Traditionally, only countries with a vent for population growth have been able to succesfully pull out an industrialization process. For Europe it was Americas, South Africa, Australia and NZ. For the US, it was and still is the US. China is a unique social experimentation where you kill the population growth by regulation. It’s not over yet but it looks good so far.
I checked around, and found this link UCLA - International Institute ..::.. Error
the correlation you speak of exists, but the paper also states -
Anyway, I’m amenable to the argument that the caste system caused massive inequality for roughly 16% of the population which had negative fallout from the caste system(cite for the percentage of ‘scheduled’ castes), which would result in a worse initial position for them in terms of health/education and have some effect on economic growth for that population. Its overall effect is still limited though.
You seem to be mistaken about any number of things here. Lets start with the easy stuff. Rejection of the caste system is not a rejection of Hinduism at all. Most Hindu scriptures pay little attention to the business of caste(which is called varna, is described as a classification of the work done by the person, and is non-hereditary).
Also, you seem to think of the caste system as some sort of all pervasive rulebook that actively governs day-to-day actions and leads to rampant discrimination in society. Truth is, the only time caste enters into most people’s lives from a social perspective is at the time of marriage, and while this is considered legitimate by some, the caste system’s hold is reducing even here, especially in urban India. The ‘Indian experience’ won’t be markedly different either if you take away caste. Historically, only the untouchables(roughly 15-16% of the population) have suffered any significant negative discrimination due to the caste system. This is not accepted as legitimate today, although it continues in rural parts of the country in the poorest states.
Politically, yes, recent affirmative action laws have made caste an issue, and caste does no doubt enter into electoral politics. This is unfortunate, but the single-issue voters that you claim are thankfully rare, only one state in India has a party in power that makes caste its primary plank. Also, the complications that you’re thinking of regarding determination of caste are quite unnecessary. India is by and large (and unfortunately, in my view) a patriarchal society. Father’s caste = your caste. As I said earlier though, unless you’re a ‘scheduled’ caste, this would make little difference.
I could give you all of what you say though(hypothetically), and you would still not have addressed why the caste system should have a significant impact on the economy, given that the private sector, which is where most of the economic activity happens, is largely free of the trappings of caste.
**tomndebb **We’ve discussed this previously. The work of Richard Lynn & Tatu Vanhannen draws on over 100’s of psychometric researchers around the world. Their figures are consistent with TIMMS & PISA data. If you are going to accuse Lynn of fraud, you need to at least acknowledge that his (and Vanhannen’s) figures have external validity as measured on these tests.
https://www.technologyreview.com/blog/post.aspx?bid=354&bpid=26018
The only thing that I “have” to acknowledge is that Lynn felt free to include a lot of spurious information from outdated tests and test of groups far too small to be significant. That he might have lucked into some information that was consistent with other reports does not mitigate the fraudulence of the stuff he did include.
Beyond that, this is off topic for this thread, so drop it, here.
I suspect it’s mostly the caste-system issue.
Even at the time, people who were willing to look the facts in the face recognized that slavery was an economic dead weight. A caste system is basically slavery-lite in that regard.
Have you actually been to India? It’s not “slavery-lite” in any sense of the word. It’s more like tribalism or clan-ism, and a relatively weak form of it at that, especially, as has been noted, in urban areas.
There are thousands of castes all of whose specific relative status is unclear. It doesn’t work anything like race-based slavery does.
Speaking from experience, roughly half the servants/retainers in any household will be of the same caste as the members of the household and they will be in positions that are economically and socially more or less equal to those servants/retainers of lower caste. The big difference will be in which parts of the house they will be allowed to eat and sleep and whom they will marry.
What do you base this suspicion on?
It would be great if you could cite something more definitive in terms of the economic impact of slavery. I’m somewhat surprised that no serious studies seem to have been done on this issue(it could be that I can’t find them). The slavery issue might be something of a hijack though. Feel free to ignore it.
