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Caste as Social CapitalThe Tiruppur Story

M Vijayabaskar, Kalaiyarasan A

The authors thank Atul Sood and M S S Pandian for their useful comments on an earlier draft.

M Vijayabaskar (baskarv@mids.ac.in) is with the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai and Kalaiyarasan A (kalaijnu@gmail.com) is a PhD student at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, JNU, New Delhi.

There are suggestions that caste networks can be used as a means to reduce transaction costs and promote economic development. Based on critiques of the social capital for development literature and the experience of the knitwear cluster in Tiruppur, this article contends that caste-based economic networks reinforce socio-economic hierarchies and generate new forms of exclusion.

Like caste, its defenders too have a number of avatars. The most recent one is being promoted by propo-nents of the free market and Hindu right-wing ideologues. They view caste as a driver of development and as a form of social capital. Taking his cue from the book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity where Francis Fukuyama argues that culture constitutes 20% of the missing element in economics, S Gurumurthy, ideologue and convenor of the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch,1 looks at caste as the missing cultural element in the Indian context. He claims that caste is a safety net or a shock absorber that counteracts the problems posed by an expanding individualistic and acquisi-tive ethic. As he reasons,

Caste is a very strong bond. While individu-als are related by families, castes link the families. Castes transcended the local limits and networked the people across. This has prevented the disturbance that industrial-ism caused to neighbourhood societies in the West, resulting in unbridled individualism and acute atomisation.2

Gurcharan Das, writer and news-paper columnist, and R Vaidyanathan of the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore (IIM-B), make similar argu-ments. Das argues that the caste struc-ture provides rules of self-restraint which smoothen market functioning by provid-ing the required trust between economic agents. Caste also, according to him, pro-vides knowledge and capital. He claims,

Instead of morally judging caste, I seek to understand its impact on competitiveness. I have come to believe that being endowed with commercial castes is a source of advan-tage in the global economy. Bania traders know how to accumulate and manage capital. They have fi nancial resources and more important, fi nancial acumen (Das 2002: 150, cited in Vaidyanathan 2012).

Vaidyanathan argues that given the putative positive role of caste in economic

development, the cry to abolish caste is to semitise and homogenise Indian society and those who are critiquing caste are rootless metropolitan elites.

He claims that those who use caste in business tend to be productive and up-wardly mobile whereas those who de-ploy it in politics continue to lag behind.

Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar, writ-ing in The Times of India, too proposes a case for caste-based development through the concept of social capital. He argues, it is the social glue that enables cohesive communities to pull together, help dis-tressed members, mediate confl icts, penalise deviant behaviour and reward desirable behaviour, far more effi ciently and cheaply than government mecha-nisms.3 According to him, instead of worrying about negative aspects of the caste system, one needs to use it effec-tively through caste-based develop-ment schemes.

The industrial town of Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu is often pointed out as an example of how caste as social capital can propel development. For example, the World Development Report 2001 notes,

Tirupur was a world leader in the knitted garment industry. The success of this indus-try is striking. This is particularly so as the production of knitted garments is capital-intensive, and the state banking monopoly had been ineffective at targeting capital funds to effi cient entrepreneurs, especially at the lev-els necessary to sustain Tiruppurs high growth rates. The needed capital was raised within the Gounder community, a caste rel-egated to land-based activities, relying on community and family network (World Bank 2001: 175).

Gurumurthy echoes a similar sentiment:

These are community-driven models...I think it is only social capital which can do it. In my view, the community is the social capital in India. Take Tamil Nadu, for instance. The Naidus, the Kongu Goundars, the Nadars, and the Rajus took to commerce there. These communities developed fi nancially, educationally and socially.4

The increasing recourse to the social capital theory in developmental discourse has however been critiqued extensively by Harriss (2001) and Fine (2010) among others. Based on their critique and em-pirical evidence from the knitwear in-dustry in Tiruppur which has been held

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Economic & Political Weekly EPW march 8, 2014 vol xlIX no 10 35

as a model for the caste as social capital argument, we point out that the proposi-tion validates exclusionary practices and reinforces socio-economic hierarchies.

