Influence of caste system on self-esteem and school performance

Abstract
Education is important especially for a fast developing country like India, while, social stratification adversely affect Indian education. This social stratification in India poses a sensitive context for education, so it needs a particular consideration.
In my dissertation I explored the influence of Indian social stratification on school performance and self-esteem, which resulted in three publications.
The first publication is a theoretical review (Thaiparambil, Waldmeier and Kunnel John, 2017 –in press), which deals with the social stratification in India. The consequences of the Indian caste system still creates severe impediments for education in India, though the Government of India provides reservations quotas to handle the stratifications still it remains ineffective, further more it diminishes the quality of the education. Therefore, my study proposes a merit- and income-based reservation quota to overcome the psychological consequences, which should be sided by actions to foster social connections and the sense of belongings.
The second study was focused on the influence of Governmental class and the self-esteem on school performance in India. It was a multisite longitudinal study. Indian education system is strongly influenced by Indian society and its diversity of caste, economic status, gender relation and cultural characteristics. Although the Indian constitution of 1950 eradicated the caste system, inequalities based on caste by birth remains as a stumbling block to national development as it denies education for marginalized groups (MHRD-Ministry of Human Resources Department of India, 2008). The result shows that in overall there is no significant relationship between self-esteem and school performance, but the governmental class significantly influences school performance.
Third study deals with the Big Five and NEO FFI 3 personality traits and their relation to school performance. For the development of a nation education is important, as for India education is much more important, since it is leaping into a developed nation. Personality traits are one of the factors that influence academic performance, so reliable and valid as well as economic assessments of these psychological constructs are needed. Thus, the aim of the study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of Big Five and NEO FFI-3 Personality questionnaire on Indian adolescents. The Cronbach’s alpha reliability analysis shows low internal consistency for BFI and NEO FFI-3.
These publications contribute a developing research in the field of education in India. It identifies the prevailing issues that influence education system in India such as the quality of education, socio-economic factors and social-stratifications/caste. And points out education as the remedy to weed out social-evil from Indian society. And in order to achieve this, the study recommends income and merit based reservation system and actions to encourage social connections to overcome psychological consequences of social-stratification and thus to cultivate caste/class-insensitive education.