DALIT AND ADIVASI PARTICIPATION IN INDIA’S BUSINESS ECONOMY * Barbara Harriss-White with Kaushal Vidyarthee and Anita Dixit ** Economic research on Dalits and Adivasis has focused on the roles of Dalits in the wage labour force, and the transformations of common property, shifting cultivation, and debt relations among the Adivasis (Baviskar, 2005; Toppo and Kumar, 2012). However, a significant index of the effects of the domestic and international opening of the Indian economy is the extent to which Dalits and Adivasis are incorporated into India’s capitalist economy, not only as more or less free wage labour but also by establishing themselves in business. Over half of India’s workforce is self-employed or owns businesses. Most of the businesses are small, run by a family labour force, employing wage workers if and when they grow.These accumulation trajectories also have implications for the spatial arrangement of the economy. Liberalisation, if it frees up domestic factors of production, should produce spatial re-location by displacing planned sites with market-allocated ones; it should move economies mapped to some extent through planning towards convergence through response to competitive price signals. Not just firms but also regions with lower capital–labour ratios and higher marginal productivities of capital should offer higher rates of return and attract investment so that regional diversities and spatial inequalities could be reduced. 1 Territorial regions will become redundant concepts—already reflected in the curricula of geography. 2 * This is a slightly revised version of Essay 3 in Dalits and Adivasis in India’s Business Economy: Three Essays and An Atlas (2014). Three Essays Press, New Delhi, re-published with the permission of the publisher, Asad Zaidi <[email protected]> ** Senior Research Fellow and Emeritus Professor, Area Studies, Oxford University, Email: Barbara. [email protected]); AD: Specialist Analyst, Knowledge Resource Centre, Azim Premji Foundation, Bangalore, Email: [email protected]); D. Phil Candidate, Social Policy, Oxford University, Email: [email protected], respectively. 1 For the case, see Bhagwati (1993); for regional inequalities, see Meher (1999). 2 Spatially mapped data is also dismissed as being reflective of dominant authority relations through which it was collected and arranged in particular scalar categories—here states and districts. However, in this case, though the data have been long collected, they have not been mapped before and are a good reflection of the marginalisation not just of Dalits and Adivasis but also of spatial sensibility.
Transcript
76 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL INCLUSION STUDIES
DALIT AND ADIVASI PARTICIPATION IN INDIA’S BUSINESS ECONOMY*
Barbara Harriss-White with Kaushal Vidyarthee and Anita Dixit**
Economic research on Dalits and Adivasis has focused on the roles of Dalits in the wage labour force, and the transformations of common property, shifting cultivation, and debt relations among the Adivasis (Baviskar, 2005; Toppo and Kumar, 2012). However, a significant index of the effects of the domestic and international opening of the Indian economy is the extent to which Dalits and Adivasis are incorporated into India’s capitalist economy, not only as more or less free wage labour but also by establishing themselves in business. Over half of India’s workforce is self-employed or owns businesses. Most of the businesses are small, run by a family labour force, employing wage workers if and when they grow.These accumulation trajectories also have implications for the spatial arrangement of the economy. Liberalisation, if it frees up domestic factors of production, should produce spatial re-location by displacing planned sites with market-allocated ones; it should move economies mapped to some extent through planning towards convergence through response to competitive price signals. Not just firms but also regions with lower capital–labour ratios and higher marginal productivities of capital should offer higher rates of return and attract investment so that regional diversities and spatial inequalities could be reduced.1 Territorial regions will become redundant concepts—already reflected in the curricula of geography.2
* This is a slightly revised version of Essay 3 in Dalits and Adivasis in India’s Business Economy: Three Essays and An Atlas (2014). Three Essays Press, New Delhi, re-published with the permission of the publisher, Asad Zaidi <[email protected]>
** Senior Research Fellow and Emeritus Professor, Area Studies, Oxford University, Email: [email protected]); AD: Specialist Analyst, Knowledge Resource Centre, Azim Premji Foundation, Bangalore, Email: [email protected]); D. Phil Candidate, Social Policy, Oxford University, Email: [email protected], respectively.
1 For the case, see Bhagwati (1993); for regional inequalities, see Meher (1999).
2 Spatially mapped data is also dismissed as being reflective of dominant authority relations through which it was collected and arranged in particular scalar categories—here states and districts. However, in this case, though the data have been long collected, they have not been mapped before and are a good reflection of the marginalisation not just of Dalits and Adivasis but also of spatial sensibility.
DALIT AND ADIVASI PARTICIPATION IN INDIA’S BUSINESS ECONOMY 77
To what extent do the dissolving of regions, the mass entry of Scheduled Castes (SCs)/Scheduled Tribes (STs) into the capitalist class and tendencies towards the convergence of pathways of economic development actually happen? What is the impact of liberalisation on the Dalits and Adivasis at the base of the economy?
In this essay, we examine the trajectories of incorporation of both Dalits and Adivasis into the business economy not as labourers but as owners of firms.3 Using data from the Economic Censuses on private enterprise,4 we explore the hypothesis that unevenness in the economic opportunities of Dalits and Adivasis would be reduced by the modernising and emancipating forces released by liberalisation. We use the Economic Census on private enterprises for the period 1990 to 2005 (Harriss-White and Vidyarthee, 2010), and focus on four dimensions of changes in the ownership of private enterprises of Dalits and Adivasis: first, across scales—variation between macro-regions, states and districts; second, variations across different sectors of the agricultural and the non-farm economy; third, differences in the trajectories of incorporation of regions and sectors over time; and fourth, differences between the Dalits and Adivasis, with the latter intensifying over time, Adivasis positively, but Dalits sometimes negatively. The changes occurring during the period of liberalisation have been analysed for the 15- year period between 1990 and 2005. The Economic Census of private enterprise that is conducted at regular intervals has been used for the purpose.
1. GENERAL TRENDS OVER 1990-2005
1.1 The Spatial Distribution of the Dalit/SC and Adivasi/ST Population
While aggregated analyses of the condition of Dalits and Adivasis tend to merge caste with ethnicity, categorical analyses use the bland official categories—SCs and STs—along with the ‘backward castes’ and other politicised caste groupings. They may then be stylised into formal economic models (Akerlof, 1976; Banerjee and Knight, 1985; Scoville, 1996). These quantitative analyses generally strip caste relations of their complexity, dynamism and violence; and the evidence and methods we deploy here are no exception.
The proportion of SCs to the total population (Appendix I) is greatest in the North and South-east and lowest in the far West and a belt across the Centre, in the North-east and the state of Kerala in the south. The growth rates of SCs are fastest where they are least densely distributed. The presence of SCs as agricultural cultivators tends to be most visible in the North, as agricultural labourers—conversely—in the South, as forestry workers in the South-west and in services in the North-east. Their distribution as small-scale operators in the non-farm economy is widely scattered. While SCs have entered the sectors of mining, quarrying and construction, they are most consistently prevented from entering the sectors of transport, food, hospitality, finance, trade and services, the latter of which are driving Indian growth.
