BOOKS
Economics of caste
RAJ SEKHAR BASU
The author establishes how disparity in society is entrenched within
the caste-occupation nexus.
IN the late 1990s, Dalit activists in many parts of India had started
debating whether the institution of caste that prevailed in the
country had similarities with the concept of race as was often
conceptualised in the West. In fact, before the Durban Conference on
apartheid and racism, many Dalit intellectuals believed that caste and
race were almost similar in the context of India. The question is why
these Dalit intellectuals and the Dalit counter-public tried to insist
on this sort of an analogy. As has been argued by critics such as Shiv
Visvanathan, there possibly had been attempts by many non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) working among Dalit communities to integrate them
at the grass-roots, State, national and international levels.
Indeed, such a strategy reflected an element of flexibility whereby
the state was visualised not only as an agency of reform but as one
whose powers violated the dignity of Dalits in their everyday life.
The focus was on entitlement, and in this ambience the exercise of
rights assumed great significance. In other words, it added fuel to
the arguments of Dalit activists, notably those attending conferences
such as the Durban Conference, that the reactions to caste and
caste-based discrimination were akin to the reactions that had been
set in motion by race and racial discrimination.
Sociologists have for long argued that what sets India apart from
other societies is the overwhelming dominance of the caste order.
Indeed, there is an opinion that there are no phonotypical differences
between castes and it is specific, coded substances that differentiate
one caste from another. These differences are often expressed in terms
of purity and pollution which are to be observed very strictly by
individuals in their quotidian experience as human beings. As in terms
of race, physical separation was also given primacy by social
theorists working on Indian communities.
Dipankar Gupta has argued that what makes caste stand apart from other
forms of stratification is the elaborate and ritualised rules that not
only insist on the observance of these distinctions but also prescribe
sanctions in cases where the norms are violated. In his words, "It is
this obsessive attention to the slightest variation in ritual-making
that marks out caste from other forms of stratification." More
importantly, while it is difficult to provide a quantitative
interpretation of the impact of caste on Indian society, its
formidable presence in terms of a hierarchical order resembling racism
continues to baffle scholars interested in the study of caste both as
a cultural and an economic system.
However, scholars increasingly argue that it is difficult to accept
the provocative position as adopted by Louis Dumont in his well-known
work Homo Hierarchicus, which says that pure hierarchy was a state of
mind to which all those within the caste system abided. This model of
an all-embracing hierarchy had a great deal of similarity with the
version of the Indologists of the 19th century who preferred an
uncritical interpretation of the brahmanical texts such as the
Yagnavalkyasmriti and the Manusmriti. It is now being argued that
caste identities cannot be straitjacketed within a single
universalised system, where the pure and the impure remain
unproblematically firm in times of interaction.
Inequity and poverty
What needs to be stressed is that caste order is characterised not
simply by the contesting notions of hierarchy but by issues of
inequality and poverty. In her book, Ashwini Deshpande strongly
asserts that caste could be an important group identifier vis-a-vis
issues relating to economic disparity and discrimination. A few years
ago, there were articles in academic journals that Dalit children were
being chased out of schools in some villages of Tamil Nadu since they
wanted to participate with the rest of the children in the
government-run midday meal programmes. The dominant castes rejected
such action on the basis of their caste pride and did everything
possible to stall such moves.
More glaring were the reports from Patna, Bihar's capital city, where
the government's public distribution shops owned by the dominant
castes refused to distribute goods to Dalit customers until cloth
screens were hung to save them from the gaze of the so-called
polluting presence of "the untouchables". The Indian Institute of
Dalit Studies conducted a survey of 531 villages in five States of
India in 2003 and exposed the patterns of exclusion and discrimination
that beset the much-publicised midday meal schemes and the public
distribution system.
The author has rightly argued at the very outset that since the
non-economic literature on the Indian caste system is vast, there may
be a question as to whether "an economic enquiry can make any
additional worthwhile contribution" (page 3). She expresses her
discomfort with many of the contemporary writings which emphasise that
the links between occupation and caste are breaking down and that all
this is resulting in the release of enormous entrepreneurial energies
in different parts of India. An economist by training, Ashwini
Deshpande acknowledges that while occupational structures may have
witnessed a rapid transformation, caste division is ubiquitous in
contemporary India.
Caste-class overlap
The author tries to answer questions as to whether the lower castes
tended to get absorbed into low-paying and less-prestigious
occupations, while there was a pronounced presence of the upper castes
in modern occupations. In fact, there can be little disagreement with
her proposition that social and economic mobility is still a distant
dream for members of the lower castes. In other words, while links
between caste and jati can snap, there are enough examples to lend
credence to the old Marxian logic of a caste-class overlap in India.