An Institution for Markets

The new avatar of caste as social capital has to be understood in the light of recent shifts in the discourse of develop-ment economics. From merely getting prices right, there has been a growing emphasis on getting institutions right which has shifted attention to identify-ing institutions including social ones like caste that can help markets work better. In particular, this shift coincides with the ascendance of what has been referred to as the post-Washington consensus. The call for getting social relations right symbolises the failures of the policy structure advocated by the Washington consensus. This has opened up space for the consideration of non-economic factors in economic develop-ment. Social capital is one such non- economic factor; and it has been used as an explanatory factor in developmental outcomes like income, education and health in recent years.5

There is no singular defi nition of what constitutes social capital. The World Bank (WB) defi nes it as the norms and networks that enable collective action encompassing institutions, relationships, and customs that shape the quality and quantity of a societys social interactions.6 However, it is broadly defi ned as social networks based on horizontal and volun-tary local associations and as resources that people have by virtue of their social relationships. The evolution of the concept of social capital has come from diverse routes.7 The concept of social capital initially developed by Pierre Bourdieu (2008) is much broader in its scope than what is currently being used in policy discourses. His notion of social capital rooted in social structures allows for emergence of social stratifi cation through unequal distribution of this capital and a reinforcement of other sources of strati-fi cation. His thesis on forms of capital describes how cultural, social and eco-nomic capitals combine to enhance and expand the domain of exercise of power stemming from the economic.

The current version of social capital that permeates development economics is closer to the one developed by James Coleman, a Chicago-based functionalist and a rational choice sociologist (Coleman 1988). According to his argument based on methodological individualism, social capital which is produced through inter-action between persons in a given social structure may become an asset in itself like physical and human capital. This understanding has found its way into institutional and information-theoretic economics that emphasises the importance of social trust and networks in reducing information asymmetries and transac-tion costs (Fine 2010). Social capitals are divided into three operational categories. The capital that binds the members of a group together is referred to as bonding capital. It is supposed to produce a sense of identity and common purpose. The sort of capital that connects people from different social groups is defi ned as bridging capital. Finally, linking capital is expected to generate ties between the relatively weak and the powerful.

Colemans concept of social capital was applied by Robert Putnam (1994) in his study of Italy, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. This work has become paradigmatic, inspiring the application of the concept across disciplines. Putnams primary contention is that the better perform-ance of northern Italy in comparison to the south is due to an early active engagement in community affairs, a dense network of local associations, and an egalitarian pattern of politics in the region. Critics have however shown that such difference is rooted in a particular agrarian structure and state formation in the northern region which perhaps has facilitated such civic engagement (Harriss 2001). In other words, the emergence of certain patterns of civic engagement too needs to be explained. Importing the concept of social capital to study differences in the US in a subsequent work, Putnam (2000) locates the current problem of differences in health, wealth and happiness amongst Americans in the lack of social capital.

Broadly, the current dominant para-digm of social capital gives primacy to

civil society in understanding economic outcomes. It views civil society as a sort of equalising space devoid of power, privileges and confl ict. That is, by volun-tary association, everybody benefi ts from mutual cooperation and collectivism. However, what is missing in this story is the aspect of vertical and often exclusive nature of such associations, networks and civic engagements. As we shall see, caste continues to be the primary source of such exclusive networks in India.

Tiruppur: Claims and Realities

Tiruppur is a successful export hub in the country. It produces roughly 15% of the countrys cotton yarn and generates 45% of its knitwear exports (Damodaran 2008). The dynamics of industrialisation in the region have been characterised variedly as a decentralised form of capital accumu-lation, amoebic capitalism or as trans-formations of non-corporate capital (Chari 2004; Cawthorne 1995; Mahadevan and Vijayabaskar 2012). Indeed the re-gion has witnessed rapid expansion and accumulation for over two decades, mostly through a dense agglomeration of networks of small and medium fi rms.

