Dalit and Adivasi Participation in India's Business Economy

Harriss‐White, Barbara; Vidyarthee, Kaushal; Dixit, A. K.

doi:10.1177/2394481120140106

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…Across the economy, an occupational ranking of markets differentiates Dalit access. While sectors such as mining/quarrying, construction, and transport are relatively open to Dalit businesses, health and education, food, hospitality, and the service sectors are found to be relatively closed to them (Harriss-White, Vidyarthee, and Dixit 2014, 67; Thorat, Kundu, and Sadana 2010, 320–21).…”

Section: Caste and Market Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many try to hide their identity (half in Jodhka's survey of 118 Dalit entrepreneurs in two urban centres of Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh). Discrimination more generally contributes to restricted Dalit business access to capital or collateral, to premises, infrastructure, raw materials, and markets, ensuring that, while Dalit businesses are diversifying away from stigmatizing activities in rural areas, prejudice still enclaves them in urban areas (Jodhka 2010; Iyer, Khanna, and Varshney 2013; Thorat, Kundu, and Sadana 2010; Harriss-White, Vidyarthee, and Dixit 2014; Deshpande 2017, xviii). And, in some cases, the barriers to self-employment, like those to professional careers, contribute to Dalits’ withdrawal into unemployment (Das 2013).…”

Section: Caste and Market Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The intersections of caste and gender mean that Dalit women, with comparatively higher (although declining) participation rates in the labour force, are particularly restricted in job mobility (Deshpande 2017; Das 2013). In parallel, the rapid expansion of private business with a two-thirds increase in enterprises since 1990, and half the workforce self-employed by 2005 (Harriss-White, Vidyarthee, and Dixit 2014, 40, 51), has not brought freedom from caste effects. The Dalit share of enterprise ownership is disproportionately small and initially decreased post reforms before rising by 2005 (Iyer, Khanna, and Varshney 2013, 56).…”

Section: Caste and Market Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The extent of discrimination (like Dalit business access) is uneven across sectors; it is also (for reasons still poorly understood) uneven across the country. Loosely speaking, Harriss-White et al (2014) map three regional variants: a ‘northern’ belt with low general business activity and low Dalit participation; a ‘central’ belt with high activity and high Dalit participation; and a ‘southern’ belt with high business activity but low Dalit participation. State policy, such as on poverty reduction, is a poor explainer of this variation, but so are education levels, urbanization, growth rates, Dalit political success, or anti-caste movements, especially of the southern entrepreneurial region having strong discrimination against Dalit business (Harriss-White, Vidyarthee, and Dixit 2014, 59).…”

Section: Caste and Market Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Modernity of Caste and the Market Economy

Mosse¹

2019

Mod. Asian Stud.

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What place does the caste system have in modern India with its globally integrating market economy? The most influential anthropological approaches to caste have tended to emphasize caste as India's traditional religious and ritual order, or (treating such order as a product of the colonial encounter) as shaped politically, especially today by the dynamics of caste-based electoral politics. Less attention has been paid to caste effects in the economy. This article argues that the scholarly framing of caste mirrors a public-policy ‘enclosure’ of caste in the non-modern realm of religion and ‘caste politics’, while aligning modernity to the caste-erasing market economy. Village-level fieldwork in South India finds a parallel public narrative of caste either as ritual rank eroded by market relations or as identity politics deflected from everyday economic life. But, locally and nationally, the effects of caste are found to be pervasive in labour markets and the business economy. In the age of the market, caste is a resource, sometimes in the form of a network, its opportunity-hoarding advantages discriminating against others. Dalits are not discriminated by caste as a set of relations separate from economy, but by the very economic and market processes through which they often seek liberation. The caste processes, enclosures, and evasions in post-liberalization India suggest the need to rethink the modernity of caste beyond orientalist and post-colonial frameworks, and consider the presuppositions that shape understanding of an institution, the nature and experience of which are determined by the inequalities and subject positions it produces.

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Section: Caste and Market Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Caste and Market Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Caste and Market Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Caste and Market Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The Modernity of Caste and the Market Economy

Mosse¹

2019

Mod. Asian Stud.

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“…This is clearly evident from the decline in the proportion of units owned by marginalized groups such as Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) (Deshpande and Sharma 2013). Studies have shown that the caste of the entrepreneurs determines their entry into several sectors (Harriss-White et al 2014). Due to their limited access to capital or collateral, infrastructure, raw materials, and markets controlled by other castes, marginalized groups ended up running survival-oriented businesses rather than entrepreneurial businesses (Deshpande and Sharma 2016;Guérin et al 2015;Harriss-White et al 2014).…”

Section: Social Groupmentioning

confidence: 99%