the chimera of dalit capitalism2 - the hindu
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The Hindu
Opinion » Op-Ed
Published: July 18, 2013 01:41 IST | Updated: July 19, 2013 01:43 IST
The chimera of Dalit capitalism
Nissim Mannathukkaren
VENTURING OUT: It is shocking that Dalit liberation seeks to join hands with capitalism at a juncture when it is at its carnivorousworst. The picture is of Milind Kamble, chairman, DICCI (centre) and others at an entrepreneurship meet in Hyderabad.
The recent launch of the first Dalit venture fund occasions an examination of the moral and ethical emptiness of capitalism
History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics
B.R. Ambedkar
If only Milind Kamble, founder of the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DICCI) and Chandra BhanPrasad, Dalit thinker, columnist and DICCI mentor, had imbibed the wisdom of Manning Marable’s HowCapitalism Underdeveloped Black America, a classic work in African-American studies, they would not have beensuch virtuoso performers of the ballad of Dalit capitalism (which claims Black capitalism among its inspirations).And this ballad is increasingly getting mainstream attention as evidenced by the interview of the duo in a famoustalk show after the recent launch of the first Dalit venture capital fund.
The fundamental argument made by them is that it is time for Dalits to change their image of being perpetualvictims (always in need of state support through reservations and doles) to that of being in charge of their owndestiny — to put it pithily, “Dalits are not only takers, they are givers.” And what better way to achieve this thanDalits becoming capitalists themselves, and welcoming with open arms, economic reforms and globalisation: “wesee that there is an economic process, that capitalism is changing caste much faster than any human being.Therefore, in capitalism versus caste, there is a battle going on and Dalits should look at capitalism as a crusaderagainst caste.”
In the U.S.
It is, of course, understandable that an oppressed people would look to any and every avenue that would helpoverthrow the shackles of oppression. In that sense, the limited use of the market in dissolving some of themillennia-old feudal and caste hierarchies has to be acknowledged. But to move from that to romanticising therelationship between capitalism and caste is completely different, especially when it is done in an anodyne andvacuous manner as Prasad does: “along with globalisation came Adam Smith to challenge Manu. So that’s why forthe first time, money has become bigger than caste... bigger than Marx, bigger than everybody because in thismarketplace, only your ability is respected.” And “Montek [Singh Ahluwalia] is a friend of Adam Smith and AdamSmith is an enemy of Manu, so therefore, Montek is our friend.
If indeed the market is a level playing field, one wonders why is it that after centuries of glorious capitalist growthand decades of Black capitalism in the headquarters of world capitalism, African-Americans languish at the bottomof socio-economic indicators. In 2011, the poverty rate among blacks was 28.1 per cent, almost three times the ratefor non-Hispanic whites. In the prison capital of the world, African-Americans are incarcerated at almost six timesthe rate of non-Hispanic whites, thus constituting almost a million out of a total prison population of 2.3 million! Somuch for a market place that respects one’s ability. If capitalism is so democratic and benign, why is it that itsbiggest crisis since the Great Depression — the financial crisis in 2008 — had a particularly devastating effect on theAfrican-American population?
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The Pew Research Center analysis shows that the median wealth of white households was a staggering 20 times thatof black households in 2009. This was the largest gap in 25 years and almost twice the ratio before the crisis.
Despite the optimism that people like Prasad and Kamble exude about Dalits becoming equal participants in ademocratic capitalism, there are other Dalit and non-Dalit scholars who have demonstrated the immense barriersfor Dalit entrepreneurs within the so-called capitalist market, and the ugly casteism that marks corporate India.
But my concern is not about the inability of Dalits to become capitalists within a structure marked by gargantuaneconomic and social inequalities, but about the moral and ethical emptiness of capitalism as a liberatory mechanismfor an oppressed people. When Chandra Bhan Prasad speaks in glowing terms about the four Mercedes Benz carsthat Rajesh Saraiya, the richest Dalit businessman, worth about $400 million and based in Ukraine, owns, he doesnot ponder about the gross inequalities that characterise the global capitalist system which bestows such bountieson a minuscule number at the expense of the vast majority who inevitably pay the price.
The flaw
The fundamental flaw in the argument for Dalit capitalism is that it merely seeks to find an equal space for Dalitswithin what is inherently an exploitative system: thus the hitherto exploited sections of the people will now play therole of exploiters. In sum, Dalit capitalism, while it seeks to dismantle age-old hierarchies and discriminations, ishardly bothered about the new oppressions perpetrated by capitalism.
What is particularly shocking is that Dalit liberation seeks to join hands with capitalism at a juncture when it is atits carnivorous worst. The Golden Age of capitalism and industrialisation has given way to “casino capitalism,”driven by financial speculation and what Marx calls as “fictitious capital.” The greatest example of this is the crisis of2008. In a desperate bid to sustain its profit margins, capitalism resorts to, in the words of distinguished professorof anthropology and geography David Harvey’s words, “accumulation by dispossession” — privatisation of publicproperty, forcible expulsion of peasant and indigenous populations from their lands, unbridled exploitation ofnatural resources and so on.
Rather than grapple with the question of a comprehensive transformation of political, economic and culturalrelations towards equality in society, Dalit capitalism ingratiates itself with the present exploitative order. There areno radical questions asked, like that of reparations for slavery in America (the Harper’s Magazine estimated thevalue of reparations to be over $100 trillion for forced labour from 1619 to 1865). Instead, Dalit capitalism becomesthe new darling of mainstream media simply because it refuses to question the commonsense of market as thesaviour. As a prominent columnist gushed about the Dalit venture capital fund: “This is a vision of shared equalityamong castes, not of trickle down. It is a vision of Dalit entrepreneurs taking their place at the top of the pyramidand offering to share their profits with investors from all castes that historically dominated them.”
Ultimately, what is most disturbing is that Dalit capitalism is mainly inspired by the “economic thought of Dr.Babasaheb Ambedkar”! The great man would definitely turn in his grave when he sees his followers seeking theliberation of his people through capitalism when global multinational capital is pillaging the Aymara people of LatinAmerica for oil and minerals, and the Ethiopian peasants for land. In an interlinked world, the former’s destiny isirrevocably tied to the latter.
(Dr. Nissim Mannathukkaren is with Dalhousie University, Canada, and author of The Rupture with Memory:Derrida and the Specters That Haunt Marxism. E-mail: [email protected])
Keywords: Dalit liberation, Dalit capitalism, Capitalism, economic reforms, globalisation
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