Recasting India (21 page)

Hiring non-Dalit staff is another classic problem of the Dalit entrepreneur. The good news is that the survey showed that almost all Dalit enterprises had grown—but the exact rate of growth was hazy since most did not maintain proper books. More than half had a small turnover—about Rs 100,000 ($1,686) or so a year. The number of those who reported annual turnover above a lakh of rupees was also significant with 28 percent reporting a turnover of 1 to 5 lakhs and another 6 percent reporting it to be between 5 and 50 lakhs. Two respondents reported a turnover of above 50 lakhs. The other big question is—where were Dalit businesses located? Since higher castes often do not want proximity to Dalits, a third of the Dalit businesses were located in areas with a majority Dalit population—in many cases they were extensions of their living quarters. But half of the respondents said they worked from mixed localities with a majority of non-Dalit population. Surprisingly, almost everyone said that they faced no discrimination at the location of their business, and they had no issues relating to their caste in the place of work.

In some cases, Dalits worked in traditional caste-related occupations like leather (since it involves handling dead animals). But newer opportunities had also opened up—in education, for instance. Especially in Uttar Pradesh, there are many Dalit-run schools. The best part about these Dalit-owned and Dalit-run private schools is that, when well run, they often had students from all castes, not just Dalits. In fact, the study found that only a small number (5 percent) of Dalit-run schools said that their students were only Dalits. A large majority, 78 percent, reported that students from all castes studied with them—breaking yet another major barrier.

In fact the key purpose of the study was to understand the “caste dimension of the everyday economic life in the regional urban context as it is experienced by those who come from the bottom line of caste hierarchy and have tried to step into areas of economic activities that have been hitherto closed to them for various social and historical reasons.”
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In essence, to understand how caste affects livelihood and the search for starting an enterprise.

In short, it asks—does caste matter?

It does, said 63 percent of the people who participated in this survey: they had faced some kind of discrimination in their lives. But interestingly, only 42 percent had faced discrimination in business—showing that entrepreneurship is one of those areas where the impact of caste is naturally lower.

How did caste matter in business?

Some said they were not acceptable to the larger business community. The study reported, “The locally dominant communities, who have traditionally dominated the business scene, do not like Dalits getting into business.”
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But interestingly, barely 5 percent had any trouble buying things—as long as you can pay, no one cares who you are!

One of the biggest problems that the Dalits faced was the lack of powerful social networks that would, for instance, help them access informal funds or stand guarantees for bank loans. “Banks ask for guarantee. We do not own expensive houses or plots of land in the city. Neither do we own any agricultural land. Our businesses are also small. Why would banks give us loans?”
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said one respondent in the report.

One curious thing that the study found was that Dalit entrepreneurs often articulate caste discrimination also in terms of access to finance. Inevitably, most of them borrowed from family and friends. Their biggest problem is no different from the problem faced by most start-ups—lack of resources. The caste burden finally plays out, more often than not, as a resource crunch. One respondent said: “Our main problem is the lack of resources. Our people are poor and also lack confidence to come to cities and try something new. Even those who have the courage, fail to go far. This is because we lack social contacts.”
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The key takeaway from the study was that almost all of Dalit entrepreneurs felt that they had made something of their lives. Through entrepreneurship they had found dignity, broken away from “a life of slavery” and received greater respect in society compared to their peers in the same community. Not only were they self-sufficient, many were even in a position to provide employment to others—which brought about an unprecedented sense of empowerment. In a sense, they had become “role models” in their community, and in turn pushed for the best education for their children.
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The one man who brought this study to life for me was Sunil Zode. I met him at a dinner to which Chandra Bhan Prasad invited me.

His (cryptic, without the right context) email invitation was titled—ABCD.

It read,

For the uninitiated, this is perplexing stuff, but it contains centuries of Indian politics hidden in one email. The “gated” reference is to Delhi's infamous elite class who live in gated colonies that are shut off every night—and have no passersby unless you live inside the colony.

The Macaulay mention lies at the heart of one of India's most bitter class divides—between those whose primary mode of schooling was in the English language and those who did not go to an “English-medium” school. Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay was a British historian and politician who supported the transfer of the official language of the government in India from Persian (favored by the old Mughal courts) to English in the mid-nineteenth century. In the years leading to the English Education Act of 1835, Macaulay wrote a “Minute upon Indian Education.” It says all the things that the invitation from Prasad says it does.

It also says, “I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues…. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. Honours might be roughly even in works of the imagination, such as poetry, but when we pass from works of imagination to works in which facts are recorded, and general principles investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely immeasurable.”
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It also says,

Modern-day India has great disdain for “Macaulay's children,” or Indians who proclaim superiority because of their knowledge of English—and the West. But Ambedkar—and even today's Dalits—have the reverse opinion. They realize, accurately, that English frees them, puts them on a par, gives them not just equality in society, but equanimity. While Sanskrit, the language of Hindu orthodoxy, and therefore caste bias, which could traditionally only be accessed by the Brahmins, keeps the lower castes trapped, English unlocks the chains.

Therefore this worship of Goddess English; therefore this party.

The divide comes from independence. Both Gandhi and Nehru were London-educated barristers, as was Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of Pakistan's independence movement and the founder of the state of Pakistan. Over the years a feeling developed in India that it was a country ruled by a handful of British- (later American-) educated politicians who had little contact with the rest of India.

The reference to “Tharoor Class” is to Shashi Tharoor, the very suave former UN diplomat turned Congress Party Member of Parliament. Tharoor is a graduate of St Stephen's College, one of the most elite liberal arts colleges of India, and the alma mater of many members of the Congress Party which has ruled India for most of its modern history, including the latest scion of the Gandhi–Nehru family, the perpetual head of the Congress, Rahul Gandhi. Tharoor has a PhD from Tufts University in international relations, was a career diplomat rising to undersecretary general of the UN before he returned home to enter politics.

This is the divide that fuels today's India. What most people don't understand is that the caste divide is also the class divide—which is why economics, money, earnings and prosperity are often its most potent antidote in modern India.

This little party in Delhi to which Prasad invited me was to celebrate another Ambedkar lesson to his people—embrace English.

The hall where it was being held had a little iron statue of a woman carrying a book on one side. She was, I was told, the Goddess of English. “We worship her,” said Prasad, “because she sets us free.”

This is something Seema Saroj also says. The moment she starts to speak fluent English (her mother speaks the language only haltingly), something changes even among people who know her caste. “The barriers fall,” she told me.

S
UNIL
Z
ODE WAS HAVING A QUIET GLASS OF SWEET LIME AND SODA AT THE
party when I met him. He caught me looking at his shoes, which had caught my eye for their dazzling polish. “I like good shoes and I polish them well. The first pair of shoes I ever wore, I had to steal them. I did not have money to buy shoes,” said Zode.

There were many people that evening and we didn't get a chance to speak more, but later in Bombay where he lives, Zode told me his story. He owns six companies, including a large insecticides firm, a travel company and some logistics companies. His annual turnover is Rs 20 crores ($3.3 million).

He is the youngest of seven children born to an agricultural worker in the rural Wardha district of Maharashtra. Often there was no food to eat. Until Class 7, often he had only one set of clothes—and no shoes.