Wealth and Caste in India

Today's New York Times ran an article on an interesting and controversial crusader for outcasts in India. The article is "When Crusader Sees Wealth as Cure for Caste Bias"(you may need to register -for free- to view full article). Relevant for the start-of-semester readings/discussion on 'What is development? Think of Amartya Sen's ideas on income, development and exclusion as you read. Lots of bits in the article on the role of markets, discrimination, and policies to promote development. A few choice quotes:
... There are about 200 million Dalits, or members of the Scheduled Castes, as they are known officially, in India. They remain socially scorned in city and country, and they are over-represented among India’s uneducated, malnourished and poor.

...When Chandra Bhan Prasad visits his ancestral village in these feudal badlands of northern India, he dispenses the following advice to his fellow untouchables: Get rid of your cattle, because the care of animals demands children’s labor. Invest in your children’s education instead of in jewelry or land. Cities are good for Dalit outcastes like us, and so is India’s new capitalism.

...Mr. Prasad [a former Maoist guerilla] is a contrarian. He calls government welfare programs patronizing. He dismisses the countryside as a cesspool. Affirmative action is fine, in his view, but only to advance a small slice into the middle class, who can then act as role models. He calls English “the Dalit goddess,” able to liberate Dalits.
There is also an interesting side discussion of how to convincingly demonstrate 'causes' of an improvement in living conditions in economic studies (an 'impact evaluation' topic we'll discuss at length). Abhijit Banerjee of MIT and The Poverty Action Lab are mentioned. One study mentioned found that:
... those with familiar lower-caste names fare worse in job interviews, even with similar qualifications. The Indian elite, whether corporate heads, filmmakers, even journalists, is still dominated by the upper castes.
Mr. Prasad believes that “[e]conomic expansion is going to neutralize caste in 50 years.” Unfortunately he also states “[i]t will not end caste.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Help the World’s Poor: Buy Some New Clothes

Help the World’s Poor: Buy Some New Clothes : "Back to school shopping leads many people to buy apparel that was made in sweatshops. Rather than feel guilty for “exploiting” poor workers, shoppers should rejoice. Their spending is some of the best aid we can give to people in poorer countries." So says Benjamin Powell on the always provocative AidWatch blog. Liberal New York Times columnist and Economics Nobel Prize international economist Paul Krugman wrote an earlier and now often cited statement along similar lines titled " In Praise of Cheap Labor: Bad jobs at bad wages are better than no jobs at all ." Do you agree with these arguments?
Read more

Krugman, In Praise of Cheap Labor

I know this may be hard for some of you to believe but before Paul Krugman was writing for the New York Times and outraging Bush administration supporters, he was writing for Slate and other publications and ridiculing Clinton administration officials for their 'dangerous obsession' with 'competitiveness' and their 'strangely careless arithmetic.' He was also known for challenging anti-globalization protesters for 'not thinking their position through.' His piece " In Praise of Cheap Labor Bad jobs at bad wages are better than no jobs at all " which appeared in Slate - Dismal Scientist - March 20, 1997 compactly sums up his position on this last point. This piece is on the Eco 340 reading list but I wanted to post it here for those of you in Eco 740 who might be interested, and to open up a space for discussion. Here's a choice excerpt: .... moral outrage is common among the opponents of globalization--of the transfer of technology and ca...
Read more

eco740: PS1 and fixed link

I've posted problem set 1 (due Oct 10th) to Blackboard course documents section. Fixed link: A web link to one of tonight's external readings, Jeffrey Williamson's Globalization, Labor Markets and Policy Backlash from the Past , had not been working, but now it is. See if you can interpret his empirical findings on convergence and changes in income distribution using the Specific Factors Model we were working with last class (but applied to international rather than intra-national labor mobility).
Read more