Caste system holding back the great Indian dream: Survey

India is capable of being an economic superpower but the oppressive caste system is holding it back, a survey of Indians conducted by BBC has suggested.

In total 1,616 citizens in India were interviewed between December 5–15, 2006.

The polling was conducted for the BBC World Service by the international polling firm GlobeScan and its research partner in India.

Visitors to BBC websites were allowed to choose questions for the survey.

While almost two–thirds of respondents in the World Service poll said that it is important that becomes an economic superpower and almost 71 percent felt proud to be an Indian, 55 percent thought caste issues were still a "barrier to social harmony."

About 60 percent thought it was important that India should be a political superpower or a military superpower.

The survey also came up with some interesting findings.

While fifty five percent felt that the Indian justice system treated the rich and poor people fairly, 52 percent thought that being a woman was no barrier to success any more.

Interestingly, more Indians favoured working for a private company (48 percent) than for the government (22 percent).

But on other topics respondents were less positive.

Forty–seven percent agreed that "corruption is a fact of life which we should accept as the price of doing business in today's world," though younger people were less tolerant of corruption than older people.

While 50 percent of the respondents felt that "people in India don't take their religion seriously enough", 40 percent believed that "young people have lost touch with their heritage and traditions."