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[ZESTCaste] Digvijay backs Maya's demand for Dalit member in Lokpal panel

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/digvijay-backs-mayas-demand-for-dalit-member-in-lokpal-panel/780316/

Digvijay backs Maya's demand for Dalit member in Lokpal panel

Agencies Posted online: Sat Apr 23 2011, 14:05 hrs
New Delhi : Senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh today backed Uttar
Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati's demand for inclusion of a Dalit
representative in the Lokpal drafting committee while Justice Santosh
Hegde does not seem to find any merit in it.

"The demand is valid," Singh said when asked about Mayawati's demand.

However Hegde, who is a member of the commitee, said, "if you have to
have any caste-wise representation, then this committee can never be
constituted."

Asked about the issue, Union Minister Salman Khurshid, a member of the
joint committee, said, "we should trust the ten members. Let them
present their product... we should give them a chance. After the
product comes out, we can see and examine it and put forth our
objections if any."

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[ZESTCaste] The Other Temple Entry - Thirty Dalit businessmen have defied odds and caste prejudice to become billionaires in their own right

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?271501

dalit crorepatis
The Other Temple Entry
Thirty Dalit businessmen have defied odds and caste prejudice to
become billionaires in their own right
Anuradha Raman

"I weep when I cruise past my village in my BMW. My chauffeur thinks
I'm crazy when I ask him to stop the car by a huge tree. I get out and
rest in its shade. I give it a hug and even talk to it."

—Ashok Khade, chairman, Das Offshore Pvt Ltd, Mumbai

The tree Khade stops by falls on the way to his village Ped in Sangli
district in Maharashtra, and is the very place where his father made a
living as a cobbler. Young Khade's caste marked him out for
exclusion—from the village ground, the well, its water, the
temple—almost everything. Education held the lone hope in this dark
abyss, and Khade clutched firmly at this straw, sweating it out at the
Mazgaon docks during the day and studying for a diploma in mechanical
engineering at night. It wasn't easy; there were times when he had to
live under staircases because he could not afford to pay the rent. But
determination and hard work eventually paid off. Today, Khade presides
over a business empire that is worth Rs 550 crore and has a workforce
of 4,500 people. Das Offshore undertakes construction assignments for
offshore rigs, and also builds skywalks or foot overbridges.

Khade and 30 other businesspersons, including a woman, are now part of
a league of 'Dalit crorepatis', comprising first-generation
entrepreneurs who run successful businesses and give jobs to others.
And they haven't used the ladder of quotas to get to the top,
preferring instead to strike out on their own, cocking a snook at the
cynics who disapprovingly cluck at the very mention of an inclusive
society based on positive discrimination. Propelled by sheer
grittiness and tremendous self-belief, they have arrived at a juncture
far removed from their predecessors and have acquired a clout their
forefathers wouldn't even have dreamt of. So much so that the
Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) is trying to formalise an
association with their body, the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and
Industry (DICCI).

"Why is it that the state still indulges in skill development jargon
for poor and leadership development for rich?"

And they are by no means done yet. "Every time I look at Fortune
magazine's list of billionaires," says Milind Kamble, CMD of Fortune
Construction Company, Pune, "I wonder when one of us will make it to
the list." When he says "one of us", Kamble is referring to the
country's most oppressed community, the Dalits, making it to the
world's list of the richest. Incidentally, Kamble takes some measure
of pride in one of his recent projects—laying the pipeline supplying
water to Baramati, the pocketborough of Union agriculture minister
Sharad Pawar. "Mein Pawar ko pani pilata hoon (give him water,
literally, but the phrase could also mean get the better of someone),"
he says jocularly.

Outlook's list of 30 Dalit crorepatis (sourced from the DICCI) is far
from complete; members of the chamber say the numbers are likely to
increase as more entrepreneurs come forward. But what makes each of
these success stories that much sweeter is the fact that it has come
after years of fighting a system whose very structure is designed to
keep Dalits out. Not only that, many of the enterprises are in areas
not traditionally open to the community.

As Surinder S. Jodhka of the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies at
Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University puts it, "It is a tough struggle
in a market where businesses are run on networks and caste lines, and
being a Dalit often means no land and virtually no assets. The
discrimination is not just on the lines of untouchability, a whole
structure of stereotypes is built around them—that they lack the
required skills or can't speak good English—which takes time to work
around." Besides, Jodhka points out, the informal sector is brutal and
exploitative, while shrinking avenues of employment in the government
sector in the face of liberalisation have meant that the oppressed
classes have had to perforce step out and try to forge networks as
they rise up in the open market—the very reason DICCI was set up in
2005.

