Paper short abstract:

This paper explores recent strategies used by Dalits to escape some of the worst forms of dependency in rural Tamil Nadu, India. We discuss why Dalit attempts at carving out spaces for independent entrepreneurship within capitalist production regimes remain an uphill struggle.

Paper long abstract:

While Dalits across India have mobilised a series of political and democratic tools to challenge some of the most oppressive forms of exploitation and discrimination, their aspirations to achieve economic independence within capitalist production regimes remain an uphill struggle. Despite the promises of neoliberal transformations and the skill development opportunities hailed by recent governments, Dalit attempts to escape relations of dependency and carve out spaces for independent entrepreneurship within capitalist production regimes remain heavily undermined by a sheer lack of access to assets and means of production.

Based on long-term ethnographic field research carried out in the rural hinterland of Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu, this paper explores three strategies recently used by Dalits to escape some of the worst forms of dependency on higher castes in the rural powerloom industry. These strategies include attempts 1) to run their own powerloom units rather than to work as labourers in the workshops of higher castes; 2) to escape forms of labour bondage by using microfinance to settle outstanding debts with powerloom employers; and 3) to take up garment work in Tiruppur, with the aim to escape powerloom work and village dependency altogether.

Using ethnographic case studies, the paper describes these strategies and explains why each of them ended up being a mixed success, if not altogether a failure. We discuss the ways in which higher-caste recruitment strategies, ongoing technological transformations, and Dalits' precarious fall-back position undermine the latter's attempts at challenging their dependent position within rapidly changing capitalist regimes.