3 For many scholars, especially labour economists and lawyers, small self-employed firms constitute a form of labour (Iyer, et al., 2013), but see Harriss-White (2012) for a critique. We will distinguish ownership of firms from labour in this essay.
4 Collected and published by Central Statistical Organisation (CSO), Government of India.
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In contrast, the population of the STs is maximised in a ‘dumb-bell’ shaped region in the Centre—there are 20 million in the state of Maharashtra alone—and the North-east, and minimised in the North (Punjab and Haryana have none) and the South. Their growth rates are fastest in South and Central India. As a crude generalisation, forestry is the dominant ST occupation in the West; agricultural production and labouring in the Centre, and artisanship in the non-farm economy in the East. As small-scale operators of firms, their distribution is maximised in absolute terms where their population is maximised (in Central, East and North-east India), but it is maximised in relative terms where their population distribution is very thin on the ground—in the belt running from Himachal Pradesh (HP) through to Bihar, in the West coastal regions and in the far South (de Golbery and Chappuis, 1997, pp. 321-32; Chapman and Pathak, 1997). It may be pointed out that STs started with a relative disadvantage in all sectors of the non-agricultural economy. From a low base, however, they have been able, with the help of improvements in literacy, to move into most sectors, but, as we will see, at the lower end.
1.2 The Proliferation of Firms
During the first 15 years of the reform period, that is, 1990-2005, the absolute number of private enterprises in India increased by leaps and bounds, that is, by more than two-thirds (from 22 million to 38 millions, (see Figure 1).5 The first decade of the reforms saw significant shifts in private enterprises from rural to urban sites6 and the growth in urban firms was significantly faster than that in rural firms. Regional equity in the distribution of total firms has deteriorated while that of urban private firms has improved.7
Source: Government of India, Economic Census, 1990, 1998, and 2005.
5 While during 1990-98, it increased by a quarter (that is, from 22 million to 28 million), during the subsequent seven years, that is, 1998-2005, it increased by more than a third (that is, 28 million to 38 million).
6 Statistically significant at the 0.1 level.
7 This conclusion is from an analysis of state level standard deviations—the trend towards deepening regional inequality was not statistically significant by 1998.
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The proportion of all private enterprises owned by Dalits and Adivasis remained stable at 13-14 per cent. However, this stability disguises dramatically different trajectories, for while during 1990-98, the proportion of enterprises owned by Adivasis increased by 49 per cent, those owned by Dalits actually declined by 15 per cent. Meanwhile, between 1998 and 2005, while the proportion owned by Adivasis decreased by 7 per cent, and that owned by Dalits increased by 17 per cent, the proportion recovered to just below 1990 levels (Table 1).
Table 1: Dalit Enterprises, 1990-2005
Total No. ofPrivate
Enterprises1 (m)
% STPopulation
% STFirms
% SCPopulation
% SCFirms
19902 (-1) 22.14 8.08 2.92 16.33 9.85
1998 (-01) 27.71 8.20 4.35 16.20 8.42
2005 37.58 8.26 4.05 16.14 9.82
Sources: Censuses and Economic Census data.
1.3 The Changing Sectoral Structure of Firms during Early Liberalisation
In the most important sector—approximately some 38 per cent in both 1990 and 1998—livelihoods are carved out in wholesale and retail trade. Hotels and restaurants accounted for just 4 per cent of all firms. Together, by the turn of the century, trade and services accounted for 56 per cent of the GDP but 67 per cent of all enterprises. As with trade pure and simple, it is not well appreciated how important the livestock production and trading sector is to the structure of India’s non-farm enterprises is not well appreciated. It rose from 8 to 10 per cent of all firms from 1990 to 1998. These are the sectors of the Indian economy that are the easiest to enter.8 It is not just services that are driving the growth of firms and transforming India’s economy,9 but it is trade as well. Manufacturing firms accounted for 23-20 per cent of the total number of firms (while accounting for about 22 per cent of the GDP—roughly commensurate with their share of enterprises [Government of India, 2007]).They declined over the period (or perhaps retreated into the deepest recesses of the informal economy, avoiding the Economic Census altogether).
8 A point also made in Iyer, et al. (2013).
9 Indeed services in the spheres of health, education and community, and personal services declined relatively from 19 to 8 per cent in the 1990s.
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Table 2: The Distribution across Sectors of Private Enterprises in India
1990 1998 2005
Sectors Total Private
Enterprise
% Total Private
Enterprise
% Total Private
Enterprise
%
1. Agricultural and allied
22,43,042 10.13 34,38,010 12.41 58,87,783 15.66
2. Mining and quarrying 47,143 0.21 34,072 0.12 80,179 0.21
Total 2,21,40,833 100 2,77,17,190 100 3,75,88,151 100
Sources: Economic Census, 1990, 1998 and 2005.
The sectoral trends for Dalits and Adivasis have been both uneven and strikingly different. In rural areas SCs lost ground as owners of firms both in absolute terms10 and much more markedly in relative terms—as a percentage of all owners, and STs seem to have ‘substituted’ for SCs. In urban areas, during the first decade of liberalisation, SCs increased their share of firms a little, but STs increased their own ownership of firms by a massive factor of 300 per cent. Overall in the urban sector, the proportion of general caste business owners declined because STs gained. Interstate inequalities in the incidence of urban ST ownership of firms also increased. This is a massive and hitherto unrecorded process and the details of the social processes of this uneven incorporation remain unknown. However, SCs and STs are entering the ‘business economy’ in different ways and should not be lumped together, as is so often done in statistical analyses.
1.4 Changes in the Size, Distribution and Growth of Individual Businesses
While enabling new firms to enter the economy, liberalisation should also release constraints on the growth of firms. Throughout the early phase of liberalisation, during
10 Though the trend was not statistically significant.
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the period 1990- 2005, the only element in the aggregate size structure of private firms that shifted was the group of largest firms employing more than ten wage workers. This more than doubled in proportion from 1.5 per cent to 3 per cent (see Table 3).
Table 3: The Distribution of Enterprises by Size Class of Employment and Enterprise Type
Employment Size 1990 1998 2005
1-5 93.41% 94.00% 95.07%
6-9 3.46% 3.30% 3.42%
10 and above 3.13% 2.80% 1.51%
Enterprise Type
Own account enterprises 70.73 % 70.43% 64.41%
Enterprises with hired workers 29.27% 29.57% 35.59%
Sources: Economic Census, 1990, 1998, and 2005.
All other elements of the distribution remained more or less stable. During the 1990s, own account enterprises persisted stubbornly at around 75 per cent of all firms. By 2005, while non-SC and, extraordinarily, ST own account firms had shrunk to 57 per cent of the total, the proportion of SC firms remained high at 65 per cent. Indeed from 1990 to 2005, the average size of the wage labour force declined from 3 per firm to 2.4 (Government of India, 2008; Harriss-White and Vidyarthee, 2010).
Scheduled Castes (SCs):Table 4 shows that in the twenty-first century, SC firms are packed into the informal
economy: deploying family labour, even smaller and more disadvantaged in terms of access to bank finance than STs.