This widespread accumulation has been attributed to the successful entrepreneur-ship among members of the Gounder caste, an intermediate caste group with landed interests in western Tamil Nadu. They have mobilised capital more through family networks than through formal markets or state support, it is argued. Labour too is mobilised through fi rm-family and fi rm-farm-family networks. The disproportionate share of entrepre-neurs from this caste in the manufactur-ing sector is revealing. For instance, 56% of the manufacturers registered with the South India Hosiery Manufacturers Association (SIHMA) are Gounders. The same situation prevails in the Tiruppur Exporters Association (TEA), a producer association for knitwear exporters (Chari 2004). The role of state intervention in industrialisation in Tiruppur has been circumspect, with Gounders themselves explaining their success in terms of their toil or uzhaippu in Tamil (ibid). As Chari points out, this representation as self-made men connotes not merely the prevailing social conventions among

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Gounders but also ways of working and exercising control over labour.

The signifi cant point, however, is that the caste itself is highly differentiated as indicated by the multiple paths of entry into the knitwear industry and their sub-sequent growth trajectories.8 The move-ment of the richer peasants or those with bigger landholdings has been through investment of agrarian surplus whereas the entry of agricultural workers and many of the small and middle peasants is driven more by push factors rooted in the poor agricultural conditions in the region. Given the vagaries of dry land cultiva-tion, agrarian incomes have historically been supplemented by income from non-farm activities in the form of dairying, seasonal employment in ginning and pressing in Tiruppur, etc. The growth of the knitwear industry and the declining prospects in agriculture led to a new mode of transition into the urban indus-trial economy. Increasingly, capital for investment in the knitwear industry was acquired through sale or mortgaging of agricultural land to raise capital for investments. This process has intensifi ed over the last decade with the increasing unviability of agriculture on the one hand and rising land prices on the other.

Another route is based on kashtak-ootu, a distinct institution that draws upon kinship networks (Swaminathan and Jeyaranjan 1994). Workers with good work experience in this industry enter into a partnership with a relative who would invest the necessary capital. Thus, while the management of production would be taken care of by the worker-owner, the other partner would be in-volved in negotiating buyers, accessing new markets, etc. In a few instances, persons with assured access to one or many buyers would team up with a worker to set up a production unit. Yet another route of capital mobilisation, though not an openly acknowledged phenomenon, is through dowry. As a part of the dowry, the son-in-law, in addition to being given money for investment, would also come to establish links with other relatives who would then begin to place orders with his unit.

In addition to such kinship facilitated entry into entrepreneurship, there are a

couple of other routes for Gounder work-ers to enter the industry. These are routes opened up as a part of the bigger fi rms strategy of capital accumulation, helping themselves against market un-certainties and avoiding legal obligations to labour. Bigger fi rms in order to escape fulfi lling legal obligations to labour and to avoid problems of maintaining a large labour force, encourage long-standing workers, most often belonging to the same caste as that of the owners, to move out and set up units of their own. They were invariably supplied with second-hand machinery and orders to work on in the initial phases. Such provision of gratis capital was particularly prevalent during the 1970s and early 1980s. Given the low investment and technological requirements, especially in the earlier phase, workers often teamed up together to start a unit of their own. Mostly, it was done with the help of second-hand machinery with operations being carried out in household premises.

Since then, there has been an infl ux of white-collared employees from the formal sector, both public and private, teaming up with locals with a good knowledge of the industry to start export- oriented units. Else, they would work for a period of six months to one year in their friends or kins fi rms before setting up units of their own. With their social capital more attuned to the process of accessing global markets and loans from formal lending institutions, many of them have succeeded. Caste thus morphs into capital among the Gounders in Tiruppur, facilitating capital mobilisation for entry into the sector. However, the uneven-ness of the process is missed out in the explanation based on caste as social capital. All routes of entry are not how-ever available to all Gounders. While access to land and certain kinship net-works constitute the axes of such intra-caste variations, need for additional attributes to transact with global buyers further excludes sections of Gounder en-trepreneurs. Entering into direct exports requires an ability to interact and nego-tiate with global buyers, an attribute that is unevenly distributed among the entrepreneurs. Lack of formal education among workers and small peasant-turned

entrepreneurs is a key factor confi ning most of them to the position of job workers and subcontractors undertaking work outsourced by the direct exporters. Importantly, as we show next the idea of horizontal intra-caste solidarity mooted by the caste as social capital argument collapses in the way caste is deployed by the Gounder exporter-entrepreneurs to negotiate market uncertainties.