Not all are ready to raise a toast to the 30. Don't read much into
their lavish lifestyle and their BMWs, they say.

The market, say many of these Dalit entrepreneurs, is not quite the
leveller it is often made out to be. The poor and socially backward
find credit facilities to start something big hard to come by. Admits
Kalpana Saroj, chairperson of the Mumbai-based Kamani Tubes, which she
took over after clearing a debt of Rs 140 crore, "Being a woman and a
Dalit, it was really tough to make the grade."

Married off at the age of 12, Saroj took a loan of Rs 40,000 from
Allahabad Bank to purchase a few sewing machines and employed women to
stitch and embroider garments. But ambition got the better of her and
she moved soon enough into real estate and construction, using that
money to buy Kamani Tubes eventually. The company started small, but
today boasts a turnover of Rs 100 crore. Her next project: to buy a
helicopter before Diwali!

Did her Dalit background inhibit her in any way? "One has to move
forward," Saroj says philosophically, adding that the initiative has
come from her side. "Not all Dalits can become businessmen," notes
political writer Chandra Bhan, "just as not every bania (traditionally
traders) is a businessman. The Dalit crorepatis show how success is
possible within the system."

Once a business gets going, though, getting loans becomes easier for
expansion and diversification. Devjibhai Makwana from Bhavnagar,
Gujarat, found it difficult to source funds when he tried to set up a
unit manufacturing multi-filament yarn used in fishing nets. But now
things have changed, as his son Nagin Makwana explains. "My father
struggled to get a loan, now there is no dearth of bankers queuing up
to offer credit. We have a BMW now and our business of multi-filament
yarn can only look upwards." Currently, the Makwanas' Suraj Filament
has a turnover of Rs 300 crore.

Success, however, has not made these Dalit crorepatis turn their back
on where they came from. Instead, they are striving to uplift their
brethren, whether by example or through community service. Since
education is what liberated them from the chains of caste, Saroj,
Khade and others have opted to open schools in their villages. Dr
Sushant Meshram, whose father worked as a waiter in an ordnance
factory and who himself went on to become a fellow at the Johns
Hopkins University, is now putting the final touches on a
multi-speciality state-of-the-art hospital in Nagpur which will be
open to the public in a month's time. "Fortunately, I was a bright
student and did well in college. We are socially backward but we have
chosen not to be economically backward," he says.

There is also the more celebrated example of IIM graduate Sharath
Babu, who grew up in the slums of Chennai and whose mother sold idlis
for a living. He went on to study at BITS Pilani and then IIM-A and
started the eatery chain Food King four years ago. With his business
yielding an annual turnover of Rs 7 crore now, Sharath decided it was
time to repay the faith people reposed in his abilities. And so he
contested the recent assembly elections in Tamil Nadu. He feels people
like him should join politics to rid it of its bad name.

"Industrialists oppose reservations but welcome subsidised loans, tax
cuts—another form of reservation."

And where does the state figure in this saga of Dalit emancipation and
inclusion? Six decades after Independence, the state seems to have
confined itself to playing the welfare card with its schemes for the
scheduled castes. Employment of Dalits in the private sector is still
voluntary though the idea was mooted in 2007. And predictably, the
business lobby was quick to raise concerns of quality taking a hit
should it implement the suggested inclusive agenda, even as they would
publicly declare that the market does not discriminate on lines of
caste. Given this scenario, the number of backward castes making it to
top-level positions is virtually an impossibility. Something that irks
Professor Anil Gupta of IIM Ahmedabad no end. The state, he says, has
disengaged itself from where it should actively be helping. "Why is
that the state still engages in the skill development jargon for the
poor and talks of leadership development for the rich? How many
leadership institutes do we have in states where there's a larger
scheduled caste population?" he asks.

Ironically, inclusion is an initiative being taken by some Dalits
themselves. IIT Roorkee graduate Harish Bhaskar, who started the Kota
tutorials in Agra, takes pride in the fact that almost all castes come
to him to gain an entry to the elite IITs. Started 10 years ago,
Bhaskar says he is trying hard to persuade members of his community to
take education seriously. "Most of them are too scared to look at IITs
and IIMs, and there are few people to guide them," he says.