Table 4: SC and ST Disadvantage, 2005 Caste Status
Size (Labour)
% Operating with Only Family Labour
% Unregistered
% with Access to Institutional Credit
SCs 1.7 77 7 2.6
STs 1.9 77 77 3.6
Non-SC/ST 2.1 68 77 3.0
Source: Data from the Economic Census in Iyer, et al., 2013.
The current era of liberalisation has actually unleashed a mighty torrent of tiny firms. These firms are poor and often unable to accumulate. Thorat reports:
“In 2009-10, of the total rural Scheduled Caste self-employed households, about 24 per cent were poor, the ratio being 15 per cent for higher castes. The ratio of poor for urban Scheduled Caste self-employed households was 35, as against 20 per cent for higher castes. … (A)mong the Scheduled Tribes (it) was more than 30 per cent.” (2011).
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There are signs that SCs are on slow expansion paths. It seems that the SC ownership of single-person firms declined slightly and was compensated for by an expansion of small SC firms employing less than six workers. The largest firms hiring over six workers also recorded a significant growth in the numbers of SC owners. Although small-scale production in self-employment (‘own-account enterprise’) persisted in dominating the structure of ownership of SC firms in terms of sheer numbers, it was on the decline in terms of its share.
However, the fact that the share of general caste (GC) ownership of firms in urban areas declined during the first decade of liberalisation hides an important detail—that GC ownership has become more concentrated in larger firms employing more than six workers. Thus, while the proportion of GCs among business owners has declined, (seemingly making way for SC business owners), GC employers of labour are now more concentrated in the largest sizes of firm. The main ‘inroad’ made by SCs into the structure of India’s business economy is limited to small firms employing fewer than six workers.
The sectoral trends for Dalits are remarkable, if diverse and uneven. From 1990 to 1998, while SC participation as owners in the agricultural and allied sectors, and in the manufacturing, and mining and quarrying sectors declined (in absolute number of enterprises, by 3.8 per cent, 63.6 per cent, and 16 per cent, respectively), and their participation in services grew by only 24 per cent, and in wholesale and retail trades, hotels and restaurants, it increased by 47.2 per cent. During the later period of 1998-2005, the absolute number of SC firms rose in most sectors but it fell by 33 per cent in the sectors of health, education, community and personal services, which must include sanitary work. The sectoral unevenness of the participation of SCs has increased rather than declined during the first fifteen years of the reforms.
Scheduled Tribes (STs):
While there was no change in the size concentration of rural ST firms, urban areas saw not only a rise in numbers but, as with SCs, also a rise in the relative importance of labouring–hiring firms with fewer than six employees.11 The distribution of these small capitalist firms also became more unequal between states.
In sectoral terms, STs achieved strong increases in their roles in the primary/extractive and secondary/manufacturing industries (by 66% and 54% respectively) but a remarkable rise of 125% in services.12
In sum, it is clear that sectoral unevenness in the number of firms increased rather than declined during the 1990s; and that the process of entry into the market assumed different forms for STs and SCs. Thus our hypothesis—that unevenness in the economic incorporation of Dalits and Adivasis would be reduced by liberalisation—is not supported.
11 Non-directory enterprises or ‘NDEs’.
12 Harriss-White and Vidyarthee (2010). See Appendix 1 there for the sectoral composition of these gross—but conventional—aggregations.
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1.5 Mapping Incorporation: Evidence and Method
We have used the population censuses which provide data for Dalits and Adivasis, SCs and STs, and the total populations by each Indian state for the years 1991 and 2001, and the economic censuses, which provide state-wise data on the number of private, overwhelmingly ‘own account’, enterprises (OAEs), owned and operated by Dalits, Adivasis and other castes for ten sectors of the economy for the year 1990, and for 14 sectors for the years 1998 and 2005. ‘Enterprises’ in this context are economic undertakings ‘not for the sole purpose of own consumption’.13 There are no disaggregated data for the participation of self-employed SCs in sanitary services, refuse collection, and re-cycling, among others. While other kinds of services are disaggregated in the Economic Census, this category of work is taboo in the official presentation of its systems of aggregation of occupations, which is testimony to the Indian State’s enduring lack of interest in them. On an aggregate, the 2005 data show that in 80 per cent of India’s districts, the proportion of firms operated by SCs and STs is less than their district population share (Iyer, et al., 2013, p. 55).
With due caution these data may be used to produce indices of participation (PI):
SC or ST enterprises (SCE) in sector i, state x/total enterprises in sector i, in state x / SC or ST Population (SCP) in state x / total population in state x
∑∑ x
x
ix
ix
PSCP
ESCE
A value of 1.0 represents the absence of bias or a state of parity: that is, the proportion of Dalit enterprises equals the proportion of Dalits in the state. A rank of <1 denotes disproportionately low participation or ‘negative discrimination’ in the business economy, and >1 disproportionately high participation or ‘positive discrimination’.
These indices have been mapped by using the Geographical Information System (GIS) to produce the atlas of discrimination in the participation of Dalits and Adivasis as owners of capital in the Indian business economy between 1990 and 2005 (Harriss-White, et al., 2014). The following discussion draws on the 78 maps comprising the atlas, (three
13 It should be noted that there are three difficulties with these data—first, matching business data for 1990, 1998 and 2005 with demographic data for 1991 and 2001; second, difficulties for aggregation of the changes in sectoral classifications over the ‘short decade’ of 1990-98; and third, the territories of states (which were also re-classified over this period), which produce distortions to India’s agro-ecological regions. In 1990, the sectors are livestock; agriculture and forestry; mining; manufacturing; utilities (electricity, gas and water); construction; trade, hotels and restaurants; transport, storage and communications; finance and real estate; and health, education community and personal services. In 1998 and 2005, they are livestock; agricultural services; mining; manufacturing; utilities; construction; wholesale trade; retail trade; restaurants and hotels; transport; storage; communication; finance and real estate; and community social and personal services.
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maps for each of the 13 economic sectors for the years 1990, 1998 and 2005, separately for SCs and STs, supplemented by others for population and enterprises. See Appendix I for details of the populations, Appendix II for details of the sectors, and Appendices III and IV for details of the indices). The atlas enables us to comment on both the time trends and the spatiality of economic and social incorporation and exclusion, as also on their implications for the uneven regional effort that would be needed for the Government of India’s socially inclusive development.
In the rest of this essay, we examine unevenness in the incorporation of Dalits and Adivasis by sector, and the State, using the PI measures before turning the lens around and describing some economic and social characteristics of the macro-regions of incorporation above the level of the State, and then of contiguous regions not defined by state boundaries but revealed by district level data.
In the final part of this essay we initiate the process of explaining these discoveries.
