Few Indians make it across the divide between poor and rich. But some so-called “untouchables” who have crossed it see only one way to bring fellow Dalits across: employ them themselves.
Lydia Polgreen writes in The New York Times of the struggles faced by Dalits, who occupy the very bottom rung of Hinduism’s social hierarchy, in today’s booming Indian economy. She says that while Indian law officially prohibits caste-based discrimination, ongoing social stigma in the private sector—in the form of exclusion from all but the lowest-paying jobs—has left the group among the poorest in the country.
Most struggling Dalits never turn their rags to riches, but the few whose successful businesses have catapulted them to the top have “bought rank in the market economy,” Polgreen writes. Many of their successes are, in part, the product of post-independence affirmative action policies to redress the class imbalance, including reserved spaces for lower castes in education institutions and public jobs.
Just last month, the Indian government continued this trend by requiring state and public companies to make 20 percent of their purchases from Indian businesses, specifying that a fifth of those purchases be made from businesses belonging to the country’s lower castes, like Dalits. Four percent of public purchases equals about USD $1.3 billion, which is nothing to sniff at.
The push to expand affirmative-action policies into the private sector, particularly in hiring quotas, has met harsh criticism. The Economist argues that moves in this direction would be disastrous, resulting in even more social polarization and hiding the real source of inequality—lack of access to good education— which is already being addressed by older policies, albeit inefficiently.
Meanwhile, Dalit business owners have developed their own solution. The Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry is a thriving hub of corporate leaders bypassing government intervention altogether by networking with qualified jobseekers and filling purchase orders from other Dalit businesses. And if the group’s growth in membership and activity is a harbinger, we’ve found the bridge to cross the divide.