Power in Intra-Caste Networks

Kinship-based networks do not preclude unequal exercise of power between dif-ferent actors. Direct exporters enjoy a high degree of manoeuvrability vis--vis the subcontractors. Payment delays, re-duction in payment due to minor faults are all frequent complaints of the sub-contractors and job workers against the direct exporters. Subcontracting of pro-duction helps the bigger fi rms to pass on the shocks to smaller fi rms at the lower end of the hierarchy. The impact of price-cutting is felt more by subcontractors and job workers.

A telling example is how debiting has been used by direct contractors to exploit their own kinsmen who are sub-contractors. A single order obtained by the direct exporter is split into smaller orders and contracted out to different subcontractors. Let us assume that one lot of the entire order has not met the quality requirements of the importer and the corresponding amount is deducted from the amount due to the direct ex-porter. Subcontractors felt that instead of passing on the loss to the specifi c subcontractor, the direct exporter would deduct from payments due to all of them. In the absence of any direct contact with the importers, the subcontractors have no avenue to know the extent and nature of rejection. Power and information asymmetry due to intra-caste differences in endowments between the Gounder exporters and Gounder subcontractors enables the exporters to mobilise caste to accumulate at the latters expense.

In fact, as a response to such exploita-tion of the subcontractors, an associa-tion of subcontractor manufacturers called the Tiruppur Export Knitwear Manufacturers Association (TEKMA) was formed in the late 1990s to collectively

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negotiate with direct exporters on these issues and to curtail unhealthy competi-tion among subcontractors that had led to intense price wars. However, this association was not quite effective as subcontractors were worried about loss of orders from the parent fi rms. To an individual fi rm, establishment of a stable patron-client relationship with a direct exporter is strategically more advanta-geous than collaborating with fellow subcontractors to bargain with the direct exporters. The nature of intra-caste rela-tions that we have mapped here is clearly different from the one based on horizontal solidarity and cooperation within caste. Big Gounder capital draws upon internal caste differentiation to accumulate under uncertain conditions of global production. Importantly, kinship networks also exclude segments of capital that fall out-side these networks.

Failed Dalit Entrepreneurship

The exclusivity of such social networks is best exemplifi ed by the experience of the state government initiated Tamil Nadu Adi Dravidar Housing and Deve-lopment Corporation (TAHDCO) knitwear industrial estate at Mudalipalayam on the outskirts of Tiruppur. Meant to improve the socio-economic status of dalits in the state, the TAHDCO promoted, for the fi rst time in the country, an industrial estate exclusively for dalit entrepreneurs on 100 acres along with the Tamil Nadu In-dustrial Investment Corporation (TIIC), with the state government providing a 15% capital investment subsidy and a 5% share in capital contribution. Given the lower technological and capital require-ments of the garment sector and the sub-stantial growth in demand for knitted clothing from the Tiruppur region in the global market, it was anticipated that the fi rst generation dalit entrepreneurs would be able to plug themselves into circuits of global production once the initial start-up costs are subsidised.