Ashwini Deshpande draws our attention to the growing incidence of the
breakdown of the traditional subsistence economy. But this does not
essentially establish the fact that the influence of caste is waning;
rather there are signs that it is making its presence strongly felt in
the different dimensions of the economy. She alludes to a number of
studies which stress that untouchability is not only present all over
rural India but have 'survived' by adapting to new socio-economic
realities and is taking on new and insidious forms. She points out
that the extrajudicial power exercised by caste panchayats,
particularly in the sphere of inter-caste romantic/matrimonial
alliances, is proof of the lasting relevance of caste in rural
society.
However, the author does not intend to confine her study to economic
investigation; her intention rather is to establish how through a
discursive reading of the past there can be a crucial understanding of
the material aspects of disparity, as was entrenched within the
caste-occupation nexus.
Ashwini Deshpande's volume is based primarily on her own academic
interests spanning over the last decade vis-a-vis issues of
contemporary caste inequalities in India. Her work takes an all-India
view, recognising the regional and subregional variations. Apart from
a concise introduction, she brings out the diversities in her work
through the various chapters. In one of the chapters, she discusses
the possibilities of employing a few economic theories to investigate
how social identity has impacted on the economic outcome, leading to
discriminations in market settings. She insists that both
classical/neoclassical interpretations and heterodox traditions,
including Marxian, have stressed that social identity of the economic
agent does not matter. She contests such understandings by arguing
that unfortunate and stark life experiences have proved that issues of
identity are not so peripheral that they can be ignored by scholars.
She highlights the contradictions inherent in them, despite the
overarching supremacy of neoclassical economic theories, since social
discriminations are found to be acceptable within the market
traditions and within the system of profit maximisation.
In this context, it has been pointed out that though the conversion of
Dalits to other religions, including Christianity and Islam, was
influenced by an urge to escape from exclusion and discrimination,
such conversion did not ensure the improvement of the social status of
the converted individual.
General equilibrium model
The most interesting part of her argument is that which highlights the
assumptions of the general equilibrium model. This model establishes
the point that profit-maximising agents could encourage discrimination
until there were policies of affirmative action or a coalition of
employers who were interested in breaking free from all social
stereotypes. The general equilibrium model suggests that all employees
get paid according to their productivity, whereas in a world with
statistical discrimination, employees get paid according to their
group identities.
The hallmark of Ashwini Deshpande's analysis is that she tries to
explain these complex economic theories in terms of the discourses
which have taken place on caste and the Hindu social order since the
last decades of the 19th century. Like the present-day economists,
social theorists of the 19th century argued that the very affiliation
to a certain social category determined the level of wages and issues
broadly related to human security. In other words, an individual
belonging to the lowest social classes could barely expect highly
rewarding jobs.
Ashwini Deshpande feels that despite the popularity of a number of
economic models, there are a whole range of questions on the caste
system and its role in the economy that are unanswered. In this
context, the author has raised the problems arising out of conflicting
social prescriptions. Subsequently, she also raises the problem of
identity formation.
In India, she argues, the usage of terms such as Dalits and Harijans
often gives rise to a great deal of contestation. The official
emphasis on the usage of the term Harijan is found to be offensive by
the advocates of Dalit identity since they find it to be too
pejorative if not patronising. The construction of identity is itself
a complex phenomenon, and the self-perceived identity also displays a
degree of homogenisation or enforcement, thereby creating conflicting
ideas of self-respect within a particular community. This identity
sometimes appears to be the real identity, but sometimes it is also
fissured along the lines of class, territoriality and gender.
Possibly, it is these complexities that economists lose sight of when
they present their theoretical models based on a singular consensual
identity. In the case of India, most of these studies bring out a
number of interesting dimensions.
VISHWA KUNDAPURA
Dalit workers engaged in manual cleaning of pits of public toilets in
Kolar Gold Fields, Karnataka. Social and economic mobility is still a
distant dream for members of the lower castes.
Land reform legislation
The author stresses the fact that while there are conflicts between
the middle and upper layers of rural societies over issues relating to
social distribution, such conflicts are less marked among the lower
castes. The reality is that members of the Scheduled Castes (S.Cs) in
rural areas continue to depend mostly on upper-caste landlords for
their daily employment. This situation could be directly related to
the lack of initiative on the part of rightist and centrist political
parities of India to support land reform legislation on a large scale.
The example of Uttar Pradesh in this regard would not be out of place,
where Dalit politicians, despite capturing political power, did not
introduce land reform legislation for the benefit of the majority of
S.C. families.
Such actions on the part of Dalit politicians are often based on their
own understanding of social hierarchy and that of power relations in
society. Presumably, this explicates the rise of the Chamars as an
important force in Dalit politics in northern India. The Chamar
identity thus gets privileged over other identities such as
all-embracing identities like those of the Ravi Dasi or Kabir Panthis.