Not all, however, are hurrying to raise a toast to this group of 30.
Some fear the lobby of Dalit crorepatis might well be gobbled up by
big business as other enterprises have been by an unsentimental
market. Others say poverty and backwardness are still endemic to most
castes and not much should be read into the lavish lifestyle and BMWs
of Dalit businesspersons.

Which is not to say that new Dalit entrepreneurs should not be helped
along, and the field be made open to all. Karnataka announced a slew
of policies last year that ranged from a Rs 10 crore budgetary
allocation for the welfare of SC/STs and credit at 4 per cent rate of
interest by the state finance corporation to 40 per cent subsidy on
land. Says Baalu of the Karnataka chapter of small enterprises: "The
state can intervene with loans on easy terms of interest, easy credit
and subsidies on land—as are made available for the big business
houses." Adds professor Y.S. Alone of JNU: "All industrialists thrive
on government money and support. They are opposed to reservations but
welcome tax cuts, subsidised loans and many such government measures
which are another form of reservation."

Ask the Dalit crorepatis, and they say they don't see the need for
reservations for their children. Let others not as fortunate as us
avail of its benefits, they say. They are set on consolidating on the
gains they have made so far. And maybe get into Fortune's list of
billionaires. With a firm named Fortune Constructions, Kamble just
might make it there.

Top 10 Dalit Crorepati Club

* Natha Ram, Chairman, Steelmont Pvt Ltd, Mumbai, Turnover: Rs 600 crore
* Ashok Khade, CEO, Das Offshore Engineering, Mumbai, Rs 550 crore
* Kalpana Saroj, Chairperson, Kamani Tubes, Mumbai, Rs 100 crore
* Milind Kamble, CMD, Fortune Construction Company, Pune, Rs 101 crore
* Sanjay Kshirsagar, MD, Sound Concept, Mumbai, Rs 100 crore
* Devjibhai Makwana, CEO, Suraj Filament, Bhavnagar, Gujarat, Rs 300 crore
* Swwapnil Bhingardeve, MD, Khandoba Prassana Sakhar, Pune, Rs 90 crore
* Malkiat Chand, CEO, Janagal exports, Ludhiana, Rs 70 crore
* Dr Sushant Meshram, Multi-specialty hospital in Nagpur, Rs 40 crore
* Avinash Jagtap, CMD, Everest Spun Pipes, Pune, Rs 35 crore

***

20 Emerging 'Dalpatis'

* Sushil Kumar, MD, Simlex Engineers, Noida, Rs 25 crore
* Mahavir Singh, MD, Tricon Buildcon, Delhi, Rs 16 crore
* Rajendra Gaikwad, MD, GT Pest Control, Pune, Rs 15 crore
* Pradeep Nagrare, MD, P.K. Nagrare Construction, Nagpur, Rs 15 crore
* Dilip Bhai, CEO, Amba Synthetics, Bhavnagar, Rs 15 crore
* Jeetu Makwana, MD, Millennium Industries, Bhavnagar, Rs 10 crore
* Sharath Babu, CEO, Food King, Chennai, Rs 10 crore
* Harsh Bhaskar, Director, Kota Tutorials, Agra, Rs 10 crore
* Devanand Londhe, MD, Payod Industries, Pune, Rs 7 crore
* Raju Neele, MD, Sunrise Auto Pack, Aurangabad, Rs 7 crore
* Sukesh Ranjan, MD, ABS Beverages, Lucknow, Rs 7 crore
* Bijendra Singh, MD, Kabeera Printo Graphic, Faridabad, Haryana, Rs 6 crore
* Nand Kishor Chandan, MD, Samrat Ashoka Buildwell, Delhi, Rs 5 crore
* Madan Lal Khinder, MD, Rattan Brothers, Jalandhar, Punjab, Rs 5 crore
* Lalit Bhansod, MD, Comsolve Mediatech, Pune, Rs 4 crore
* J.S. Phulia, MD, Signet Freight Express, New Delhi, Rs 3 crore
* Shishupal Singh, CEO, Sangam Exports, Delhi, Rs 3 crore
* Shammi Kapoor, MD, Buildtech Engineers, Ludhiana, Rs 3 crore
* Devki Nandan Sone, MD, Hotel Taj Plaza, Agra, Rs 3 crore
* Sudhir Chaudhary, CEO, MD Plastics, Gurgaon, Rs 3 crore

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[ZESTCaste] India's untouchables make millions

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/india/110421/india-untouchable-dalit-business-entrepreneur

India's untouchables make millions
By Jason Overdorf
Created 2460-04-23 14:03

Jason Overdorf [2]April 22, 2011 07:41

Members of the lowest caste have proven themselves as entrepreneurs
and India's elite is turning to them for business advice.

