The Glass Floor: How Ravikant Kisana’s Bold New Book Exposes India’s Hidden Caste Architecture

In the early 2000s, India was poised to “shine.” The country’s golden generation of millennials—fresh graduates from prestigious B-schools and engineering programs—were expected to propel the nation toward superpower status. The Great Indian Dream seemed ready for takeoff. But as Ravikant Kisana argues in his incendiary new book “Meet the Savarnas: Indian Millennials Whose Mediocrity Broke Everything,” published by Penguin Random House India, India never quite left the ground. And the reason, he contends, has been hiding in plain sight: caste.

Kisana’s book represents a rare and audacious attempt to examine caste privilege from the perspective of the privileged themselves—the Savarnas, India’s traditional upper castes who have dominated the country’s post-independence elite spaces. In “Meet the Savarnas,” Kisana documents the lives, concerns and crises of India’s urban elites, framing the Savarnas as a distinct social cohort that operates within itself yet remains oblivious of its own social rules, privileges and systems.

Rather than focusing on caste oppression from the perspective of the marginalized—the traditional approach in Indian social research—Kisana flips the lens to examine how caste privilege has shaped and ultimately limited India’s development trajectory since economic liberalization began in the 1990s.

Academic Turned Cultural Detective

Ravikant Kisana is currently the Associate Dean & Associate Professor at Woxsen University, Hyderabad, with expertise in Cultural Studies and ethnographic research grounded in Critical Caste Studies. His research looks at the intersections of caste with structures of privilege and popular culture, and he also podcasts and performs live under the moniker of ‘Buffalo Intellectual’.

Kisana’s academic credentials are complemented by his work as a cultural commentator and journalist. He has written for publications including BuzzFeed, The Indian Express, and Firstpost, and has contributed to outlets like The Quint, The Caravan, and Feminism in India. He tweets and uses Instagram as ‘Buffalo Intellectual,’ focusing on critically scrutinizing Savarna systems of cultural hegemony.

Central to Kisana’s analysis is his concept of the “glass floor”—a powerful inversion of the familiar “glass ceiling” metaphor used to describe barriers faced by marginalized groups.

This dual identity—academic researcher and cultural critic—positions Kisana uniquely to bridge the gap between scholarly analysis and accessible public discourse about caste in contemporary India.

The Glass Floor Theory

Central to Kisana’s analysis is his concept of the “glass floor”—a powerful inversion of the familiar “glass ceiling” metaphor used to describe barriers faced by marginalized groups. In an excerpt published by Scroll.in, Kisana explains this framework with stark imagery.

“Think of South Asia – India, especially – as full of people sitting in a cramped and dirty basement,” he writes. “Think of millions and millions of heaving masses, sweating, crying, pleading, clawing – sometimes angry, sometimes despondent, sometimes hopeful, but at all times in the basement. Looking up at what is a glass ceiling for them but is, in fact, a floor above which lives a very small group of people.”

This small group—the Savarnas—”have access to all the switches in all the rooms of the house, including the basement. They switch on the lights and switch them off at will.” The metaphor illuminates how upper-caste privilege operates not just through exclusion, but through control over the very infrastructure of opportunity in Indian society.

A Case Study in Savarna Blindness

To illustrate his arguments, Kisana presents compelling case studies of how Savarna privilege manifests in India’s celebrated startup ecosystem. He recounts the story of two “savarna techie boys” who, in 2011, decided to experiment with living on what they perceived as an “average Indian” income before launching their healthcare startup.

The experiment—living on roughly Rs. 100 per day for a month—was meant to provide market intelligence about the “600 million Indians” they estimated as potential customers for their mobile health services. Kisana notes this was “the epoch of delusion, where every corporate estimate assumed that the millions in the ‘basement’ could now be engaged solely through the wonders of mobile telephony and digital connectivity.”

What emerges from Kisana’s analysis is a critique of how Savarna entrepreneurs approached India’s masses not as human beings with complex needs and structural constraints, but as untapped markets waiting to be “cracked” with the right technological solution.

The entrepreneurs eventually launched HealthifyMe, which became successful with 35 million users and over Rs. 220 crore in operating revenue by 2023. However, as Kisana points out, this figure falls far short of the 600 million “masses” that market wisdom suggested were just waiting to be monetized.

Critical Reception and Cultural Impact

The book arrives at a moment when conversations about caste privilege in modern India are gaining momentum, particularly in urban, educated circles that have long considered themselves post-caste. The book offers “a strikingly original and irreverent take on what it means to navigate the online world especially from the margins” with “razor-sharp wit and biting satire” as it critiques savarna-dominated digital spaces.

The book examines “caste privilege and how it has shaped – and limited – India after liberalisation”, filling a significant gap in how India’s development story has been told. Most analyses of India’s post-1991 economic performance have focused on factors like corruption, political dysfunction, or global economic conditions, while overlooking the fundamental role that caste hierarchies have played in shaping outcomes.

The Uncomfortable Mirror

What makes Kisana’s work particularly powerful—and potentially uncomfortable for his primary audience—is his insider’s perspective on Savarna culture. His academic position and media presence place him squarely within the elite circles he critiques, lending authenticity and urgency to his observations.

The book’s provocative subtitle, “Indian Millennials Whose Mediocrity Broke Everything,” signals Kisana’s willingness to challenge the self-congratulatory narratives that have dominated discussions of India’s educated elite. Rather than celebrating the generation that was supposed to lead India to greatness, he examines how their inherited privileges may have actually limited their effectiveness as agents of genuine transformation.

Implications for India’s Future

As India grapples with persistent inequality, social fragmentation, and unfulfilled economic potential, Kisana’s analysis offers a framework for understanding why certain approaches to development have consistently fallen short. His work suggests that meaningful progress may require the country’s privileged classes to confront uncomfortable truths about how their advantages are maintained and reproduced.

The book’s impact extends beyond academic circles, contributing to broader public conversations about privilege, inequality, and social justice in contemporary India. In an era where caste-based discrimination continues to shape life chances despite constitutional protections and affirmative action policies, Kisana’s focus on the mechanisms of privilege rather than just the experiences of oppression provides a crucial complement to existing scholarship.

“Meet the Savarnas” stands as both a scholarly intervention and a cultural provocation, challenging readers to examine not just India’s failures, but the role that privilege and blindness to structural inequality have played in perpetuating them. For a generation that grew up believing they would transform India, Kisana’s book poses an essential question: What if the transformation that’s needed starts with transforming themselves?

Sources: Penguin Random House India, Scroll.in, Muck Rack, National Law School of India University, The Caravan, The Quint, Feminism in India, The Swaddle.