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Somewhere on the "reasons to be pessimistic about India list" there must be mentioned affirmative action, which destroys everything it touches and of which India has a more oppressive and thoroughgoing system than just about anywhere outside of South Africa. Yeah, China has affirmative action, too, but they're 90% Han Chinese, while in India up to 75% of the population gets affirmative action in some jurisdictions. It is one of the main reasons the South Asians in your life are here instead of there.
A hundred times this. India unnecessarily handicaps itself by subverting its otherwise reasonably robust commitment to meritocracy.
I agree it's a major reason for skilled professionals to flee the country, such as yours truly, because even after finishing med school I still face massive barriers to further career progression gated by exams with insane levels of hard quotas for "underprivileged" groups. And even were I to grit my teeth and force myself through, I don't want to raise children in such an environment.
Of course, Indian culture does endorse meritocracy as a whole, unlike the West where it increasingly needs to be fought for, but the AA activists here operate under the figleaf that the system is still meritocratic and the people who avail it aren't worse at everything, even if anyone who isn't legally blind can see the qualitative difference between AA candidates and those who got there the old-fashioned way.
I'd run from a doctor if I learned they got through based on quotas, assuming I had a choice. Unfortunately, having grown up a naive caste-blind kid, I lack the keen ability to distinguish them by their surnames this truly requires.
In fact, my girlfriend, who while very smart still has SocJus sympathies, is fervently blackpilled on the matter because as someone who fought their way into medicine while coming from a significantly less well off background compared to me (she was raised by a single mom), even she's seen how the rotten sausage is made. Most doctors from the General Category are, regardless of whether it's viable to say so in public.
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