By Chuppal Nagesh Bhushan Few art forms possess the power to stir collective souls quite like music. In India, the ancient edifice of classical ragas—elaborate melodic systems steeped in emotion, season and spirituality—evolved from temple and court traditions into a potent instrument of nationalist awakening. Long before independence dawned in 1947, ragas helped forge a shared cultural identity, lending structure and emotional depth to the freedom struggle and leaving an indelible mark on the country’s patriotic vocabulary. As British colonial rule intensified in the late 19th century, Indian intellectuals turned to indigenous traditions for renewal. Classical music, with its rigorous grammar of notes (swaras), scales (ragas) and rhythmic cycles (talas), offered both continuity with a glorious past and flexibility for contemporary expression. Its capacity to evoke rasa—the aesthetic flavour of human feeling—proved singularly effective in awakening a sense of shared destiny among a div...
Walk into the boardrooms of India’s biggest private firms, private-equity offices and unicorn startups, and a striking pattern emerges. Nearly nine out of ten of the country’s leading CEOs, promoters and top business figures hail from a narrow segment of society: the Savarnas, chiefly Brahmins and Banias. This is not affirmative action gone awry. It is, its critics argue, the most enduring and least discussed reservation of all. A 2010 study of India’s 1,000 largest companies found that some 93% of board members came from “forward” castes. A 2012 analysis put the figure for board directors at around 91%. More recent reporting suggests little has changed at the top: upper castes continue to dominate senior leadership roles, while comprehensive official data remain elusive because few companies track caste in hiring or promotions. Hiring realities Discrimination is evident well below the C-suite. Multiple field experiments continue to show that equally qualified candida...