22 Asia The EconomistJanuary 27th 201812 jobs no one else will take, such as dispos-
ing of dead animals and cleaning sewers.
In 2017 alone some 90 sewer-cleaners, all
Dalits, were fished out dead from India’s
drains, an activist group reports. So much
are Dalits associated with tidying up other
peoples’ mess that anthropologists have
identified caste attitudes as the main rea-
son for rural India’s uniquely high rate of
open defecation. It was found that many
upper-caste villagers, including Dalits of
higher sub-caste than the drain-cleaners,
see toilets as “polluting” to their homes.
Dalit parents regularly protest that schools
have singled out their children to clean toi-
lets. They also complain that state schools
assign numbers to plates when handing
out free lunches, lest a child whose family
insistson ritual separation from Dalits be
served on “polluted” crockery.
In eastern and southern parts of India
the proportion of respondents who say
they consider Dalits polluting can be as
low as 1%. When asked more specific ques-
tions about interacting with Dalits, how-
ever, these numbers tend to rise, dramati-
cally so in less enlightened parts of India.
In the central state of Madhya Pradesh
some 53% of respondents to one survey
said their family tried to avoid certain
forms of contact with Dalits; surveys of ru-
ral areas in nearby states found rates of 65%
or more. Although 55% of Indians say they
do not mind people of different castes mar-
rying one another, only 4% say they have
married someone from outside their caste.
A study in 2010 of some 1,589 villages in
the western state of Gujarat identified 98
practices, from preventing access to public
wells to obliging Dalits to play drums at
weddings, and ranked them in order of
prevalence. It found, for example, that in
91% of villages Dalits were not allowed in
non-Dalit temples, and in 98% of them
non-Dalits would not serve tea to Dalits in
their homes. The survey also found a high
prevalence of similar practices among dif-
ferent sub-castes of Dalits.
Yet such practices, although still wide-
spread, are declining. Recent surveys sug-
gest that barely a quarter of families still
follow them in some form, compared with
virtually all Hindus before independence.
Devesh Kapur, an economist at the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, recalls visiting a rural
area in the 1970s. “The kind of language
that was used and the whole emphasison
purity and pollution wasjustnothing like
as relaxed as we see now.”
Mr Kapur suggestsit is just asimportant
to consider the “intensity” of practice as
the prevalence. Even among families who
admit to prejudices such as refusing to let
Dalits into their homes, or to use the same
utensils, it is likely that the number of such
taboos has diminished over time. Acceler-
ating urbanisation, bringing with it a much
wider degree of anonymity, is an impor-
tant factor. “Take the fast-food industry,”says Mr Kapur. “I don’t know who has
touched my food anymore, and pretty
soon I stop caring.”
Martin Macwan, a Dalit activist and
one of the authors of the Gujarat study,
cites another example of change. When he
started a service offering free legal advice
20 years ago all his clients were Dalits. Oth-
ers did inquire, but at first balked when Mr
Macwan told them they could have his ser-
vices free of charge if they would drink a
glass of waterin a Dalit home. Now a third
of his clients are non-Dalit.
Indians will not turn liberal overnight,
says Mr Kapur. It happens in stages. The
first is when people stop noticing who is
Dalit; the second when theystop caring.
The third is when they actively want to do
away with untouchability. “I think we are
now somewhere between the first and sec-
ond steps,” he says. 7“A
UNIQUE and sweet taste,” says a
posterdescribing a new brand of
soju, a local firewater, made by Naego-
hyang. The North Korean company started
out making cigarettes (reportedly puffed
on by Kim Jong Un, the country’s dictator).
It has branched out into a thicket of unre-
lated items, including playing cards, sani-
tary towels, sports kit and electronics. It ad-
vertises them in the stadium of the
women’s football team it sponsors.
Naegohyang, which means “My Home-
land”, is one of what appears to be a grow-
ing number of large and diversified busi-
nesses in North Korea. In Kwangbok AreaShopping Centre in Pyongyang, the capital,
Naegohyang’s “7.27” cigarettes compete
with “Hanggong” (meaning “airline”)
brand, produced by Air Koryo, the national
carrier. The latter, too, appears to be ex-
panding into several industries, from mak-
ing potted pheasant and canned mackerel
to operating taxis and petrol stations.
Such conglomerates are often com-
pared to the chaebol of South Korea, but are
best understood as “a private-public part-
nership” says Chris Green of International
Crisis Group, a think-tank. Under North
Korean law the government is the sole eco-
nomic operator and private business is
banned. Although these companies are
nominally owned by the state, they are run
mainly privately and rely, at least in part,
on private funding.
After a famine caused the state ration-
ing system to collapse in the 1990s, Kim
Jong Il, Mr Kim’s father and predecessor,
turned a blind eye to small markets called
jangmadang, where ordinary North Kore-
ans bought and sold goods. Ministries
were later given rights to trade in certain
goods, creating opportunities for entrepre-
neurs down the supply chain. The govern-
ment requires some state-owned compa-
nies and agricultural workers to provide
fixed quotas of goods, but allows them to
use the rest of their output as they see fit.
Not all the conglomerates grew out of
ministries: some started as private compa-
nies but became big enough to require
state patronage. North Korea’s monied
elite provide them with cash and cream off
most of the profits. The overseeing minis-
try provides protection in return for a
cut—a tax, in effect. Itis usually a fixed sum
based on expected profits.
Sanctions, ramped up in recent years,
have further encouraged the development
of conglomerates, says Andray Abraha-
mian of the Honolulu branch of the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, a
think-tank. He points to the example of
Myanmar. Sanctions that blocked access to
foreign goods and investment led, he ar-
gues, to the domination of the economy by
the well-connected. In North Korea, for ex-
ample, it is often relatives of powerful min-
isters and bureaucrats who own trading
companies. Jang Song Thaek, Mr Kim’s un-
cle, who was executed in 2013 for treason,
controlled fisheries, coal mines and ex-
ports of other minerals.
Unlike his father, Kim Jong Un has not
tried to roll back the development of a priv-
ate economy or large, sprawling compa-
nies. Indeed, since 2013 he has stressed the
parallel development of nuclear weapons
and the economy. He has talked about
making more domestically and giving
choice to local “consumers”. In 2014 the
law was changed to allow managers of
state-owned firms to trade and create joint
ventures with foreigners, and to accept fi-
nancing from private investors at home.North Korea’s conglomeratesFrom planes to
mackerel
Seoul
A new breed of company is helping to
prop up the nuclear dictatorshipРЕЛИЗ
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