By the concept of ‘region’, we understand physical territories with dense weightings of definable attributes but with boundaries which are not always neat or fixed. They will be a product of official categories: data-containers which mask variations within them. At this stage, it is impossible to know the local spatial distribution of ‘real’ phenomena—it is the form they take at the district and state level of aggregation that can be recognised. The regions we discover would also be the product of the intervals used to map the characteristics. Our explanations cannot avoid the constraints of official categories and of the power relations, routines and scaled information requirements of official agencies—they cannot avoid being data-driven. As Fouillet has explained (2009; p. 199, Footnote 198), the scale at which phenomena are mapped affects tools, methods and evidence used for explanation, the limits of generalisation possible as well as the appearance of homogeneity. While multi-scalar reasoning is essential for explanation, multi-level explanations may be at odds with one another. The factors deemed irrelevant for an all-India policy may, in fact, prove to be highly relevant at other, local scales.14
2. POPULATION AND ENTERPRISE DISTRIBUTIONS
Strong regional patterns emerge. Recall that SCs and STs are distributed differently across India’s states. In terms of people, the proportion of SCs to the total population is greatest in the North and South-east and the least in the far West, the North-east and the state of Kerala in the South. In contrast, the proportion of STs is maximised in the centre and the North-east and minimised in the North and South.
14 Fouillet (2009); Vidyarthee (Forthcoming); have made this point by using spatial econometrics. In Fouillet’s case—that of the spatial relations and regionalisation of microfinance—the multivariate state-level explanation included poverty levels, unemployment, agricultural production and productivity and the number of banks; within-state variables included literacy, the number of NGOs, the siting of IFAD-planned projects, and the degree of coverage of social programmes; at the micro level, explanations for the density of microfinance uptake involved local caste relations of banking, gender relations and levels of out-migration (Fouillet, 2009).
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The proportion of Dalit enterprises takes a somewhat different spatial expression from enterprises, in general. While SC enterprises are proportionally most abundant in the North-east with extreme PI values of over 10, ST enterprises match the distribution of population, but to a far lower extent.
While between 1991 and 2001, there was no change in the demographic regions, the maps of the participation index (PI) for all private enterprises show that during the period 1990-98, ‘negative discrimination’ against SCs spread throughout the South and intensified in a belt from Rajasthan and Gujarat, through Uttar Pradesh (UP) to Bihar and Chhattisgarh. Between 1998 and 2005, while the relative participation of SCs recovered in most of the southern states and UP, it decreased in Orissa; and remained unchanged in the rest of India.
The opposite happened for STs: during the period 1990-98, the PI indices recorded increases in relative participation focused in the regions of Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, but extending in a general belt along the eastern littoral—spreading westwards from the East. Between 1998 and 2005, the relative participation of STs decreased in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, and increased in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
2.1 The Spatiality of Dalit and Adivasi Discrimination
Despite the limitations of the data, different sectors show different patterns of regional distribution, which intensify both positively and negatively during the period 1990-2005. We look at the sectors of the economy by SCs and STs separately after which we re-order the discussion according to the bigger territorial regions and, within a framework provided by the existing data, examine their economic and social characteristics.
Scheduled Castes (SCs)
Agricultural and Livestock Businesses: These are pre- and post- harvest activities together with agricultural services. In 1990, SCs were disproportionately prominent in agricultural business in the North-east and under–represented in western India. By 2005, however, negative PIs spread throughout the country except Orissa, West Bengal and the North-eastern states.
Non-agricultural Business in General: In 1990, SCs were strongly under-represented in the South and relatively over-represented in Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh (MP) and the North-eastern states. By 2005, the disproportionately low participation of SCs had spread from the South to the North-west, making a solid region of low participation throughout South India, and in UP, Bihar and the North-west.
Mining, Quarrying and Construction: In 1990, SCs were disproportionately active in these sectors in large parts of India. In the construction industry, high levels of participation are to be found everywhere except in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. The participation of SCs in mining and quarrying is dispersed, concentrated and deteriorating.
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By 1998, ‘positive discrimination’ had spread to a belt in the Centre and the North but the SC disadvantage increased to 2005 in the whole of South India.
Manufacturing: In 1990, SC participation was positive in Central India and relatively poor in the South-east and North-west. However, by 1998, a relative disadvantage spread to Karnataka in the South, and to Gujarat and Rajasthan in the North-west; while a positive advantage started emerging in a wider belt in Central and North-central India. By 2005, there had been a disproportionate increase in participation in the NE and a relative decrease in the West.
Trade, Hotels etc.: In 1990, SCs were conspicuous for their low levels of participation, except in Orissa and the North-eastern tribal states. There appear, on the face of it, to be powerful entry barriers at work. By 1998, when these categories were disaggregated, the pattern persisted. However, by 2005, Maharashtra and West Bengal had observed a relative increase in participation.
Transport, Storage, Communications, Finance, Real Estate: There is persistently low participation in these sectors throughout India, except in the North-eastern states. However, by 2005, a relative increase in participation started emerging in a belt in the South-west and the East.
Personal and Community Services (Health and Education): These are sectors wherein the impact of reservations in education and in the public sector might be thought to be the most manifest. However, in general, the participation of SCs is disproportionately low, intensifying through the decade except in a diagonal belt from the South-west through the East to the North-eastern states.
Scheduled Tribes (STs)
Agriculture and Livestock: Controlling for the distribution of tribal people, in 1990, their agricultural firms were disproportionately concentrated in a North–South spine in Eastern India, and under-represented where they are also the smallest proportion of the population—in western India—notably Gujarat. In 1998, while they were withdrawing from the livestock economy, their relative disadvantage was declining—and even turning to a relative advantage—in the North-west. By 2005, the pattern became patchy except in the North-west, where they were under-represented.
Non-agricultural Business in General: While in 1990, the participation of STs was disproportionately low everywhere except in UP and Sikkim, and Mizoram in the North-east, by 2005, there was a striking increase in participation ‘spreading’ from the eastern littoral. Gujarat has relatively high participation rates.
Mining, Quarrying and Construction: Relative to their population, STs were
DALIT AND ADIVASI PARTICIPATION IN INDIA’S BUSINESS ECONOMY 87
disproportionately concentrated as owners of firms in this sector in a patchy scatter of regions around the periphery of India up to 1998. However, by 2005, a pattern of relative advantage for STs had emerged in the North and South-east.
Manufacturing: In 1990, ST firms were relatively concentrated in a northern belt extending East to Orissa, and were disproportionately under-represented elsewhere; by 1998, their under-representation had been reduced somewhat in the South of India. By 2005, it had become patchy.
Trade—Wholesale, Retail and Hotels: STs were under-represented in trade throughout India in 1990, with the exception of UP and Assam. By 1998, however, their participation had greatly improved in the South though the Central belt showed no improvement. The more highly disaggregated classifications for 1998 and 2005 confirm this trend.
Transport, Storage and Communications: The participation of STs in this sector is patchy and shows no pattern. However, there has been an improvement in their participation in the North and South-east.
Finance and Real Estate: STs are relatively absent in a Central belt; but by 2005, their participation had improved in UP, Bihar, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and the North-east.
Education, Health, Personal and Community services: During the decade, a significant positive change was witnessed in the South of India.
The atlas shows that the regionalisation of the economic participation of Dalits and Adivasis—and their social and economic entry barriers—are highly differentiated in sector-specific ways, and differ substantially for SCs and STs. There appears to be a multiplicity of regional patterns and no sign of regional convergence. In the era of the reforms, while the relative disadvantage of SCs spread and then recovered somewhat, especially in the southern states, the relative advantage of STs spread inland from the East, and throughout the South—from a very low base. We turn to examine some economic characteristics of these macro regions.