As to India - I see no reason why the caste system, despicable social practice though it may have been, should significantly impact economic performance. The major impact it would have would be to leave a segment of the population impoverished, unhealthy, and illiterate, but then many more people in the population at large suffered the same problems thanks to centuries of colonial rule and fifty years of bad government policy, just without the added social stigma. So again, how would the caste system have a significant economic impact?
The caste system doesn’t similarly retard economic development and industrialization, though. The people on the bottom rungs of the ladder are getting paid, even if they have little social mobility.
The answer to the question has nothing to do with caste. China’s growth has essentially excluded 90% of the country - peasant farmers - just as India’s has.
bldysabba covered it pretty well; it’s a combination of a half-century flirtation with socialism, and being a democracy.
American schools teach students that capitalism goes best with democracy. That’s nonsense. Capitalism did best with a constitutional monarchy; the US has never been as rich as the British Empire once was.
The problem for India is that never quite getting to communism meant never making a clean break from socialism. Protectionism and strange tax laws are still retarding growth (the one thing Qin got right).
Being a democracy, India can’t do some of the things China does to promote domestic growth, like currency fiddling. It can get away with doing some similar things- like the 120% import duty on imported vehicles, for example- but in general, the Chinese government is just better equipped to do many things.
Perhaps one of the most important things it can do is limit brain drain. There are 50,000 Indian-born medical doctors practicing medicine in the US. About 60% of Indian-trained physicians will emigrate to the West or one of the Gulf states at some point in their careers.
China also suffers from brain drain, but China’s brain drain is less damaging. Most Chinese leave prior to completing undergraduate programs; most Indian emigrants leave after completing *post-*graduate study. So India is not only losing its best and brightest, it’s losing them after paying to educate them.
Another factor is that most Chinese couldn’t leave prior to 1978, when the “open door” policy was implemented. Indians have always been able to leave, and have always done so (my parents, Indian-trained medical doctors, left in 1972 for the UK). Ironincally, racism in Britain served to protect the Indian economy, to a degree- any Indian who attended school in the UK before 1960 would never have gone back to the UK- and in any event every Western state pursued fairly strict racial immigration quotas until the 60s.
Perhaps most strange of all is that steady Indian growth in the face of the global recession is luring many Indian expatriates home, which bodes very well for the future (not so well for healthcare costs in the West). I doubt it’s a long term trend, but even a 5% increase in the rate of return would significantly benefit eastern economies in the long term.
India’s rather late industrial expansion also means that it has yet to exploit its enormous untapped resources.
For example, India has huge reserves of the element thorium-which can be used to fuel nuclear power plants. This will put India in a good position when it developes its electric grid.
So India may well surpass China in the coming years.
The overwhelming belief from my Emerging Markets equity managers is the bureaucracy created by having a democratically-elected government. The checks and balances in place in India prevent India from getting things done quickly. This is obviously something we see in the US as well. India knows what it needs to do, but political roadblocks stop these things from happening, or at least slow them down. China’s totalitarianism allows it to move quickly, without regard for the well-being of its citizens.
To clarify, this is not my answer to the question, but the opinion of investment managers who invest in these countries. That said, many do believe India will grow and create wealth, but at a slower pace than China.
It is true that India has a huge problem with petty corruption. China is developing such a problem itself, but China also occasionally conducts summary executions to make examples of such people.
Actually, from what I know, China has a fairly huge problem with corruption as well. The difference is that India’s much noisier media and competitive political environment leads to higher perceived corruption since a lot more instances come to light. The biggest problem with India’s brand of corruption is that Indian bureaucrats and politicians will accept bribes and then not deliver on what they promise because of the limitations of the political system. OTOH in China the perception is that while corruption may be an added cost of doing business, at least business gets done! Not sure which approach to corruption is more damaging in the long run.
A related issue is intellectual property. India is presumably willing to enforce intellectual property rights of investors; China thus far has not been.
Hinduism is an infinitely flexible system, but caste is tied up with Hinduism in a way that was never true with slavery and Christianity. So yeah, while you can be Hindu and not believe in the caste system, it’s difficult to see how you could believe in the caste system and not Hinduism. For at least a large segment of Hindus being born in the lower castes is punishment for deeds in a prior life. Rejecting that goes at the core of the rebirth cycle and Hinduism.
