> > This sparked a train of thought in me. I belong (inter alia) to the TamBram > elite. I strongly suspect that the kind of high cost you're talking about > might be absent, at least in the more traditional societies, because of the > utter focus on academic performance and 'centum' in the society at larger, > which translates into a different set of high costs for the students [1].
It's an inevitable result of the way TamBram (and the rest of Tamil) society has grown. Centuries of using the ability to read and write as their sole currency in the scheme of things, and using it to wield extreme influences on society have made the Brahmins completely dependent on it. The Mudaliars, Chettiars, Nayakars and everyone else had a few other fall-back options. They had land, they had livestock, they traded, they joined the militaries of their time. The TamBram just went to school; it's our ancestral profession. Now, onto those other high costs: we're socially inept, except among our own kind, where we simply drink filter coffee, talk about which MNC our kids have joined, how big their house in the Bay Area/New Jersey is, and who/where/what scandal has recently rocked the family. We are also terribly inadequate when it comes to actually fixing stuff that's broken (literally and figuratively), but we'll analyze the damn problem to death. Our names are our bane (my last name is mispronounced/misspelt both in south and north India. The Americans didn't bother with it). If a son/daughter is not an engineer (now working in software) or a doctor, then he/she is the black sheep of the family (part of that not-hypereducated-is-undereducated syndrome). Meanwhile, it's getting progressively tougher in TN for TamBrams. The state boasts a whopping 67% reservation quota for various categories of disadvantaged classes. Despite a plethora of fly-by-night engineering colleges, these students are unable to find admission to engineering programs. Medical schools are fewer in number, and admission is a nightmare. This has led to an IIT/BITS/bust mentality among the TamBrams. And the only way to truly secure a future is to get the hell out of India, make a pot of cash in the States, then come back to lord it over the local yokels. Rinse and repeat. </rant-infused discourse> Disclosure: I'm TamBram, IIT-educated, multiple advanced degree-owning, America-returned, member of elitist invitation-only groups, intellectually arrogant, extremely articulate in English, deluded by imagination of grandeur, and mostly quite tolerable company. If you're as elite as I am. :) -- Sumant Srivathsan sumants.blogspot.com
