Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies
School of Social Sciences
ZHCES Seminar Series
Misperceptions about Caste and Attitudes toward Affirmative Action Among Youth in India
Ashutosh Bhuradia,
Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
Abstract: Caste—a system of social stratification—permeates every aspect of Indian society. Its influence is salient in particular in the lives of youth in educational settings, where caste-based affirmative action policies have created beneficiaries (“lower” caste youth) and non-beneficiaries (“upper” caste youth). Attitudes toward affirmative action, and, in general, toward caste, might be shaped by youth’s misperceptions of caste-based inequities in Indian society. In this study, I capture misperceptions related to caste among Indian youth and conduct an intervention to address these misperceptions. Specifically, I survey 774 college-aged respondents in India. I find that while both upper and lower-caste youth have misperceptions about caste, upper-caste youth have larger misperceptions compared to their lower-caste counterparts. Upper-caste youth are more likely to underestimate India’s lower-caste population and also underestimate income disparities between upper and lower-caste groups. I then randomly assign respondents to an online intervention that provides them with facts about caste and research evidence related to caste-based discrimination and test whether correcting misperceptions about caste changes youth’s attitudes toward caste and preferences for affirmative action. While preferences for affirmative action do not change, I find that correcting caste-related misperceptions changes attitudes by 0.13 SD on an index that measures attitudes toward caste. The results of this study are critical to understanding caste-related biases and misperceptions among youth in India, and, more broadly, for designing informational interventions that promote diversity and inclusion at higher education institutions around the world.
Bio: Ashutosh is a 5th-year PhD candidate in Education Policy and Program Evaluation and a Presidential Scholar at Harvard University. Previously, he was a project manager at the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) at Stanford University for four years, where he managed large-scale educational assessments and RCTs in developing countries. He has a master’s in international education, also from Stanford University, and a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from his hometown, Indore. His work has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Human Behaviour, Educational Researcher, Social Science & Medicine, and the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management. Through his research, he is interested in understanding the impact of affirmative action policies and soft-skill development programs on the learning and labor market outcomes of low-income youth in developing countries.
DATE: 06 December, 2024 (Friday)
TIME: 03.00 pm
Venue: #207, SSS-II
(All are Welcome)
