{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02687458526874585, 'fraction_numerical': 0.007962840079628402, 'mean_word_length': 5.078629032258065, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Blocked by caste: economic discrimination in modern India, edited by Sukhdeo Thorat and Katherine S. Newman

In June 2005, during the first innings of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, 22 industrialists met Ms Meira Kumar, the then minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, to represent their case on the issue of granting reservation to Dalits and Adivasis. They argued that India Inc. was reluctant to cede to the government proposal to grant reservation to these communities as this move would, in their understanding, seriously undermine the quality of production. India Inc. was willing to promise as support some affirmative action to bring these communities (in real terms, castes) into the mainstream and enable them to compete for employment along with others, supposedly on an ‘equal footing’. It is another matter altogether that 5 years since India Inc. is yet to frame any such programme. The signatories above included Ratan Tata, Anu Aga, Rahul Bajaj, Kumaramangalam Birla, Jamshyd N. Godrej, Keshub Mahindra, Narayana Murthy, Deepak Parekh, Azim Premji, S.K. Munjal and many others. Meira Kumar had been ecstatic about the letter and had hailed it as a historic step. The truth, however, was that the ministry had written to 218 corporate houses and associations on 18 November 2004 about the possibility of reserving a percentage of jobs in the private sector for scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs). After 3 months it had received just 21 replies and no unqualified support. Other groups sought tax breaks and incentives before taking up the proposal. In short, most of the business groups had attempted to kill it with a studied silence. This scheme also formed a part of the UPA’s Common Minimum Programme then, but even after a passage of 5 years, India Inc. had not moved towards translating this promise into a programme that could exhibit their commitment towards the backward groups of society. Until recently, there was no study that could have helped in understanding this discrimination of backward groups and minorities in corporate circles, and Blocked by Caste: Economic Discrimination in Modern India edited by Sukhdeo Thorat and Katherine S. Newman, for the first time, provides an in-depth perspective about a ‘modern’ institutionalized discrimination faced by persons belonging to the backward groups of society. The book is divided into three sections that pull together 13 well-researched articles written by 19 scholars. The volume is based primarily on empirical researches conducted by the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies. The article ‘The Legacy of Social Exclusion: A Correspondence Study of Job Discrimination in India’s Urban Private Sector’ brings forth some shocking facts alongside equally shocking statistics. Thorat and Paul Attewell selected vacancies advertised in a few newspapers (namely, The Hindu, Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai editions; Times of India, New Delhi and Mumbai editions; Deccan Herald, Bangalore edition; and Deccan