Sunday, August 31, 2008

Wealth as Cure for Caste Bias

As an aside, it's remarkable that these articles are appearing in the NYT - and kudos to them for doing so. I just hope they bother circulating them around the editorial board. Markets are currently our most efficient way to recognize merit - so it should follow that markets reduce prejudice with time (NYT). What India's poor needs are more markets, not less of them:

“Economic expansion is going to neutralize caste in 50 years,” he predicted. “It will not end caste.”
I'm reminded by a quote by a noted Canadian asset manager when asked about the limitations to women and minorities in finance. To paraphrase: 'it doesn't matter if they're a purple martian midget so long as they bring in the numbers.'

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