Social cause: Tata invests Rs 1 crore in Delhi Dalit enterprise

In 2011 Ratan Tata had openly endorsed the cause of Dalit entrepreneurs at a trade fair organised by the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industries.

“We should all assist in letting small enterprises, especially those from the Dalit community, to become big and global enterprises,” he had said then.

Two years, later his successor, Cyrus Mistry, the current chairman of the Tata Group, has carried forward that sentiment and invested Rs 1 crore for a 33 percent stake in a Delhi-based Dalit enterprise that manufacturers industrial helmets.

According to a report in the Economic Times, Nand Kishore Chandan, a Dalit entrepreneur holds an electrical engineering diploma and is a veteran in plastics moulding. The new venture, which is in the process of setting up its factory in Ghaziabad, has already received its first tranche of orders for over 50,000 helmets from a clutch of group companies including Tata Steel, Tata Motors.

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[caption id=“attachment_871211” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] AFP[/caption]

While social upliftment has always been a priority for the Tatas, the investment by Mistry is being touted as shot in the arm for the concept of ‘supplier diversity’ wherin large corporations seek out, handhold, and buy products and services from entrepreneurs belonging to under-privileged and minority sections.

For centuries, dalits have been at the bottom of the income and social pyramids. Most Dalits have almost no assets, so startup loans are nearly impossible to get - even when the government announces special schemes. As new entrants, they lack the familial and social connections on which most small-scale businesses depend .This is where the private sector comes in.

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Surinder Jodhka, a sociologist at the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, New Delhi, conducted an ethnographic survey of two flourishing industrial towns"Panipat and Saharanpur" and discovered that the main plight of Dalit entrepreneurs was a lack of of social network and resources. “Even when they had economic resources they were crippled by the lack of social resources,” he says in an EPW article.

More initiatives like the Tata investment will only further the cause of social uplift.

In 2011, there were 30 Dalit businessmen who had defied odds and caste prejudice to become billionaires in their own right. With the help of the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DICCI), these untouchable entrepreneurs organised a big business fair in Mumbai, India's financial capital .

To help the development of Dalit capitalism, the Indian government passed a long-awaited measure later that month requiring the state and public companies to make 20% of their purchases from Indian businesses. A fifth of those purchases - 4% of the total - will have to be made from businesses belonging to SCs or STs (Scheduled Tribes - members of the country’s old tribes.)

In January 2013, President Pranab Mukherjee also awarded founder of Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry ( DICCI) Milind Kamble the Padma Bhushan. Milind Kamble, chairman of Fortune Construction, who started as a sub-contractor, gave dalit entrepreneurship a profile. His success spurred him to focus on securing a share for dalits in the nation’s GDP. DICC has a list of 10,000 self-made Dalit entrepreneurs with an annual turnover between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 100 crore.

Last week, finance minister P Chidambaram launched the first social impact fund registered with the Securities and Exchange Board of India. Called the DICCI (Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry) SME Fund, it is a venture capital corpus and aims to raise Rs 500 crore over 10 years and finance dalit entrepreneurs to set up businesses.

But as Kamble in an earlier interview with Firstpost said , " big business houses are the ones which can provide the guidance to those involved in small aspiring enterprises."

Is India Inc listening?