3. INDIA’S REGIONS OF ACCUMULATION: DALIT AND ADIVASI INCORPORATION
State level evidence for population, the ownership of firms, the size distribution of firms and their relation to the agricultural sector—summarised in Table 5 here—suggests that though there is considerable internal variation and state-level idiosyncrasy, there are five broad regional patterns of incorporation: at the two poles—i) South, and ii) North; iii) through a swathe of states across the Centre–East of India; iv) the set of small tribal states in the extreme North-east; and v) the western states are anomalous in various ways.
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3.1 The Positioning of SCs
Table 5: Regional Patterns of Economic Incorporation of Dalits
S. No.
Regions SC People (%) Total Enter-prises
Enter-prise Ratio (Firm vs. People)
Struc-ture of the Enter-prises
Parti-cipation Indices
Discrimi-nation against Dalits
1. Southern Region (Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka)
10-20% 9 m (high abso-lute number)
1: 40 Rela-tively well deve-loped non-agricultu-ral economy
0.37 to 0.3 (un-usually low)
Strong negative discri-mination
2. Central-Eastern Swathe (Madhya Pradesh, Maha-rashtra, Orissa, West Bengal and Assam)
16% to 28% (Higher than average proportion)
10 m 1: 30 well developed non-farm economy
0.8 and over 1
Weak moving into positive in the east
3. Northern States (Bihar, UP, Punjab, Haryana, HP, Delhi, Chandigarh)
15-28% (Above average incidence)
7.5 m (relatively low total incidence of firms)
1: 46 Very low wage labour base
0.3 to 0.6 (gene-rally low participa-tion indices)
Strong nega-tive discri-mination
4. Western States (Gujarat and Goa)
2-7% (low incidence of SC - distinguishing feature of this region)
Sources: Raw data from the Indian Census, 2001 and Economic Census, 2005.
The Southern Region: AP, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka
This region has a substantial presence of SC people (10-20 per cent) and a high total number of firms (9 m firms, that is, 1 firm: 40 people). In fact, despite the high absolute numbers of firms, the participation of SCs as owners of firms is unusually low (the index varies from 0.37 to 0.3), suggesting strong discrimination against them despite the records of various kinds of ‘pro-poor politics’ in these states. Self-employment preponderates, with a slow increase over time in the proportion of SC firms employing wage labour— (varying state-wise between 10 and 15 per cent). In this, at the turn of the millennium, Tamil Nadu was in an anomalous all-India vanguard with disproportionately few SCs able
DALIT AND ADIVASI PARTICIPATION IN INDIA’S BUSINESS ECONOMY 89
to enter the business economy and yet with a very high proportion—one third—of those SC firms that have successfully entered business employing up to six wage workers—up from 13 per cent in 1990—and with 5 per cent employing over six workers.
The Central-Eastern Swathe: MP, Orissa, West Bengal and Assam
The percentage of SC population in these states varies from 14 per cent to 23 per cent (with Assam as a low outlier at 7 per cent) and there is a well-developed non-farm economy with 10 m firms (1 firm: 30 people). Discrimination against SCs is much weaker than in the South, moving into positive in the East (the index ranges between 0.8 and over 1 for Assam and Orissa). Firms are overwhelmingly own account enterprises—indicating conditions of incorporation that are, at worst, under conditions of distress with relations of exchange that prevent growth and, at best, the result of the prevalence of very small investible surpluses. In West Bengal, liberalisation has released constraints on accumulation and mobility from ‘own account’ status to firms employing small numbers of wage labourers is comparatively high,15 but there has been hardly any such movement in Orissa. In Assam, SCs have in-migrated and liberalisation has been associated with a sharp increase in their ownership of firms employing wage labourers16—from a very low base before 1990.
With an above average incidence of SC people,17 this belt of states has a relatively low total count of firms—7.5 m (1 firm: 46 people) and poor participation indices—varying from 0.3 (UP) to 0.6 (HP), including the cities of Delhi and Chandigarh (0.5-0.45). The restriction of nine-tenths of the firms to the smallest size category is only broken by Delhi—a major site of opportunity for accumulation in which SCs are active. Here one-fifth of the SC firms employ a wage labour force of under six, and 9 per cent have over six workers. The transformation of the SC business economy to a scale of production and trade wherein labour must be hired is occurring at relatively fast rates in parts of this region—but from very low bases.
Western States: Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Goa
The low incidence of SC people in the population is the distinguishing feature of this region—varying from 17 per cent (Rajasthan) through 7 per cent in Gujarat to 2 per cent in Goa. With 2.6 m firms (1 firm: 20 people), these states have flourishing non-farm economies, otherwise they do not form a coherent region. While Gujarat resembles the northern region in terms of strong negative discrimination, Goa is at parity. Maharashtra, the state with the highest number of enterprises in the urban sector, has a relatively high percentage of SC enterprise owners, but it is still below parity with the SC population
15 Corroborated from field research in Harriss-White (2008).
16 True of both Economic Census categories—firms with below and with above six workers.
17 Ranging from 15 per cent in Bihar to 28 per cent in Punjab.
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share. One attribute that most of these states have in common is that the SC firms are almost completely restricted to own account enterprises—the exception is Maharashtra, with 12 per cent SC businessmen owning small labour-hiring firms.
In the outer and inner Himalaya, there are very few firms—about 0.2 m (1 firm: 62 people) and very few SCs. Imported under the British to perform menial services, there are political barriers to their remaining in these territories. Those few who manage to cut through the red tape of work permits, are rarely allowed to own property and instead have to rent licences, residential and business premises from local tribal people. However, they are disproportionately positively represented both as owners of firms and as employers of labour (see Harriss-White, Mishra and Upadhyay, 2009). The highest frequency and fastest growth of SC firms with wage labour are in the states of this region. The variety of trajectories here, where states are very small, is suggestive of possible intra-state variation elsewhere.
3.2 Scheduled Tribes in India’s Macro Regions of Accumulation
With the exception of Orissa, the North-eastern tribal states and Delhi, STs are much more homogeneous in the way in which they have been allowed to participate in the business economy. They are discriminated against almost everywhere—in fact there are no ST firms recorded in North-west India18—and their participation started from a very low base in 1990. Between 83 per cent and 95 per cent of the ST firms are own account enterprises. Such enterprises are maximised in the states with the most tribal people, such as (undivided) Bihar, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh.
In the southern region, from this very low base, the first decade of India’s reform period was associated with a rapid increase in the proportion of firms owned by STs.19 In Andhra Pradesh, there was also an unusual increase in the number of firms with more than six workers and in Tamil Nadu, a high relative incidence of such firms. In the northern region, the outlier is again Delhi, where only 56 per cent of the ST firms are own account and as many as 29 per cent are firms with more than six wage workers. In the East, while West Bengal and Orissa have witnessed a proliferation of miniaturised firms, only 2 per cent are owned by STs in West Bengal, while the highest proportion of firms owned by STs India-wide, outside the North-east, is to be found in Orissa (17 per cent). Yet, West Bengal has seen a remarkable expansion of STs employing wage labour. So has Assam.