That’s not true at all. Your caste historically determined your employment, standing in Hinduism, and access to political power. Those effects linger today, and your station in life today is affected by what caste you are far greater than being black in America.
Again, it depends what you mean by significant. Political power, economic power, military power, and religious power were reserved for specific castes. If I wanted to be a trader, but couldn’t because I was a Brahman, was I discriminated against? I couldn’t pursue my chosen profession, but I had access to a certain type of power. It’s not an black/white issue like racism was/is in America. There are infinite shades of gray.
Children produced out of intercaste marriages are not treated the same as those within castes. A high caste father and a scheduled caste mother does not make you high caste.
Come on, that’s just ridiculous. The people cleaning toilets in train stations aren’t high castes and the guys writing software aren’t scheduled castes. Even if I give you the idea that no one considers caste anymore in economic decisions the inequalities linger.
There are Islamic and Christian communities in South Asia that preserve the caste system. I think most Muslims and Christians would consider this as antithetical to Islam and Christianity, but those people certainly don’t consider themselves as being Hindu.
Hinduism does not require belief in rebirth. Hinduism has no mandatory dogma. I know plenty of people (myself included) who don’t believe in souls or rebirth or the after life who are perfectly comfortable calling themselves Hindus.
Well, both of you are right. Originally, varna was a mere description of your occupation. But, as the caste system developed, the jati you were born into determined your hereditary occupation. The “four-colour” varna categories (priest-warrior-artisan-peasant) are irrelevant to the modern caste system.
The first part of the statement is almost certainly true. The second part isn’t as certain. There are plenty of low caste software engineers. There are also plenty of low caste doctors and other kinds of engineers. If for no other reason than government reservations.
Yes-the Chinese practice “clean” graft-an honest politician is one who, once bought stays bought.
As Acsenray has pointed out, you definitely can believe in the caste system and not in Hinduism. Only today I read about Muslim communities in the floods in Pakistan that refuse to occupy the same relief shelters because they’re from different castes. The caste system, especially its hereditary variety, is an almost entirely cultural phenomenon much more akin to nepotism than something religiously sanctioned. Has it acquired religious trappings over time and used religion to reinforce its position? Sure. Is it inextricable from Hinduism? Not at all. In fact, and only since you’ve brought it up, I would argue that there is more sanction for slavery in the Bible than there is for the caste system in Hindu scriptures.
While you claim to talk about infinite shades of gray, you tend to take a very simplistic view of the situation at hand. That of caste as the be all and end all. It’s not an uncommon viewpoint, just an incorrect one. It is most correct(but still not absolute) for the castes at the ends of the spectrum - the untouchables and to a lesser extent the Brahmins. If you’re interested in finding out more, one of the most authoritative writers is G.S Ghurye whose book “Caste and Race in India” has run to five or six editions IIRC. Here, from an article in the American Sociological Journal(link), is a rough summing up of his views on a complex subject -
The latter two types of theories - racial and occupational(occupational being the one you hold) were largely proposed by British sociologists, and because they were the early and predominant source of information about India to the west, these theories passed into the the domain of ‘common knowledge’ to the extent that many texts still hold to the occupational theory (the racial one being unfashionable)
It does indeed make you high caste. In fact, poor Brahmins were known to sell their marital services in this fashion.
For one, Acsenray is again correct. There definitely are scheduled caste software engineers, and in the southern states they probably outnumber the upper caste software engineers. For another, How does it matter from an economic standpoint? Someone has to clean toilets, and someone has to code software. Morally or socially speaking, I wouldn’t want the jobs to be hereditary, but so long as they get done, how does the GDP get affected?
Well, from an efficiency standpoint, it’s much better to allocate manpower based on inclination and ability than on an essentially randomly assigned basis.
In other words, people who code software because they thought they’d enjoy it and went to school for computer programming are, ceteris paribus, likely to be much better at it.
Like Bhopal. How open can you get?