Nonetheless, the discrimination against Dalits in matters relating to
access to educational institutions and land ownership cannot be
overlooked by scholars working on contemporary India. In West Bengal
and Kerala, which have witnessed long years of progressive
governments, the S.Cs continue to be treated as landless communities.
In several other States, Dalits have been classified as
non-agricultural communities because they are scavengers, leather
workers or those engaged in other menial occupations.
Interestingly, economic liberalisation and globalisation have not
brought about much change in the socio-economic status of Dalits.
Indeed, there seems to be very little evidence, as the author
suggests, of a departure from the earlier experiences of caste
inequalities. For instance, the economic forces of liberalisation and
globalisation have generated a number of jobs in the outsourcing
industry where recruitment is based on fluency in English and computer
literacy. Dalits, because of their educational disadvantages, find it
difficult to compete for such jobs.
It has also been argued that the emulation of upper-caste norms by
members of the Dalit communities have led to the undermining of the
role of women in the family and in the workplace. This is a change
from the earlier times when these communities were noted for their
relative egalitarianism in gender-related issues. Gita Nambisan, in
her researches, has pointed out how Dalit girls faced discrimination
in schools because of the double stigma of gender and caste. The
author has highlighted how through a variety of ways such stigma
manifested itself in the everyday lives of Dalits. Her in-depth
qualitative investigations dealing with gender differences in
education, both at rural and urban localities, bring out the
prevalence of such a phenomenon.
The author has also highlighted the caste-class interaction and its
implications for the participation of women in the employment sphere.
She states emphatically that an upper-class background often enabled
urban women to break free from the traditional caste diktats. This is
reflected in their greater presence in higher education and
professional occupation and also in their marriage choices. But an
S.C. woman has little option other than continuing with her
traditional caste occupation. This explains why women from these
communities carry on with their traditional tasks and become
craftswomen, petty traders or midwives.
Finally, highly educated workers enjoy appreciable hikes in their
wages, whereas women engaged in menial work do not. In other words,
the author proves convincingly how educational attainment for women
have a direct bearing on their income capability. But the other major
issue that she brings out is the evidence of sharp discrimination
existing within the earning patterns. Ashwini Deshpande argues that
while this pattern may be true for all women, the inter-caste division
undoubtedly suggests that it is more so for Dalit women.
Affirmative action
The most important premise of Ashwini Deshpande's work lies in the
fact that despite legislation, the problems of disparity and
discrimination remain untouched. In fact, the benefits of high growth
do not reach the marginalised, that is Dalits and tribal people. It is
on the basis of such arguments that the author investigates the impact
of the policies of affirmative action in India. It has been pointed
out that unlike countries such as Malaysia, there is no national
enforcement mechanism for affirmative action in India.
It is well known that the upper–caste, elitist bias of the Indian
judiciary prevents the adoption of strong redress measures to end the
discrimination against the less-privileged caste groups. But these
issues often get integrated into a bigger debate as to whether caste
should be the determining factor of backwardness. Some sections of
Indian society believe that reservation should be class-based for two
reasons.
First, if the state accepts caste as the basis for backwardness, it
legitimises the caste system, which contradicts secular principles.
Secondly, the traditional caste system on the lines of the jajmani
system has broken down and contractual relationships have emerged
between individuals.
The implicit belief in such arguments is that the life chances of an
individual in contemporary India are determined by one's economic
conditions and not by the membership of any social group. But the
efficacy of the policies of affirmative action lies in the fact that
the majority of the people who are eligible for benefits remain
outside its confines; the beneficiaries are only certain caste groups
which have been pampered for narrow, selfish political dividends. This
possibly lends strength to the entire idea of the domination of the
creamy layer as the major beneficiaries of state policies.
Nonetheless, through a lot of information drawn from interviews with
students from prominent educational institutions in Delhi, the author
firmly reiterates that Dalits strongly support the policies of
affirmative action. Yet, there is a feeling that reservation should be
targeted more towards poor and rural Dalits rather than second- or
third-generation recipients of quota admission. While all these
policies have led to the emergence of a Dalit middle class, the
majority of Dalits continue to be untouched by quotas in government
offices and educational institutions. Thus, the quota system has not
been the universal phenomenon for removing caste-based discrimination.
The author, through her in-depth analysis based on economic theories,
interpretation of statistics and a broader discussion of the
affirmative action programmes, will definitely influence social
theorists to debate more on issues of equity and citizenship. She
establishes that the study of caste and its role in Indian society,
which earlier had been the domain of anthropological writings, can be
taken up by economists to give it a more holistic interpretation.
Rather than downplaying the nature of caste identities and the
encounters between multiple hierarchies, the Indian state and Dalits
should explore in detail the flexibility, mobility and political
possibilities of castes so that such work leads to a more composite
identity and a more balanced economic strategy based on a proper
inclusion of all the marginalised sections of society.
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