In the North-east, where the tribal people’s economic and political citizenship is legally protected, the pattern of incorporation of STs as owners of firms is both very
18 In Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh. It is not clear how nomadic/trans-humantic pastoralists were recorded.
19 In Karnataka, their proportion even rose from 1.7 per cent to 4.4 per cent from 1990 to 1998.
DALIT AND ADIVASI PARTICIPATION IN INDIA’S BUSINESS ECONOMY 91
different and very varied (Harriss-White, et al., 2012). The proportion of firms owned by STs averages 42 per cent but varies from 7 per cent in Tripura to 98 per cent in Mizoram. The non-farm economy is dominated by outsiders—a process crying out for research—for in many North-eastern areas, they cannot own property. The proportion of small own account enterprises is far lower than elsewhere—averaging 64 per cent while the proportion of the largest firms with more than six workers owned by STs ranges from none to 13 per cent, and averages 7 per cent. Thus, despite the distribution of ST ownership being relatively biased towards firms which accumulate and hire labour, non-STs still dominate the business economy. The composition of this domination is different for different states: in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura, SCs are over-represented as business owners, while in Mizoram and Manipur, the outsiders are GCs. This makes for an interesting area of future research into the economic power of Dalits and other castes in states dominated in terms of population by tribes.
3.3 Below the Level of State Aggregation—Regions of Districts
All these regions are more nuanced when data are mapped to the resolution of districts (as we have done for 2005) rather than by state (as for 1990 and 1998). The atlas maps for 2005 reveal that the boundaries of India’s states are not easily or generally detectable. As Iyer, et al. comment (2013, p. 55), the distributions are not “driven by a few pockets of under-development”. Regions of low participation are found in both the rich developed states as well as the poor ones. Examples of such intra-state heterogeneity may be found for enterprises as a whole among SCs in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, and among STs in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat. In the mining and quarrying sector, and the private provision of utilities, intra-state heterogeneity is an all-India phenomenon.
This suggests that forces other than State policy are implicated in the opportunities and constraints traced by these spatial arrangements.20
Exceptions may be found: SC ownership of agricultural enterprises is homogeneously distributed at the district level inside the state of Orissa (relatively high), and in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh (low); ST ownership of non-agricultural enterprises is homogeneously distributed inside UP (high), and in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand (low). Trans-state ‘contagious’ regions of relatively high participation are revealed at the district level in the case of the manufacturing, construction, trade, transport, storage and communication sectors—for SC owners in a swathe across Central India and for ST owners bunched along the western and southern coasts.
Spatial patterns of ST incorporation are, by and large, more coherently regionalised than those for SCs.
We can now turn to the explanation of regional patterns and trends. So far they have been couched at the level of states.
20 A point made by Palmer-Jones and Sen (2003) in their work on non-state agro-ecological regions and poverty distributions.
92 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL INCLUSION STUDIES
3.4 Explanations from Economics
Explaining the phenomenon of several types of uneven participation is a difficult task using the normal principle of parsimony. However, in 2006, Charlotte Murphy’s attempt to explain SC/ST participation as owners of firms simplified the 10/14 sectors to three (primary, secondary and tertiary)21 for the years 1990 and 1998, and showed, in the ‘multivariate explanatory space’ allowed by existing evidence (Iyer, et al., 2013, p. 57), that a set of hypotheses about factors at the root of differentials in advantage may be eliminated as being statistically insignificant at the all-India level of analysis by using state level data.22
From the data mobilised for Murphy’s analysis, five tentative hypotheses may be generated. First, urbanism may dissolve rooted discrimination by favouring the upward mobility of SC/STs and their entry into business (the proportion of population that is urban is the only available indicator of urbanism). Second, education is hypothesised not only to give skills and credentials but also to lead to the dissolution of archaic social arrangements by facilitating entry into the business economy (literacy was used here). Third, collateral for credit (which is proxied here by Dalit and Adivasi landholding) eases entry into business. Fourth, dense social networks facilitate entry into business and the proportion of Dalits and Adivasis in the population may stand proxy for the density of social networks. And fifth, the extensiveness of brute poverty (here: the proportion Below the Poverty Line) is predicted to be a barrier to entry into the business economy, since being Dalit/Adivasi is associated with being poor (Thorat and Newman, 2007; and Thorat, assisted by Mahamallik and Venkatesan, 2007), and a modicum of capital is essential for credibility in business.
Even though these variables may be used to explain entry, and state level variations in their values may be predicted to drive regional variations in SC/ST participation in the business economy, none of these hypotheses is particular to the era of liberalisation. Nor do they address the problem of differential sectoral barriers to entry.
By relating Murphy’s state level results to the five hypotheses we find:
i) Holding caste categories constant,23 the degree of urbanisation mattered only to the class of total enterprises and not to any of the three sectors. Even at the crud-est it was significant only at the 10 per cent probability level which is normally rejected.
ii) Education (in the form of literacy) was statistically significant only in the aggre-gate. It mattered most to the chances of STs, wherein a 1 per cent increase in litera-cy resulted in a 10 per cent increase in the ownership of enterprises. For SCs, how-ever, there was a significant but very poor response. A 1 per cent increase in their literacy was related to a mere 0.001 per cent increase in the enterprises owned.
21 Primary activity is land-based—agricultural and extractive; secondary activity comprises manufacturing; and tertiary activity involves services including state administration.
22 See Harriss-White and Vidyarthee (2010), Appendix 1, for details of the data used.
23 These are the crude classifications of SCs, STs and Others.
DALIT AND ADIVASI PARTICIPATION IN INDIA’S BUSINESS ECONOMY 93
iii) Landholdings, as a proxy for collateral for credit, were not significant at the level of all enterprises. Land does not appear to drive entry to industrial sectors. In regions where SCs and STs have larger landholdings than their all-India average, they are, however, less concentrated in the secondary and tertiary sectors.
iv) The hypothesis about social networks easing the entry into business, taking as proxy the proportion of Dalits in the population, proved insignificant. There is no strong association.
v) So did the hypothesis about poverty as a barrier to entry. Head-count poverty had negligible effects and was not statistically significant.24
Throughout India, the accumulation trajectories of SCs and STs may favour rural areas because the relationship between their firms and urbanisation, though positive in the aggregate, is weak. However, we cannot assume that landholdings (or agricultural profits) constitute a springboard to investment. There is also no aggregate relationship between Dalits in the wage labour force and entry into business—either agricultural or non-agricultural.
These findings direct future research toward more refined econometric investigation and/or forms of analysis by using other kinds of evidence and levels of aggregation (including local level research).25. The studies of Dalits in the rural and non-farm economy of UP by Kapur, et al. (2010) explore a broad-based social mobility and emancipation. The metropolitan–rural relations and economic mobility of the tribal Kunchikorves in and around Mumbai have been researched (Shinde, 2011) as well as that of low-caste former textile workers in Mumbai and its hinterland (Mhaskar, 2013), but we are a long way from a body of work which captures both the social processes and the regional dynamics revealed in the atlas here.
