A Dalit straddles the financial world

India Together: ECONOMY/CASTE - 5 December 2005: " Narendra Jadhav is Principal Adviser and Chief Economist at the Reserve Bank of India. He is also a Dalit and strong advocate of reservations in the private sector. His recent book Untouchables : My Family's Triumphant Journey Out of the Caste System in Modern India has received wide acclaim. India Together's Subramaniam Vincent talked with him recently.

size does not depict strength; change depicts strength or weakness.

the rate that was decided was 35 dollars per fine ounce. And that was close to the market price at this time. And this was enshrined in law. Now when in 1955 onwards when US started accumulating deficits and deficits started growing, countries, particularly Germany and Japan started accumulating dollar balances very fast, but American gold stocks were not rising. So there were more and more question marks on whether the US would be able to honour its guarantee. The risk was there.

The worst of the fears came true on 15 August 1971, when under the Nixon administration, the US announced that it was unilaterally withdrawing from the commitment to give gold in exchange for dollars. "Bhaad me jao." (Go to hell.) They unilaterally withdrew. Nixon did it. They said that they were not willing to buy back dollars and give gold. That caused a big problem globally.

The fixed exchange rate system that was until then based on this rule started breaking down. Finally, in two years, in February 1973, the fixed rate system broke down.

We made a mistake. In the 1970s there was big debate on whether to go for export promotion or whether to go for import substitution. All the East Asian countries opted for export promotion; India went the opposite direction; we went for import substitution; in other words, rather than focusing on selling more abroad, we tried to focus on creating production within our country, even if it was inefficient, i.e., producing goods ourselves, and substituting for imports. This was a policy that drove us to make a closed economy.

But in 1991, we had a ridiculous situation where we were 15% of the world's population and 7% of the worlds land, and our share in the world's trade was one half of one percent. (Our share of exports plus imports as a proportion of total trade.) A lot of people in India believed that the imperialist powers and capitalist countries were cornering us. That was stupidity. If our share was 0.5% why would the countries with 99.5% of trade share come together to corner us? We were a closed economy.

systematic studies have been done to show how much benefits have been passed on. Iit is a paper on the status of the disadvantaged; it has stylised facts about the population. It looks at literacy rate, drop out rate, sex ratio, gross enrollment, poverty ratio, access to credit, political representation, representation in the bureaucracy, in the Ministries and so on. The question is, what has happened to SCs and STs along these indicators? You'll find that the situation changed for the better, but it changed very little.

Reservation for jobs is not like railway reservations; please understand this. Reservation, the need for it is coming from the inability of the system as a whole to be fair. It is to guard against that. What reservation means is that if you are a Dalit and I am biased man and therefore I will not give you the job, it is to prevent the kind of injustice which is there because of the psychological problems in non-Dalits towards Dalits; that is the genesis.

what I am saying is why should reservations be denied to people in the private sector? It was part of the scam that when it was implemented it was only done for the public sector. You know what Dalits feel? Dalits feel that this whole privatisation thing is being done to deny them the jobs in the future.

In Maharashtra I have seen, if there is an inefficient person and if his same is Phadke or Apte, these are all names of the high born, they will be looked upon as inefficient individuals. But if there is a Kamble who is inefficient, you know what is the immediate reaction? It is to the blame the caste and then say "inko tho reservation miltha hai na." (They get reservations.)

I always tell my friends; you have to be doubly efficient; you have to not only show that you are as good, but you have to be better than others. You have to be running to stay in the same place; that is the challenge.