A great thread re: need to acknowledge privilege. Excellent data points. But I am puzzled why caste & gender are conspicuous by their absence! Didn't find anyone raising this in the replies. Also, is reading English the right parameter to divide us Vs them? Sounds problematic. https://twitter.com/baboonzero/status/1264884582119170055

Last summer I spent hours chatting with the painters & plumbers working at my parents' home, all English reading, SM-savvy youth. The plumber was speaking in English to my BH who can't speak Kannada.

The English divider may make sense in regions with high inequity in edu, maybe?

The first day of work, the guys were painting the walls outside. Not sure if the contractor has paid them for lunch, I went to ask them if they needed money to go out. By the time I asked, they had already placed online order from Zomato. :)

English is a dividing factor in privilege no doubt about it, but the sweeping generalization of us Vs them made me feel very uncomfortable.

I skimmed through my personal experiences to analyze why. And I realized, it wasn't just caste & gender. There are other inconsistencies.

1. Rural-urban difference: Where I grew up in the 80s, English medium edu. was available only in large towns. Because of grant-in-aid schools it was not out of reach of the urban lower middle class. On the other hand, all classes/castes in villages studied in Kannada medium.

I studied in a town in an Eng. med while my brother studied in Kan. med. in a village. Both were private grant-in-aid schools, negligible fee. In rural areas, dividing line was private VS govt, but again middle/upper caste/class in remote villages ended up in govt. KM schools.