3.5 Explanations from Political Sociology
John Harriss’s explanations of success in poverty alleviation in India in terms of differences between pro-poor political regimes (Harriss, 1999) is highly relevant to any attempt to account for differences in the success of the Dalit and Adivasi population in the business economy, because they are disproportionally poor. India is of course formally a democracy and the effectiveness of democracy lies in its being able to differentiate politics from other systems of inequality and other forms of domination (Rueshmayer, et al., 1992; Harriss, 1999). However, the political regimes constituting India’s democracy are crucially dependent on the extent and mode of participation of the lower castes and classes.26 The typology that results from Harriss’ analysis of political regimes, according
24 A result confirmed by Iyer, et al. (2013).
25 Iyer, et al. (2013), explore the disadvantage in state- and district-wise employment but do not regionalise. See Vidyarthee (Forthcoming) for district level analysis.
26 Church (1984). He saw upper castes aligned with landlords, business owners and professionals; middle castes being on the land, and low castes supplying artisan goods and services. The particularities of the occupations of SCs and tribals were not mentioned.
94 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL INCLUSION STUDIES
to the combination of party politics and modes of incorporation of ‘lower castes and classes’, is presented in Table 6.
Table 6: Typology of State Regimes according to Modes of Incorporation of ‘Lower Castes and Classes’
Class Characteristics States
Ai Persistent upper caste/class dominance. Congress strong. Madhya Pradesh; Orissa; Rajasthan
Aii Effective challenges by middle castes/classes. Congress collapsed that is, dominance and alliances broken.
Bihar; Uttar Pradesh
B Middle caste-dominated regimes. Congress effectively challenged but not collapsed. Stable two-party competition and accommodation with lower castes.
C Low castes/classes more strongly represented. Congress lost dominance early on.
Kerala; Tamil Nadu; West Bengal
Source: Data in Harriss (1999).
Four comments can be made about Table 6. First, the categorisation of ‘lower castes and classes’ does not distinguish the occupations of SCs and the property rights regimes of STs, from the production conditions of poor people, in general. Nor does it address the double marginality of STs from party politics and from that of civil society (Sarkar, 2009)
as critically distinct aspects of the politics of poverty and of micro-level economic growth. Second, the distinctive tribal north-eastern region is absent from the classification. Third, while West Bengal is classed with Kerala and Tamil Nadu in the most pro-poor political regimes, there is good empirical evidence to suggest that West Bengal has not incorporated SCs and STs systematically into the party structure (Ruud, 1999); and our atlas of Dalit and Adivasi discrimination here shows that neither Kerala nor Tamil Nadu is at all notable for its achievement with respect to Dalit and Adivasi entry into business. Last, while the two classes of regimes which have the poorest incorporation of lower castes and classes do have a certain territorial integrity and regional character, there is a significant information loss between the spatial expression of the ‘pro-poorness’ of political regimes and that of the economic incorporation of Dalits and Adivasis as owners of enterprises. We cannot avoid concluding that the relations between the ‘pro-poorness’ of political regimes and the economic participation of Dalits and Adivasis differ significantly.
Pro-poor growth has been conceived in Harriss’ project as a set of formal policies sectoralising and targeting ‘low castes and classes’, and not as a set of structural transformations as SCs and STs claw their way into business. The analysis of pro-poor political regimes does not produce regions which map easily onto those of Dalit and Adivasi economic incorporation and exclusion.
These findings further reinforce the need for new research on the specific modes of political incorporation of Dalits and Adivasis, and on the relation between these processes and their entry into business (Vidyarthee, Forthcoming).
DALIT AND ADIVASI PARTICIPATION IN INDIA’S BUSINESS ECONOMY 95
4. CONCLUSIONS
The results of our research, derived by using evidence from the economic and population Censuses are striking, have clear potential significance for policy, and provoke challenges for explanation and future research. Our attempts to explain the spatial phenomena that we have discovered have generated more questions than they have answered.
Mapping the entry of SCs and STs into the business economy demonstrates that their aggregation into larger entities such as ‘lower castes and classes’ or ‘oppressed people’ at the all-India level masks the political–economic processes involved. Not only are SCs and STs incorporated in widely differing regional and sectoral patterns but their historical trajectories are also different.
The spatial relationships between the proportion of SCs and STs in the population and their relative participation in the non-farm economy as owners of firms are both strikingly varied and yet consistently patterned.
The overall share of SCs and STs as owners of firms did not change during the period 1990-2005. However, while the proportion of enterprises owned by STs increased by two-fifths during the period 1990-2005, the proportion owned by SCs actually declined by 15 per cent between 1990 and 1998, but had recovered to 1990 levels by 2005. The entry of STs into the non-farm economy and the expansion paths of ST firms—albeit from a very low base—are remarkably un-noticed features of twenty-first century economic development.
Education had radically different and contradictory effects on SCs and STs. If liberalisation is dissolving archaic forms of regulating exchange, it is doing so unevenly and slowly.
Our all-India analysis, disaggregated by state, shows that India has a series of regions of relative advantage and disadvantage for SCs and STs in the business economy. Different economic sectors may be distinctively spatially organised, but they are coherent, and they also change in coherent ways (see Table 7).
SCs are ‘relatively advantaged’ in the construction sector and consistently disadvantaged in the trade, transport, food, hospitality and service sectors, That is, the sectors which are driving Indian growth. STs, on the other hand, have a relative disadvantage in all sectors of the non-agricultural economy. However, with the help of improvements in literacy, they have been able to move into services—but, it is likely, at the low end.27
27 See Ramesh (2004) on the high caste composition of high-end ‘cybercoolies’ in the business process service sector. See Fuller and Narasimhan (2007; 2008) on the preponderance of Brahmins in the high-end engineering and software professions, not through biased recruitment but due to the high caste capture of advanced education.
96 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL INCLUSION STUDIES
Table 7: Summary of Regions of Incorporation of Dalits and Adivasis in India
SCs East Advantaged
West Disadvantaged
Central Belt (E-W) Advantaged Rest Disadvantaged
Relative Advantage Everywhere
Relative Disadvantage Everywhere except the North-eastern States
Agriculture Non-agriculture in general; manufacturing
Construction Trade; Mining; Quarrying; Transport; Storage; Finance; Real Estate; Services
Non-agriculture in General; Mining; Quarrying; Transport; Storage; Communications
Source for Table 7?
Over time, the SC disadvantage has intensified in southern India. However, it is notable that there is high SC participation in the north-eastern tribal states where there is a very low absolute incidence of SCs. The North-east is liberating for those SCs who can find their way through the formidable political and legal entry barriers.28 There is also an untold story of ‘pro-poor growth’ from conditions of great disadvantage for the STs. Their participation has strikingly improved in the eastern littoral diffusing westwards. However, whether STs are still likely to be confined to petty production and trade is a question that needs to be researched.
The other urgent questions that also need to be answered are: whether entry barriers to the different sectors are economic, social, or both; why they occur; and why they vary regionally. The explanations of complex and uneven patterns need complementary and different kinds of research at disaggregated levels and higher levels of resolution.
