobs, health
FE Team | Published: October 30, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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