4/25/24, 3:07 PM Why Brahmins lead Western firms but rarely Indian ones | The Economist

The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20220514235855/https://www.economist.com/asia/20…

Menu Search Log in

Asia | Banyan

Why Brahmins lead Western firms but

rarely Indian ones
India’s big businesses are dominated by traditional merchant and trader castes

Jan 1st 2022 Share

W hat do the chief executives of Adobe, Alphabet, ibm, Match Group

(which owns Tinder), Microsoft, OnlyFans (a subscription service
featuring 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
i i di h b d ll hi d f
https://web.archive.org/web/20220514235855/https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/01/01/why-brahmins-lead-western-firms-but-rarely-indian-ones 1/6
4/25/24, 3:07 PM Why Brahmins lead Western firms but rarely Indian ones | The Economist
companies: in recent years Indians have been granted well over two-thirds of
America’s h-1b visas for highly skilled workers.

Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.

0:00 / 0:00

But these particular bosses share something else, too. They are all top-caste
Hindus. Four are Brahmins. Traditionally associated with the priesthood and
learning, this pinnacle of the caste pyramid’s 25,000-plus sub-groups 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
“scheduled” castes (Dalits, formerly known as untouchables) and “scheduled
tribes”.

And that is surprising, because across India’s own boardrooms it is not

Brahmins who predominate. Members of the former priestly caste tend to excel
less in business than in fields such as academia, science and the law. A quarter
of Supreme 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 smaller subset of Tamil Brahmins.

India’s business bigwigs have instead come largely from traditional trading
communities of the Vaishya or merchant castes. Consider the first 20 entries in
the Forbes list of India’s wealthiest in 2021. Twelve happen to be Banias, a
Vaishya sub-caste of Hindu or Jain moneylenders and traders from north-
western India that accounts for less than 1% of the country’s population. Five of
those Bania billionaires 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 non-Banias, nearly all come from groups with a similarly long association
with commerce. Three of the top 20 are Parsis (Zoroastrians), a tiny minority
https://web.archive.org/web/20220514235855/https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/01/01/why-brahmins-lead-western-firms-but-rarely-indian-ones 2/6
4/25/24, 3:07 PM p ( ) y y
Why Brahmins lead Western firms but rarely Indian ones | The Economist

that has long packed an oversized entrepreneurial punch. Among them is Cyrus
Poonawalla, whose Serum Institute of India is the world’s biggest maker of
vaccines. The sole Muslim on the list (and India’s most generous

philanthropist), Azim Premji, also comes from a traditional merchant group, the
Khojas, Nizari Ismaili Shias originally from Gujarat. Only one, India’s third-
richest man, Shiv Nadar, is from an officially “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 business
world than the top tier. A study from 2010 of the country’s 1,000 biggest
companies 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 five upper-caste, 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, talented
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 opportunities.
Affirmative action in India has pushed them away, too. When the mother of
Kamala Harris, America’s vice-president, was seeking a college education,
quotas for lower castes had made it far harder for Tamil Brahmins to gain
admission. So she applied for a scholarship in America, earned a phd and
became a cancer researcher.

If India has conferred on other countries 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 filed by a Dalit employee at a
Silicon Valley firm, demanding compensation for alleged discriminatory
treatment by higher-caste bosses.

Read more from Banyan, our columnist on Asia:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220514235855/https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/01/01/why-brahmins-lead-western-firms-but-rarely-indian-ones 3/6
4/25/24, 3:07 PM Why Brahmins lead Western firms but rarely Indian ones | The Economist

Democracy declined across Asia in 2021 (Dec 18th)

Myanmar’s generals want Aung San Suu Kyi locked up forever (Dec 11th)
Chinese influence is spurring violence in the Solomon Islands (Dec 4th)

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline "Caste away"

From the January 1st

2022 edition
Discover stories from this section
and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

Share Reuse this content

More from Asia

https://web.archive.org/web/20220514235855/https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/01/01/why-brahmins-lead-western-firms-but-rarely-indian-ones 4/6
4/25/24, 3:07 PM Why Brahmins lead Western firms but rarely Indian ones | The Economist

How Narendra Modi is remaking India into a Hindu state

The prime minister and his party are laying waste to the secular underpinnings of the
constitution

Sri Lanka has no money and no government.

What now?
The prime minister and the cabinet are gone but the
president clings on

Australians are fed up with their two main

parties
They may turn to independents in record numbers in
elections this month

https://web.archive.org/web/20220514235855/https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/01/01/why-brahmins-lead-western-firms-but-rarely-indian-ones 5/6
4/25/24, 3:07 PM Why Brahmins lead Western firms but rarely Indian ones | The Economist
Subscribe Reuse our content Help and contact us

Group subscriptions The Trust Project

Keep updated

Published since September 1843 to take part in “a severe contest

between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid
ignorance obstructing our progress.”

The Economist The Economist Group

About The Economist Group Economist Education Courses

Advertise Economist Intelligence Which MBA?
Press centre Economist Impact Executive Jobs
Store Economist Events Executive Education Navigator
Working Here

Terms of Use Privacy Cookie Policy Manage Cookies Accessibility Modern Slavery Statement

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2022. All rights reserved.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220514235855/https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/01/01/why-brahmins-lead-western-firms-but-rarely-indian-ones 6/6