NEW DELHI, India — Not long ago, some of India's most influential
economic planners sat down with a group of Dalits — India's erstwhile
untouchables — to get, of all things, some business advice.

Though brutally oppressed for thousands of years, Dalits have
benefited from education and job quotas in recent years. Some have
struck out on their own to become entrepreneurs — and successful ones
at that.

India's Planning Commission, which formulates the government's
five-year spending plans, is taking notes.

"To be honest, the Planning Commission was stunned to find out the
scope and size of our businesses," said Milind Kamble, a 43-year-old
construction business owner who heads the Dalit Indian Chamber of
Commerce and Industry.

"We told them we are also contributing to GDP also and generating
employment also."

India's Dalit castes were once forced to perform jobs that the Hindu
religion deems polluting — like sweeping floors, making shoes and
cleaning toilets.

And even though India outlawed untouchability in 1950 and established
quotas in government, higher education and public sector jobs, Dalits
still suffer from social and economic discrimination, according to a
recent book by economist Sukhadeo Thorat. Dalits are still twice as
likely to be wage laborers than Indians from other castes, for
instance, and they are still routinely denied access to tea shops,
water pumps and barber shops.

However, since the economic liberalization of 1991 — when India
dismantled the planned economy system of quotas for manufacturing — a
growing number of the Dalits have — without connections or capital —
had varying degrees of business success.

"Including mine, most of the big Dalit-owned businesses are 15 years
old," said Kamble. "With the emergence of globalization and the
disappearance of the License-Permit Raj, many opportunities appeared
and many of us jumped on them. Multinationals started rushing in, and
business expanded in a big way."

The 30 Dalit business owners who met with the Planning Commission —
which formulates the five-year plans that map out for the government
how best to spend its resources — are just the tip of the iceberg, the
Dalit chamber of commerce claims.

According to a spokesman, the Maharashtra-based organization has more
than 1,500 members. Kamble estimates that there are 10 times that
number of Dalit entrepreneurs across India. Combined, their companies
generate about $4.5 billion in revenue and employ more than 50,000
people. And apart from gaining access to education through mandatory
"reservations," they built their businesses without government help.

"The Planning Commission was stunned when they asked how many of us
used government schemes to build their businesses," said Kamble. "Only
one entrepreneur from Mumbai raised his hand and described how he'd
applied for $20,000, spent three years visiting government offices to
chase his money and finally got $15,000."

For the government advisory body, that was more inspiring than
depressing — considering the increasing clamor for the expansion of
welfare programs, escalating demands for establishing education and
job quotas for more and more groups, and calls to extend the job quota
system to the private sector as well as government jobs.

"The Dalits reframed the topic from give me the grants and
reservations ..." said Boston Consulting Group's India chairman Arun
Maira, a member of the Planning Commission since 2009. "Any time
someone starts to make suggestions from a very practical exposition of
their own situation ... that's a very interesting conversation to
have."

Local press reports suggest that the Planning Commission is now
considering measures such as launching executive training programs for
Dalit business owners at the prestigious Indian Institutes of
Management, raising the limit on loans offered to Dalit businesses
through the main government program for encouraging industries run by
economically weaker sections of society and making Dalit entrepreneurs
eligible for special lending rates from key state banks.

But according to Surinder Jodhka, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru
University who recently conducted a study of first-generation Dalit
entrepreneurs, the Planning Commission is trying to present a picture
that looks rosier than the reality warrants — precisely because of the
renewed calls for state intervention that threaten efforts to
liberalize the economy further through labor reforms and other
measures.

"There are of course [Dalits] who are doing very well," Jodhka said.
"But the absolute numbers in proportion to the Dalit population is
statistically insignificant. To see it as a trend or something which
is going to become a routine thing is an overstatement."

Meanwhile, the obstacles preventing most Dalits from pulling
themselves up by their own bootstraps go way beyond discrimination.

Most Dalits have almost no assets, so startup loans are nearly
impossible to get — even when the government announces a special
scheme. As new entrants, they lack the familial and social connections
on which most small-scale businesses depend — a problem that can be
exacerbated by prejudice. And in a country where trade has always been
connected to caste, many find it difficult to master the intangible
"style" of the marketplace. They simply don't fit in.