There are six topics that seem to call for immediate research.
First, the differences between the processes and relationships confronting firm-owning opportunities for Dalits and Adivasis in the rural non-farm economy, as well as the urban business economy, need to be investigated. Factors such as migration, remittance compulsions, the regional character of forward caste hegemony, and of OBC and MBC resistance, the regional roles of religion, language and other moral communities on the stratification of economic trajectories may prove relevant to these processes.
Second, the key relations between Dalit and Adivasi ownership and management of
28 Field research in the state of Arunchal Pradesh reveals the differentiated economic citizenship there as being liberating for Dalits, who obtain work permits and rent premises from the Arunachali STs. As cobblers, barbers, etc., they make incomes that are three to four times greater than the incomes they would earn in their states of origin (Bihar, Orissa or West Bengal). They remit savings and redefine themselves (as ‘Thakurs’ or ‘Biharis’). See Harriss-White, Prakash and Mishra (2012).
DALIT AND ADIVASI PARTICIPATION IN INDIA’S BUSINESS ECONOMY 97
land, water, forests and livestock, wage labour, self-employment and the employment of others—and their implications for poverty reduction—need comparative class analysis, which should also be grounded in field research.
Third, in view of the poor explanatory performance of education (in the form of basic literacy), there is need to discover more about the needs of the differentiated capitalist economy for Dalit and Adivasi ‘human development’.
Fourth, research investigating individual economic agency, which would reveal the policing and punitive processes confronting attempts to challenge the social and economic order, is also needed.
Fifth, the regional modes of political incorporation or the exclusion of Dalits and Adivasis as highly differentiated and gendered categories requires a systematic analysis.
Sixth, since most SC and ST firms are unregistered and operate in the informal economy beyond the reach of the banks, the State and the planning mechanism, our finding that incorporation is extremely uneven—through space society and sector—has far-reaching implications for the uneven regional effort that would be needed for the Government of India to implement its plans for socially inclusive development. Since some contiguous sectoral regions are not coherent territories of individual states but straddle several, there is need to scope meso level approaches to improve trajectories of incorporation below the national level but above that of the states. Examples include primary education, which has helped tribal people enter the sphere of self-employment, and licencing to bring access to bank loans, which, as Harriss-White and Prakash show (2014) , are stacked against SCs and STs. However, others need urgent research.
The findings call for a programme of research into the relation between political regime structures pertaining to SCs and STs and their economic achievements as owners of businesses. Here, problems of data availability would be serious.
In view of the shifts in regional patterns that we have identified at different scales, the implications for politics and development policy—whether positive, critical or normative—are likely to be local and differentiated. In the context of globalisation, and given the absence of any beckoning alternative to India’s capitalist economy, a new movement of research on the contemporary history of regional and local processes of economic discrimination against, and of the economic incorporation and accumulation trajectories of, people still labelled and identified as Dalits and Adivasis, SCs and STs, is only to be welcomed.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Barbara Harriss-White is grateful to the GREThA, Bordeaux University, for a visiting professorship, enabling her to complete this essay. The authors also acknowledge with gratitude the cooperation of the Institute for Human Development (IHD), New Delhi, which helped in procuring the relevant data and the Oxford University Fell Fund for its support to the research project ‘Outcastes, Tribals and Modern Indian Capitalism’, 2006-09. This paper is dedicated to the memory of a fine geographer: the late Graham Chapman.
DALIT AND ADIVASI PARTICIPATION IN INDIA’S BUSINESS ECONOMY 99
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I: POPULATION DATA BY INDIAN STATES
State Total Population SCs STs
Andaman and Nicobar Islands 356,152 0 29,469
Andhra Pradesh 76,210,007 12,339,496 5,024,104
Arunachal Pradesh 1,097,968 6,188 705,158
Assam 26,655,528 1,825,949 3,308,570
Bihar 82,998,509 13,048,608 758,351
Chandigarh 900,635 157,597 0
Chhattishgarh 20,833,803 2,418,722 6,616,596
Dadra and Nagar Haveli 220,490 4,104 137,225
Daman and Diu 158,204 4,838 13,997
Delhi 13,850,507 2,343,255 0
Goa 1,347,668 23,791 566
Gujarat 50,671,017 3,592,715 7,481,160
Haryana 21,144,564 4,091,110 0
Himachal Pradesh 6,077,900 1,502,170 244,587
Jammu and Kashmir 10,143,700 770,155 1,105,979
Jharkhand 26,945,829 3,189,320 7,087,068
Karnataka 52,850,562 8,563,930 3,463,986
Kerala 31,841,374 3,123,941 364,189
Lakshadweep 60,650 0 57,321
Madhya Pradesh 60,348,023 9,155,177 12,233,474
Maharashtra 96,878,627 9,881,656 8,577,276
Manipur 2,166,788 60,037 741,141
Meghalaya 2,318,822 11,139 1,992,862
Mizoram 888,573 272 839,310
Nagaland 1,990,036 0 1,774,026
Orissa 36,804,660 6,082,063 8,145,081
Puducherry 974,345 157,771 0
Punjab 24,358,999 7,028,723 0
Rajasthan 56,507,188 9,694,462 7,097,706
Sikkim 540,851 27,165 111,405
Tamil Nadu 62,405,679 11,857,504 651,321
Tripura 3,199,203 555,724 993,426
Uttar Pradesh 166,197,921 35,148,377 107,963
Uttarakhand 8,489,349 1,517,186 256,129
West Bengal 80176197 18,452,555 4,406,794
Source: Population Census, 2001.
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APPENDIX II: ECONOMIC SECTORS ACCORDING TO
INDIA’S ECONOMIC CENSUS
S. No. 2005 S. No. 1998 S. No. 1990
1. Agricultural and Allied 1. Raising livestock 1. Livestock raising
2. Mining and Quarrying 2. Agricultural services 2. Agricultural services,
forestry, fishing and
hunting
3. Manufacturing 3. Mining and quarrying 3. Mining and quarrying
4. Electricity, Gas and Water
SS
4. Manufacturing 4. Manufacturing
5. Construction 5. Electricity, gas and water
supply
5. Electricity, gas and water
supply
6. Trade 6. Construction 6. Construction
7. Hotels and Restaurants 7. Wholesale trade 7. Trade, hotels and
restaurants
8. Transport, Storage and
Communication
8. Retail trade 8. Transport, storage
&communication
9. Finance and Business 9. Restaurants and hotels 9. Finance, real estate,
business and others
10. Public Administration 10. Transport 10. Health, education,
community services, etc.
11. Education 11. Storage and warehousing 11. Others (n.a.d)
12. Health 12. Communication
13. Other community, social
and personal services
13. Finance , business and
allied activities
14. Other activities 14. Community, social and
personal services
15. Unspecified activities
Source: Sectors of private businesses in Economic Census, 1990; 1998; and 2005.
DALIT AND ADIVASI PARTICIPATION IN INDIA’S BUSINESS ECONOMY 101
Sources: Economic Census, 2005; and Population Census, 2001.
DALIT AND ADIVASI PARTICIPATION IN INDIA’S BUSINESS ECONOMY 103
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