Caste and Entrepreneurship in India

It is now widely accepted that the lower castes haverisen in Indian politics. Has there been a correspondingchange in the economy? Using comprehensive dataon enterprise ownership from the Economic Censusof 1990, 1998 and 2005, this paper shows there aresubstantial caste differences in entrepreneurship acrossIndia. The scheduled castes and scheduled tribes aresignificantly under-represented in the ownership ofenterprises and the share of the workforce employed bythem. These differences are widespread across all states,have decreased very modestly between 1990 and 2005,and cannot be attributed to broad differences in accessto physical or human capital.