Take the case of 68-year-old Ratibhai Makwana, who heads an
Ahmedabad-based plastics conglomerate called Gujarat Pickers. With
more than $20 million in annual revenue, Makwana's company has been
growing more than 10 percent per year for the past three years. But it
wasn't easy getting started.

When his father tried to break into leather manufacturing — a natural
extension of a traditional "polluting" occupation — in 1962, banks
refused to grant him a loan. When they expanded into textiles, their
association with leather-making meant that they had to deal with
high-caste middlemen rather than sell directly to the mills. And once
they were granted a distributorship, their high-caste rivals organized
a boycott.

"This all happened because I was a Dalit," Makwana said.

Rajender Gaikwad, the 49-year-old head of GT Pest Control, tells a
similar story. Once a sprayer himself, today he employs 400 people in
four Indian states, has already opened for business in Singapore and
plans to enter Malaysia and Thailand soon. But he faced plenty of
obstacles along the way.

"I had no money. I used to take money from money lenders even on high
interest rate of sometimes 20, 25 percent," Gaikwad said. "And back
when my business was still small, a lot of the checks people used to
give me would bounce. People were not giving me my hard-earned money."

Those stories don't surprise Jawaharlal Nehru University's Jodhka.
Surveying prosperous regions in Punjab, he found that lack of access
to loans or capital forced most Dalit entrepreneurs into businesses
like running a small grocery shop or an agency for a cooking gas
distributor. Fewer than 2 percent operated more capital-intensive
enterprises such as hotels or factories.

"People need jobs. People need secure employment," said Jodhka.
"Entrepreneurship is fine ... but it's tough. Whatever has happened
over the last 70 to 80 years has been due to state policies — the new
Dalit middle class, Dalit politics, etc. If you ask them, they all
give credit to reservations."

However committed they are to self-reliance, Kamble, Makwana and
Gaikwad agree. All three of them argued that India's system of job and
education quotas must be continued for 10 to 25 years to complete the
uplift of the oppressed castes.

All three also suggested that the government could redefine the
conventional wisdom about quotas to include not just jobs and seats in
universities, but also business loans, tax breaks and advantages in
the tender process for government contracts.

"This is only the beginning," said Gaikwad. "Businessmen are coming
forward, but they need support from the government. If the government
supports entrepreneurs, then there will be lot more people like me."

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[ZESTCaste] Khap orders newly-wed couple to live as siblings

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-04-22/india/29463019_1_khap-panchayats-gotra-shera

Khap orders newly-wed couple to live as siblings
Deepender Deswal, TNN, Apr 22, 2011, 04.21am IST

PANIPAT: In yet another khap diktat that flies in the face of personal
freedoms, a newlywed couple was ordered to end their marriage and live
as brother and sister within four days of the wedding because of same
`gotra'. Krishan Chandania and his wife, Ramandeep, are now running
from village to village for safety.

Surprisingly, despite the Supreme Court's directions to rein in khap
panchayats for their bizarre edicts, police are yet to wake up. Unlike
the other diktats, which come from Jat khap panchayats, the latest has
come from a rural court of Dalits in Shera and Saanch villages of
Panipat.

Enquiries revealed that Krishan, a resident of Shera, had an affair
with Ramandeep, a girl of Tushamad gotra and resident of Saach. Their
wedding took place at Ramandeep's village on April 10, after their
families accepted their relationship.

On April 14, some residents of Shera objected to the marriage arguing
that since families of Tushamad gotra were also living there, a boy
from the village could not marry a girl of that gotra. Meanwhile, the
couple complained about this to the SP at the district headquarters,
who forwarded this to Matloda police station for further action.
However, Matloda SHO Jagbir More said the complaint was received but
protection was provided to the family.

"There is no khap panchayat involved in the matter and some
individuals might have objected. Police had talked to these villagers,
who denied giving any threat and assured safety of the couple," More
said, while justifying his decision against providing them protection.

But Krishan stuck to his version saying they were forced to shift to
another village due to khap threats. "We wanted to return to the
village, but we feel unsafe. The police have not provided us security
even after four days of approaching them."

Krishan's father Rajmal, who has also lodged complaint with police,
said, "When we didn't object and the girl's parents consented, why do
the villagers have a problem? Our lives have become hell since the
wedding."

On Thursday, the police said that they have had a talk with the
villagers and they have agreed to allow the couple to stay in the
village. However, Krishna told TOI that they are contemplating to
approach the court for directions to police to provide them security
as they still feel threatened.