Introduction

Career preferences are an unhidden taboo prevailing in our Indian society which doesn’t treat each work with equal dignity and judge people superior and inferior on the basis of their livelihood. At a big stage, we talk about the equality of each work but our internal attitude and feelings about it aren’t the same and this needs to be sorted.

What would society think?

Most of the youths today in our country tend to pursue engineering, medical, law, or administrative services majorly due to the following reasons:

1. Mental pressure by the parents on their child inhibits his/her natural talent which needs to be worked upon to achieve what is called the real success attained by following our passion.
2. The roads of conventional paths are easy to drive compared to the less-visited ones but what your soul wants to feed upon is achieved only by our own will, not by replicating others.

We need to work on these crucial matters and have our minds crystal clear with the importance, our passion brings into it. So, I want to add that children and parents do not need to argue about what vocations their children should pursue; instead, they should talk about it and come to an agreement. In this way, students can benefit from their parent's experiences, and parents can better comprehend their children's perspectives.

Caste-based work?

This has become a common ideology for the society to judge the profession an on the basis of their castes, creed, religion, race, etc. However, these orthodox practices are a social stigma on the rich cultural heritage of India which ought to be rooted out. It's not a universal law that the son of a barber (naai) is only known to cut hair but rather could bring glory to our nation.

The important thing for us to notice here is that we might not be able to balance the financial differences in society but it's very important to cut down those social gaps to make this world a better place to live.

Those entirely in the private sector—corporate managers and business professionals—have the lowest proportion of SCs and STs among sought top occupations. Non-SC/ST workers hold 93 percent of corporate management positions. The situation is significantly better in sectors where the government has a substantial presence, such as education and healthcare.

While there are hints that SCs are breaking into higher jobs to some extent, a major portion of castes involved with sweeping and leatherwork remain in these traditional activities. In Uttar Pradesh, for example, 63.4 percent of SC sweepers in the 35-39 age range are Balmikis. Balmikis account for 62 percent of SC sweepers in the 15-34 age bracket, demonstrating how little has changed for the new generation. Similarly, among SCs who work with leather, the share of lower castes is larger. (Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com)

Can a woman earn for the family?

This is quite commonly observed that women are restricted to work outside and acting as earning members of the family. The prejudices of various communities constrain women from stepping out of the home. Their role is just to take care of the husband, parents, children, or anyone in the family, and do the daily tasks in the house. Though the situation has changed a bit now, the practices of remote places of the country still remain the same. Till now women are not treated as equal to men. Most of the taboos existing in the country are another piece of evidence that proves the misery of women in our society.

Even the ratio of women and men in highly skill demanding jobs is very low. People’s mindset has been formatted in such a way that they think women can’t handle highly amenable jobs. Finding a job is far more difficult for women than it is for males all around the world. When women are working, they are more likely to labor in low-paying jobs in dangerous environments, with little hope of improvement in the near future.

In India in 2019, 67 percent of internet users were men and 33 percent were women, with the gender divide widening in rural areas.

This disparity can make it difficult for women to gain access to important education, health, and financial services, as well as to succeed in increasingly digitized activities and sectors.

"No country can develop and realize its full potential if half of its population is trapped in non-remunerative, less productive, and non-economic occupations," according to the World Bank

What can be done?

i) Moral education: The key factors of a person’s nature are predicted by the kind of moral education he/she learnt. The pillars of one's life are the moral values that are the integrating part of a united society. So, we should emphasize teaching the values which uproot the obsolete and harsh customs to revolutionize mankind.

ii) Idea to do big: In this entrepreneurial era where people are indulged to reframe a particular domain which is stereotypically treated as small by their extensive thoughts which led to generating wonders for them. For example, selling chai is not treated as a very reputed business but a startup named MBA Chaiwala led by a young visionary entrepreneur had crossed the barriers of social stigmas and set a benchmark for others.

iii) Need for creativity: Creativity isn’t restricted to any form of art. But rather it has increased its demand overall sectors. Today we require new ideas to come up and solve modern issues. So apart from the traditional methods of teaching, it has become an essential need of our education system to organize events that motivate students to work on their creative skills.

iv) Awareness: A big reason is also associated with the issue that people are still following the orthodox ideologies and to remove them we need strong support from our educated section of the society to organize campaigns on various social taboos and influence the need for proper education to each and every one.

Conclusion

After all the measures and reformation of the society, the key thing is to realize the position of the person who is facing this social stigma, just feel it for a minute and then the change becomes noticeable. We should admire their contribution to our lives and value their service. No work is ever small or big, it's just a matter that people want to follow the domain they love. Last but not least it's the person’s hard work and dedication which he/she put into that signifies your personality.

Moreover, just reading this article isn’t enough it’s time to raise your empathy towards the victims of this taboo or rather the people especially women who are also suffering from other forms of taboo and we need to raise our collective voice which could be heard at every section of civilization so that everyone receives the equal stand which would indeed adore the values of our society.

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