However, even in the initial phase, there were no takers for close to 50% of the 100 sheds. Among the remaining 50-odd fi rms that were started all fi rms except fi ve or six suffered losses and soon stopped functioning. Apart from some changes in government policy

that disadvantaged them,9 a major issue reported by the entrepreneurs was lack of access to markets despite having ac-cess to high quality imported machinery for knitting and embroidery. Orders have to be invariably sourced through so-cial networks, which are mostly control-led by the Gounders. Despite the fact that many of them had tertiary educa-tion and were ex-employees of the public sector, they could not enter these net-works. Entrepreneurs are able to enter into such networks either through kin-ship ties or through having worked with other entrepreneurs over a period. In the absence of either kinship or other so-cial ties, dalit entrepreneurs found it ex-tremely diffi cult to run the machines at optimal capacity. Caste-based networks thus once again enable some sections to gain even as they exclude by generating strong entry barriers. In other words, while the social capital argument looks at caste in discrete terms, we have point-ed out that caste indeed is relational one caste creating entry barriers to other castes.10

Following this failure, in 2007, the government helped the sick enterprises to come together to fl oat a new company, the Tiruppur Apparel Park India, that would take care of marketing issues. While there was a revival in the fortunes of some of the units through this effort,11 marketing efforts could not be sustained. Outside the TAHDCO estate, a few dalit workers have tried to become entre-preneurs by taking up job work for exporters and tier-one contractors. They purchased second-hand stitching machines by pooling in some money and under-took only stitching operations for a few fi rms during peak season. Being a labour intensive operation, they started on the presumption that their capital require-ments would be minimal. However, what they had not bargained for was the need for working capital to meet the weekly wage bill of the workers and the possi-bility of delayed payments by the out-sourcing fi rms. Their ability to rely on credit was severely undermined by their lack of collateral. Gounder entrepre-neurs by virtue of their access to land could address this demand much more easily than the dalits. While some of

the dalit entrepreneurs have gone back to work as tailors in the export factories, a few of them continue to survive as labour contractors, bringing in teams of workers to different factories as and when demand arises. Caste, by setting the initial conditions of distribution of endowments like land and education, reinforces and enhances hierarchies within a purportedly democratic socio-industrial formation.12

Exclusive and Differentiated Social Capital

Though identities based on caste, ethni city or religion do contribute to reduction in transaction costs, such identity-based networks also exclude those who do not have initial resources or belong to these networks. Such identities may ensure effi ciency in the market, but an indus-trialisation process that reinforces such social divisions may only exaggerate exist-ing inequalities. When an industrial ag-glomeration l ike Tiruppur bases its competitiveness on such networks, it re-inforces other identity-based inequalities. Developmental strategies based on use of existing caste relations as social capital clearly reinforce multiple inequalities.

Application of social capital analysis to caste has, in general, taken two forms. One assumes caste itself as social capital; and others claim how different caste groups achieve by means of certain social networks and voluntary clubs. Neither recognises the fact that caste is a hierarchical system, but assumes castes to be discrete and horizontal. If castes are seen as relational to each other, then inclusion of some groups would mean the exclusion of others. The process of either inclusion or exclusion thus becomes systemic and structural. Even within the social capital framework, caste clearly lacks both linking and bridging capital. Second, across differ-ent castes, one needs to ask how much of social capital is pre-given and how much is accumulated over time. This is important since the initial endowment of social capital might decide future accumulation of the same. Further, accumulated social networks of all caste groups need not deliver equal or similar outcomes.13

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Notes

1 The Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM) is the economic wing of the Hindu Right.

2 S Gurumurthy (2009), Is Caste an Economic Development Vehicle?, The Hindu, 19 January, accessed at http://www.hindu.com/ 2009/01/ 19/stories/2009011955440900.htm, on 31 Au-gust 2013.

3 Swaminathan A Aiyar (2000), Harness the Caste System, The Times of India, 4 June, http://swaminomics.org/harness-the-caste-system/, accessed at 31 August 2013.

4 Indias Strength Is Its Industrial Clusters, inter-view with S Gurumurthi, convenor of Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, 8 April 2003, on rediff.com, http://www.rediff.com/money/2003/apr/08 inter.htm

5 For a discussion on this, see Ben Fine (2007). 6 http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTER-

NAL/TOPICS/EXTSOCIALDEVELOPMENT/EXTTSOCIALCAPITAL/0,,contentMDK:20185164~menuPK:418217~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:401015,00.html, accessed at 15 April 2013.

