Hyderabad blood bank seeks high caste donors, receives flak on Twitter

Caste has reared its ugly head once again. At a time when the entire country is celebrating the first Indian woman to have won an individual silver at the Olympics — and our second medal at Rio — at least a few thousand of us had concerned ourselves with something vile.

‘P.V. Sindhu caste’ was one of the top searches for her name on Google. According to reports, in August, over a million people had searched the Web to determine her caste. ‘Pullela Gopichand caste’, too, was a “frequently searched item” on Google. For the record, it takes a few lakh searches for Google to prompt saying that a particular search term, has been “trending”.

Ananda Krishna Nandu, actor, said: “Before P.V. Sindhu had won the medal no one cared about her caste. It’s her success which brought attention to her caste. Caste leaders must be eager to take credit.”

Dr Diana Monteiro, psychologist, said: “The caste system has been in our blood for ages. We get to know about it when such incidents happen. It’s shocking that it is still prevalent in our society. It is important to raise children without discrimination of any kind.”

Then there was the downright disturbing tweet by a Hyderabad-based group asking for elite blood donors, which triggered a debate on caste discrimination. The group was looking for donors belonging to a specific caste.

On Thursday, the Twitter handle @bloodplusapp, tweeted that a child was in need of blood belonging to Kamma caste. The caste is considered to be dominant in Andhra Pradesh and Telanagana. and a number was provided along with the tweet. It was the contact of the parents of the child — who had been admitted to a local hospital.

A blood bank employee on condition of anonymity says, “We do get such requests but we do not encourage it. Moreover, we don’t have such categories.”
The group was quick to delete the tweet and even issued an apology, saying that it had received the tweet from an unknown person and had put it up without verifying it.

Dr K. Hari Prasad, CEO, Apollo Hospitals, said: “I find it ridiculous that they actually put up such a Tweet. How can a lifesaving action such as blood donation be divided by caste? We only make sure the patient is infused with suitable blood.”