The Unspoken Reservation: Caste, capital and control in Indian business

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 candidates with Dalit or lower-caste surnames receive fewer callbacks than those with upper-caste Hindu names. Classic studies (Thorat & Attewell, Siddique) found Dalit applicants had roughly two-thirds the chance of a positive response and needed to send about 20% more applications for comparable success. More recent research, including experimental work published in 2024–2025, confirms that lower-caste workers face systematic bias in employer evaluations and wage offers, even when productivity signals are provided.

In elite white-collar sectors such as IT and finance, lower castes remain vastly under-represented in well-paid positions. Anecdotal evidence from corporate professionals suggests that in many offices of 100 people, Dalit employees are rare or absent at mid-to-senior levels. Occupational segregation persists: upper castes dominate Grade A and B service jobs, large businesses and trading, while Scheduled Castes and Tribes are concentrated in lower grades or informal roles. Wage gaps between castes have narrowed at lower income levels but widened in elite, white-collar occupations.

The private sector in India has operated without formal reservations since its modern inception. Its champions invoke merit relentlessly. Yet three decades of liberalisation have failed to yield global product champions on the scale of a Google, SpaceX, Toyota or WhatsApp. Much of corporate India remains focused on services, arbitrage and extraction rather than frontier innovation.

When this underperformance is noted, the reaction is often revealing. Failures are attributed to outsiders, regulators or politics. Caste is declared irrelevant — until it is invoked implicitly to explain why certain communities supposedly lack the “culture” for business. Question the outcomes, and the response frequently turns defensive or abusive. “Why bring caste into it?” comes the indignant reply, even as the patterns stare back from every corporate leaderboard.

A system that reproduces itself

India’s caste hierarchy, one of the world’s oldest and most rigid social orders, long predates British rule. It has proved resilient precisely because it delivers tangible, if unacknowledged, privileges to those at the upper end. The very existence of reservations in government and education is a response to this entrenched exclusion. Critics of reservations often overlook a basic truth: they are a symptom, not the disease.

Real change would require something rarer than policy tweaks. It would demand that influential Savarnas themselves push for the eventual dismantling of the caste system. Few signs of such enthusiasm exist. Instead, denial persists alongside quiet defence of inherited advantage. The prospect of genuine equality — where opportunity is not pre-loaded by birth — appears to generate more anxiety than optimism.

Social apartheid remains visible in villages and small towns: segregated living, restricted access to wells, temples or even household utensils. Urban professionals may not practise these customs openly, yet subtle versions endure in networks, marriages and hiring. A week spent in rural India is usually enough to dispel comforting fictions about a post-caste society.

The coming reckoning

Pressure for change is building. Demands for reservations or diversity mandates in the private sector are growing louder. Rather than resist reflexively, business leaders would do well to recognise the moral and practical case for broader access. An India in which talent from all backgrounds can compete on more equal terms would be more innovative, stable and legitimate.

History suggests that entrenched privileges rarely dissolve voluntarily. Yet the moral arc eventually bends. Silence on caste is no longer neutral; in many ways, it is the most potent form of perpetuation. Open discussion, however uncomfortable, is a prerequisite for eventual reform.

Thirty to forty years of genuinely expanded opportunity could produce a different corporate landscape — one where merit is less a hereditary privilege and more a national reality. India’s private sector, long praised as the dynamic engine of the world’s fastest-growing major economy, would be stronger for it. The doors that have remained quietly closed for generations may yet open. The question is whether those inside will help turn the handle — or continue pretending they were never locked.