via Sunny Narang, CASTE AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP But is entrepreneurial activity in India dominated by forward castes? No. According to Economic Census of India (2005) which covered 42 million non-farming enterprises employing 99 million people, the OBCs owned 43.5 per cent of all enterprises, as against their share of 41 per cent in total population; Scheduled Castes (SCs) owned 9.8 per cent of all enterprises, against their population of 16.4 per cent; Scheduled Tribes (STs) owned 3.7 per cent against their population of 7.7 per cent. It is true that the SC/ST entrepreneurs are proportionately less. Yet, entrepreneurship among them is higher than that among African-Americans in the US, who, despite all the bounties given by the US government, have a self-employment ratio of 5.1 per cent, against their population of 13 per cent. But considering that only 2.6 per cent of SC-owned units and 3.6 per cent of those belonging to STs have institutional finance, if more of it could be directed to them, entrepreneurship among them can improve vastly. Surprisingly, whether it is SC, ST or non-SC/ST entrepreneurs, more than 92 per cent of them are self-financed. Studies show that competition within communities set off huge entrepreneurial movement within — as one OBC or SC or ST person sets up a business, it encourages and even compels others within their communities to copy him. This is the effect of relation-based lifestyle and explains the growth of community-driven industrial clusters in India. According to UNIDO, there are 350 small-scale industrial clusters and over 2,000 rural artisan clusters, which contribute to 60 per cent of manufacture and 40 per cent of manufacturing employment. According to the Ministry of Small Industries, there are 2,042 clusters, of which 819 are unregistered. Most of them are community-driven and evolved on their own, with even education playing little role. Take Tirupur, one of such clusters dominated by the Gounder community, which now exports close to $ 3 billion of knitwear. A study by Boston Consulting scholars has shown more than two-thirds of the exporters to have studied not even till Std 12, with less than a tenth of them being graduates. Another example is the diamond business in India, which is entirely driven by the Palanpuri Jain and Patel communities. Nine out of ten diamonds in the world are cut today in Gujarat. Of the 35 leading diamond exporters of Surat, only two had completed higher secondary education and others even less. Caste now seems to be emerging as social capital, as a vehicle for economic development. Social capital is the product of relations — as distinct from contracts — that creates kinship among people. Caste constitutes natural kinship. The idea of social capital entered the global economic development discourse in the early 1990s, thanks to Francis Fukuyama who expounded relation-based socio-economy. Caste in politics has indeed done a lot of damage. But caste in economics seems to hold high potential for India’s growth. Will the policy makers move away from the current paradigm on caste and look at India from within – particularly after the IMF, World Bank and G-20 nations have noted that there is no single economic model for the world, and each country has to work out its own? (The author is a commentator on political and economic affairs, and a corporate advisor) thehindubusinessline/.../article4721276.ece
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 18:23:38 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015