7 This discussion is primarily drawn from Harriss (2001) and Fine (2010).

8 The elaboration of entrepreneurship formation in the knitwear industry and the subsequent discussion on differentiated nature of capital and power within entrepreneurial networks is drawn from Vijayabaskar (2001); Raman Mahadevan and Vijayabaskar (2012).

9 http://www.hindu.com/2005/02/19/stories/ 2005021908130500.htm, accessed at 15 April 2013.

10 This is brilliantly captured by B R Ambedkar in his essay The Annihilation of Caste wherein he characterises caste as a system of graded inequalities.

11 http://www.hindu.com/2007/07/23/stories/ 2007072359791000.htm, accessed at 15 April 2013.

12 In this regard, Rammanohar Lohias understand-ing of caste as a form of insurance is hugely

insightful. As Arun Patnaik (2009) notes, To cite Lohia: Caste is presumably the worlds largest insurance for which one does not pay a formal or regular premium. Solidarity is always there, when everything else fails. But Lohia does not fail to notice that caste-based security for which we may not have to pay any premium for insurance protection is also excluding men of other castes who are reduced to be in pe-riphery of such social security system.

13 This argument is applicable in the context of other inferiorised identities as well. According to Rodney Hero (2007), social capital is a white mans story and he finds that racial diversity is a far more powerful explanatory factor for dif-ferential outcomes than social capital.

References

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Cawthorne, P (1995): Of Networks and Markets: The Rise of a South Indian Town: The Example of Tiruppurs Cotton Knitwear Industry, World Development, Vol 23, No 1, pp 43-56.

Chari, Sharad (2004): Fraternal Capital: Peasant-Workers, Self-Made Men, and Globalization in Provincial India (Stanford: Stanford University Press).

Coleman, James (1988): Social Capital and the Creation of Human Capital, American Journal of Sociology, Vol 94, Supplement: Organizations and Institutions: Sociological and Economic Approaches to the Analysis of Social Structure, pp S95-S120.

Damodaran, Harish (2008): Indias New Capitalists: Caste, Business and Industry in a Modern Nation (New Delhi: Palgrave Macmillan).

Das, Gurcharan (2002): India Unbound From Inde-pendence to the Global Transformation Age (New Delhi: Penguin Books).

Fine, Ben (2007): Social Capital, Development in Practice, Vol 17, Nos 4/5, pp 566-74.

(2010): Theories of Social Capital: Researchers Behaving Badly (London : Pluto Press).

Harriss, John (2001): De-Politicising Development: The World Bank and Social Capital (New Delhi: LeftWord).

Hero, Rodney (2007): Racial Diversity and Social Capital: Equality and Community in America (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge Univer-sity Press).

Mahadevan, Raman and M Vijayabaskar (2012): The Making of Non-Corporate Capital: Some Historical and Entrepreneurial Narratives from Tiruppur, Tamil Nadu, paper presented at the workshop on Rethinking Economic History: Circulation Exchange and Enterprise in India, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, 14-15 March.

Patnaik, Arun Kumar (2009): Lohias Immanent Critique of Caste, unpublished paper presented in the Lohia Centenary Seminar, Social Science Forum, Vijayawada, 26 July.

Putnam, Robert (1994): Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press).

(2000): Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster).

Swaminathan, Padmini and Jeyaranjan J (1994): The Knitwear Cluster in Tiruppur: An Indian Industrial District in the Making?, Working Paper No 126, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Madras.

Vaidyanathan, R (2012): India Growth: The Un-told Story Caste as Social Capital, India Behind the Lens (IBTL), 19 October, http://prof-vaidy-anathan.com/2012/10/18/india-growth-the-untold-story-caste-as-social-capital/, accessed at 15 April 2013.

Vijayabaskar (2001): Industrial Formation under Conditions of Flexible Accumulation: The Case of a Global Knitwear Node in Southern India, unpublished PhD dissertation, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram.

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