http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/NB16Df02.html
Feb 16, 2012
Dalit millionaires defy caste system
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - India's Dalits (former Untouchables), whose growing
electoral influence has been visible for some years, are beginning to
slowly reveal their economic muscle. A miniscule but expanding group
of first-generation Dalit entrepreneurs has thrown up some
millionaires.
This has triggered debate on the role that economic liberalization has
played in changing their fortunes.
According to the Dalit Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DICCI), there
are over 30 Dalit crorepatis (one whose net wealth exceeds a crore or
10 million rupees - roughly US$205,400) in the country.
While the number of crorepatis is exceedingly small especially since
there are around 170 million Dalits in India, the success
Dilbert
mute
stories - most of them are tales of rags to riches - indicate that in
the new India, Dalits can begin hoping to figure in Fortune's list of
millionaires.
Dalits are at the bottom of India's millennia-old caste hierarchy.
They have suffered intense discrimination for centuries, excluded from
education and public life and allowed employment only in "dirty" jobs
such as cleaning toilets, skinning cows, digging graves, etc. So dirty
were Dalits in the eyes of the upper castes that even the shadow of a
Dalit falling on an upper-caste person was considered to be polluting.
Consequently, Dalits lived far away from upper-caste settlements.
Dalit villages were located so that the air from there would not blow
into upper caste homes. They were not allowed into restaurants,
temples or other public places. They were forbidden from carrying
umbrellas, wearing footwear, shirts or sunglasses.
Although in 1950, Independent India banned the practice of
"Untouchability" ie the social, physical and political exclusion of
Dalits, and followed it up with the Prevention of Atrocities Act in
1989 and sought to improve literacy and economic well-being of the
community through quotas in education and government employment,
Dalits continue to suffer severe discrimination and are targets of
horrific violence unleashed by dominant castes.
Dalits constitute the overwhelming majority of India's poor,
illiterate and hungry. A mere 30.1% of Dalits are literate today
compared with the Indian average of 75%. Discrimination against Dalit
children in schools forces them to drop out; the Dalit dropout rate is
almost 50%. Dalits constitute the bulk of India's landless laborers,
its unemployed and underpaid. In India, cleaning of toilets is still a
task that only Dalits do.
It is the context of continuing exclusion and ill-treatment of Dalits
that makes the emergence and rise of Dalit capitalists all the more
spectacular.
In the two decades since India began liberalizing its economy, the
number of millionaires and billionaires in the country has grown
phenomenally. In 2011, India had 55 (dollar) billionaires, six more
than the previous year. Two Indians figure among the 10 richest in the
world.
The emergence of Dalit millionaires is a far more dramatic development
than that of millionaires in other communities. After all most of them
are first generation illiterates.
Take Ashok Khade, for instance. Born in a mud hut in Ped village in
Maharashtra, Khade belonged to a family of Chamars, a Dalit subcaste
that is among the lowest in the caste hierarchy. One of six children
of a poor, illiterate cobbler, Khade's childhood was the typical Dalit
story of exclusion.
As a young adult, he worked at the dockyard by day and studied for a
diploma in engineering by night, sleeping under staircases as he could
not afford to pay rent for a home. Today, the 56-year-old is a
millionaire, heading the $100-million DAS Offshore Engineering, an oil
rig engineering company with 4,500 people on its payrolls.
Most of the Dalit millionaires have similar stories tell. Their rise
to riches was against all odds.
By setting up their own enterprises and investing capital in them,
Dalit entrepreneurs are signaling that they are not averse to risk.
Several are unwilling to take a chance on discrimination by their
dominant caste colleagues. Aware of the reality out there, some have
changed or dropped their surnames if these reveal their Dalit origin.
The successful entrepreneurs now they want to help others in the community.
Some are hiring Dalits in their companies. They are also trying to
remove hurdles that they encountered when they were starting off as
aspiring entrepreneurs.
One such hurdle is access to capital. Although there are government
institutions such as the National Scheduled Caste Finance and
Development Corporation, that extends loans to Dalits, these loans are
small and given in installments. Besides, existing funding mechanisms
are largely against collateral. This means they are beyond the reach
of a large number of aspiring Dalit entrepreneurs, DICCI's chairman
Milind Kamble pointed out.
This prompted DICCI to set up a US$100 million venture capital fund
for Dalits last year that is scheduled to open up for business in a
few months. Several Dalit millionaires including Khade and Kamble have
contributed to this fund.
Another body which has pitched in to help aspiring Dalit entrepreneurs
is the Confederation of Indian Industry. Last year it agreed to work
with DICCI to increase sourcing of goods and services from Dalit
entrepreneurs by 10-20%.
The success of some Dalit entrepreneurs, their entry into the
exclusive millionaire club is often attributed to opportunities opened
up by economic liberalization.
A recent study by the Center for the Advanced Study of India of the
University of Pennsylvania covering 19,071 Dalit households in Bilaria
Ganj block in Azamgarh district and Khurja block in Bulandshahr
district (both in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh) found that
Dalit lifestyles have undergone "massive changes" since 1990.
In terms of asset ownership, for instance, between 1990 and 2007, the
proportion of Dalit households in the sample with a television set
jumped from 0.9% to 22% in Azamgarh and 0.7% to 45% in Bulandshahr.
The study found a "very substantial improvement in housing" with 64.4%
and 94.6% in Azamgarh and Bulandshahr respectively reporting they now
live in pakka (concrete) housing compared to 18.1% and 38.4%
respectively in 1990.
Many are unwilling to attribute the improvement in the Dalit situation
to economic liberalization. "Behavioral and lifestyle changes are
natural with time and circumstances," Vivek Kumar, sociology professor
at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, told The Mint, a
business daily.
Others argue that the Dalit situation has in fact worsened with the
state increasingly pulling out of health, education, etc since 1990.
Denied of subsidies and safety nets that were available pre-1990,
Dalits are running into huge debts to pay for healthcare or worse.
Analysts like P Sainath have drawn attention to economic
liberalization's impact for India's poorest, the bulk of who are
Dalits. This impact has been brutal especially for those in
agriculture, which is where most Dalits are employed. Over the past 15
years, over a quarter million farmers - most of them are likely to be
Dalits - have committed suicide on account of mounting debt.
Thus not all of India's Dalits have any reason to celebrate
liberalization. In fact the majority are not. The phenomenon of Dalit
millionaires after all is hardly representative of the Dalit reality.
While liberalization of India's economy has facilitated the emergence
of Dalit millionaires, the significant role of literacy and political
empowerment - the rise of Dalit politics coincided with liberalization
- cannot be ignored. A common feature of the Dalit millionaires is
that they have had some education.
While education provided the foundation, liberalization opened up opportunity.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore. She can be reached at sudha98@hotmail.com
INFORMATION OVERLOAD?
Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to ZESTMedia-digest@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/
PARTICIPATE:-
On this list you can share caste news, discuss caste issues and network with like-minded anti-caste people from across India and the world. Just write to zestcaste@yahoogroups.com
TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP:-
If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to ZESTCaste-subscribe@yahoogroups.com OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join/
Also have a look at our sister list, ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/
No comments:
Post a Comment