Apple Was The First To Ban Caste-Based Discrimination

Apple banned caste-based discrimination in the company. They thus took a step towards greater equality in the company. It is caste-based discrimination that tends to be quite widespread within technology companies. Apple has now banned this type of discrimination and plans to train its employees in the US to become more familiar with the concept of the caste system. This is reported by India Today.

Tech giant Apple will introduce a new item in its anti-discrimination policy. Banning discrimination on the basis of caste is said to be a major problem not only at Apple. In recent years, this type of discrimination has been talked about in relation to employees of Indian origin working throughout Silicon Valley.

Quartz India states that a June 2020 lawsuit against Cisco Systems was a "wake-up call" for tech companies: An engineer who belonged to a so-called lower caste accused two of his bosses — both of whom he says are "upper caste" — of thwarting his career. Although such discrimination is not strictly illegal in California, the tech giants can no longer ignore the problem.

Slow change

However, a few months ago, for example, the current CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, canceled a lecture on caste equality. Tanuja Gupta, who organized the talk, was reportedly subjected to several "interrogations" for violating Google's code of ethics after the cancellation and subsequently left her position.

Dalit rights activist (the lowest caste in the system) Thenmozhi Soundararajan was scheduled to speak at the lecture, but according to Tanuji, staff emails were flooded with reports of his incompetence and the potential risk of the lecture. Google, but not even Amazon or Microsoft, have yet to anchor caste discrimination in their policies. In addition to Apple, IBM also reportedly trains its managers in the given area.