When will the Brahmin-Bania hegemony end?

The Brahmin and the Bania still control the economy, but now the Shudra controls politics

By Aakar Patel

On 9 April, the Supreme Court rejected a plea that the 2011 census be caste-based. CII and Ficci oppose job reservations in the private sector, but Manmohan Singh is keen. India’s population of Brahmins and Banias and Jains all together is 6% or less.

The Sensex comprises the 30 largest traded companies of India.

ACC is run by a Brahmin (Sumit Banerjee), Bhel is run by a Brahmin (Ravi Kumar Krishna Swamy), Bharti Airtel is run by a Bania (Sunil Mittal), Grasim and Hindalco are run by a Bania (Kumar Mangalam Birla).

HDFC is run by a Bania (Deepak Parekh), Hindustan Unilever is run by a Brahmin (Nitin Paranjpe), ICICI Bank is headed by a Brahmin (K.V. Kamath). Jaiprakash Associates is run by a Brahmin (Yogesh Gaur), L&T is run by a Brahmin (A.M. Naik), NTPC is run by a Brahmin (R.S. Sharma), ONGC is run by a Brahmin (also called R.S. Sharma). Reliance group firms are run by Banias (Mukesh and Anil Ambani), State Bank of India is run by a Brahmin (O.P. Bhatt), Sterlite Industries is run by a Bania (Anil Agarwal), Sun Pharma is run by a Bania (Dilip Shanghvi) and Tata Steel is run by a Brahmin (B. Muthuraman).

Punjab National Bank is run by a Brahmin (K.C. Chakrabarty), Bank of Baroda is run by a Brahmin (M.D. Mallya) and Canara Bank is run by a Bania (A.C. Mahajan).

Of India’s software companies, Infosys is run by a Brahmin (Kris Gopalakrishnan now and Narayana Murthy and Nandan Nilekani before him). TCS is run by a Brahmin (Subramanian Ramadorai). Wipro is owned by a Khoja (Azim Premji). Khojas are Shia of the Sevener sect, converted from the Luhana trading community (same caste as L.K. Advani and M.A. Jinnah).

India’s two largest airlines are Kingfisher, owned by a Brahmin (Vijay Mallya) and Jet, owned by a Bania (Naresh Goyal).

Of India’s mobile phone firms, Reliance Communications (Ambani), Airtel (Mittal), Vodafone Essar (Ruia), Idea (Birla), Spice (Modi) are owned by Banias. BSNL is run by a Bania (Kuldeep Goyal) and Tata’s TTML is run by a Brahmin (K.A. Chaukar).

Cricket in India is run by a Bania (Lalit Modi) and before him it was run by another Bania (Jagmohan Dalmiya).

Courtesy:

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