Devesh Kapur: Western anti-capitalists take too much for granted

There is something paradoxical about the crisis of capitalism that has unfolded since the financial turmoil of 2008. Westerners are heirs to the capitalist system – and to a vast trove of wealth that it has created. But many in the developed world now count themselves among capitalism’s discontents. It is in the east, where the tradition of free enterprise is still young, that its virtues are more easily perceived.

Capitalism has of course been tarnished by its role in a financial crisis that plunged many countries into recession and put millions of people out of work. It is resented, too, for its perceived tendency to exacerbate inequalities, which sting all the more now that so many people find themselves poorer.

Look east, however, and you see something different. Economic statistics show that hundreds of millions are being lifted out of poverty. Below the surface, the social changes are even more profound.

Among the most striking beneficiaries are India’s Dalits (previously known as the “untouchables”), who for centuries were victimised by one of the most hierarchical societies in the world. Capitalism’s role in erasing this stain on Indian society is comparable to the contribution it made to curtailing slavery, serfdom, feudalism and patriarchy in the west.

Since India underwent market-based reforms in the early 1990s, Dalits have advanced their economic lives. If they have the money they can now buy what was once out of reach, and receive the education they were once denied. They have made still more impressive gains in securing dignity and ending social humiliation. Surveys have found that in the early 1990s, for example, fewer than 3 per cent of non-Dalits who visited Dalit homes in the state of Uttar Pradesh would condescend to drink water or tea; two decades later, two-thirds would accept.

Dalits have also increased their consumption of high-end food, grooming products and other goods associated with high social status. They participate in ceremonies, such as weddings, that were once reserved for people of more fortunate birth. They are no longer confined to their own parallel economy, but buy from the same merchants and sell to the same customers as everyone else.

Capitalism has played a critical role in securing this emancipation. The Dalits were once consigned to demeaning occupations, such as handling dead animals or working as bonded agricultural labourers. This transmitted the patterns of caste oppression down the generations. But market forces are driving out these humbling activities.

No longer the indentured servants of high-caste groups, the Dalits have instead become their customers – leasing land or hiring capital goods such as tractors, and selling their wares at market. They are also moving away from rural settings, where many people are still obsessed with caste, to the cities, where there is less discrimination.

And the Dalit community is producing its own capitalists, too – entrepreneurs who are profiting from opportunities in everything from construction to healthcare to education. In a growing economy that is open to all, fortune rewards those with grit, ambition, drive and hustle. Even if stories of self-made success are rare, such role models will inspire future change.

Echoes of the Dalits’ new freedoms reverberate through India’s democracy – indeed, they are amplified by it. In the most recent elections, for example, a plurality of Dalits voted for the Bharatiya Janata party, which has traditionally been dominated by the upper castes.

This is a constituency that can no longer be ignored. Dalits have received legal and constitutional protections, and benefited from affirmative action in public employment and education – measures that have helped create a small Dalit middle class. In 2007 Mayawati Kumari, a Dalit, was elected chief minister of India’s largest state. That a woman of her caste should have risen to high office largely on her own efforts would, until recently, have been unimaginable. Caste has by no means disappeared. But India’s economic growth and dynamism, unleashed by market forces, are at last providing new ways for Dalits to liberate themselves from servility and servitude.

At the end of Aravind Adiga’s Booker Prize-winning novel on contemporary India, The White Tiger, the amoral protagonist says, after slitting his master’s throat: “I’ll say it was all worthwhile to know, just for a day, just for an hour, just for a minute, what it means not to be a servant.” Happily, the liberation of India’s Dalits has been accomplished at a far lower price. Capitalism has been a wrenching force in human history – but also a revolutionary one, weakening deeply entrenched social hierarchies. In the tropics the people are cheering as capitalism undermines social inequalities. Whatever its flaws, westerners are short-sighted to lament it.


Devesh Kapur is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and
co-author of ‘Defying the Odds: The Rise of Dalit Entrepreneurs’Tagged



Fonte: FT