I understand where you are coming from. I am not lower-class and may have my biases, but unlike Siddhant in the story, I got my first bicycle (a second hand) at the age of 23 to commute within college campus while doing my masters. So I have definitely not lived in some urban bubble, away from the grassroot issues in the country.
I am not denying the discrimination in the industry. It is the magnitude that I have my doubts on.
Caste issues are much more complex in my view. Feel free to disagree.
Imagine having two friends, one dirt poor and another fairly rich (but comes from a lower caste). Both appears in an entrance exams for the engineering degree. The poor score 99% but fails to make it but the rich dude who score 70% makes it to the college. He gets caste reservation.
One may say that reservation is is off topic but is it really? It is a lifelong reminder of who you are, to both the friends.
The poor friend who somehow makes it to the Silicon Valley, is often reminded of his caste privileges.
The rich lower caste friend, gets discriminated for his caste and economic privileges that others find undeserving.
People are so obsessed over this mythos of the "more deserving" person being pushed down cuz he's white/upper cast/<insert dominant group of people> and yet if you still look at most people in power, it's still that same fucking dominant group in charge, just maybe not AS dominant as before.
There was a reddit thread that went super viral right after the SuperBowl (with zero data) about "demographics of people in the tv ads vs US demographics", and everyone was obsessing over how black people were vastly overrepresented versus their demographics... and STILL white people were also over-represented.
Don't kid yourself that just because you hear (or even experience) anecdotes of people belonging to the dominant group being "discriminated" against that it's the norm.
Simple - go try applying for jobs with a white-sounding versus a black-sounding name and see what happens.
And btw, this is literally what CRT is, and actual experts and academics have shown over and over and over again that the political systems are tilted against the non-dominant groups, even with the boogeyman of affirmative action.
I am not denying the discrimination in the industry. It is the magnitude that I have my doubts on.