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The Economist January 1st 2022
been noisily against a pardon, said that while there was no point in opposing a de cision that had already been made, Ms Park ought to apologise once more to those who were harmed by her crimes. The conservative opposition welcomed the pardon. But it complained that Mr Moon had also released Lee Seokki, a pro North Korean fi rebrand who was serving time for treason, and restored the civic rights of Han Myeongsook, a former left wing prime minister who served a two year sentence for bribery from 2015 to 2017. Despite the taint to Mr Moon’s legacy as
Asia
the “candlelight president”, the political benefi ts for the outgoing president and his camp may well end up outweighing the costs of pardoning Ms Park. Reports of the disgraced former president’s ill health are credible; she is likely to remain in hospital for several weeks before being sent home. Had she died a prisoner on Mr Moon’s watch just a few weeks before the presi dential election, the resulting outrage might well have tipped the scales against his party’s candidate. Besides the fate of his political succes sors, Mr Moon may also have had his own
future in mind. South Korean presidents often fi nd themselves being investigated for corruption after leaving offi ce. Lee Myungbak, Ms Park’s predecessor, is in prison serving a long sentence for graft. Roh Moohyun, who preceded him, com mitted suicide shortly after leaving offi ce, during a corruption probe into close aides and family members. Mr Moon’s eff orts to curb the power of the prosecution service have not endeared him to prosecutors, one of whom is now the presidential candidate for the opposition. He may be hoping his successor remembers his act of mercy. n
Banyan Caste away Why Brahmins lead Western firms but rarely Indian ones
W
hat do the chief executives of Adobe, Alphabet, ibm, Match Group (which owns Tinder), Microsoft, OnlyFans (a subscription service featur ing content creators in various stages of undress) and Twitter have in common? All seven happen to be of Indian origin. That is not surprising considering the abundance of subcontinental talent drifting into Western companies: in recent years Indians have been granted well over twothirds of America’s h1b visas for highly skilled workers. But these particular bosses share something else, too. They are all top caste Hindus. Four are Brahmins. Tradi tionally associated with the priesthood and learning, this pinnacle of the caste pyramid’s 25,000plus subgroups makes up just 50m or so of India’s 1.4bn people. The other three ceos come from castes traditionally associated with commerce or “scribal” professions such as book keeping. These groups account for a similarly slim section of the pyramid’s capstone: the 30% of Hindus that the government classes as “forward” castes, as opposed to the 70% who fall among such categories as “backward” or “sched uled” castes (Dalits, formerly known as untouchables) and “scheduled tribes”. And that is surprising, because across India’s own boardrooms it is not Brah mins who predominate. Members of the former priestly caste tend to excel less in business than in fi elds such as academia, science and the law. A quarter of Su preme Court judges in the past 15 years have been Brahmins, and three of India’s four Nobel prizes in science have been won not just by Brahmins, but by a small er subset of Tamil Brahmins. India’s business bigwigs have instead come largely from traditional trading communities of the Vaishya or merchant
castes. Consider the fi rst 20 entries in the Forbes list of India’s wealthiest in 2021. Twelve happen to be Banias, a Vaishya subcaste of Hindu or Jain moneylenders and traders from northwestern India that accounts for less than 1% of the country’s population. Five of those Bania billion aires also happen to be Marwaris, a tightly intermarried group of merchant families, originally from Rajasthan, that includes many of India’s earliest industrialists. Of the nonBanias, nearly all come from groups with a similarly long associa tion with commerce. Three of the top 20 are Parsis (Zoroastrians), a tiny minority that has long packed an oversized entre preneurial punch. Among them is Cyrus Poonawalla, whose Serum Institute of India is the world’s biggest maker of vac cines. The sole Muslim on the list (and India’s most generous philanthropist), Azim Premji, also comes from a tradition al merchant group, the Khojas, Nizari Ismaili Shias originally from Gujarat. Only one, India’s thirdrichest man, Shiv Nadar, is from an offi cially “backward” class, but his rural South Indian Nadar caste has
been upwardly mobile for a century, having long ago shed its traditional association with tapping palm wine. The hold of traditional merchant groups extends deeper into India’s busi ness world than the top tier. A study from 2010 of the country’s 1,000 biggest com panies found that some 93% of board members came from “forward” castes. Fully 46% were Vaishyas. Another study in 2016, looking at a database of 1,530 listed companies, revealed that just fi ve uppercaste, mostly Vaishya, surnames accounted for a tenth of 10,078 company directors. After eliminating repetitions and adjusting for varied spelling, the researchers found that some 500 were either Agrawals or Guptas, among the two most common Bania surnames. So why are Indian Brahmins doing better in business abroad? One answer is that because business in India favours those with established networks, tal ented Brahmins have tended to emigrate. A tradition of bookishness has made it easier for them to pass exams and enter the countries with the greatest opportu nities. Affi rmative action in India has pushed them away, too. When the moth er of Kamala Harris, America’s vice president, was seeking a college educa tion, quotas for lower castes had made it far harder for Tamil Brahmins to gain admission. So she applied for a schol arship in America, earned a phd and became a cancer researcher. If India has conferred on other coun tries an immense amount of talent, it has also exported some of the most troubling aspects of caste. For the past 18 months a California court has been hearing a suit fi led by a Dalit employee at a Silicon Valley fi rm, demanding compensation for alleged discriminatory treatment by highercaste bosses.
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