Caste-based trade among the Nakarattars of Tamil Nadu This is not to say that the Nakarattar banking system resembled an economist’s model of Western-style banking systems … the Nakarattars loaned and deposited money with one another in caste-defined social relationships based on business territory, residential location, descent, marriage, and common cult membership. Unlike in modern Western banking systems, it was the reputation, decisions, and reserve deposits shared among exchange spheres defined according to these principles, and not a government-controlled central bank, that … assured public confidence in individual Nakarattars as representatives of the caste as a whole. In other words, the Nakarattar banking system was a caste-based banking system. Individual Nakarattars organised their lives around participation in and management of various communal institutions adapted to the task of accumulating and distributing reserves of capital. Source: Rudner
Read the extracts from Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India(Rudner 1994) in the box and answer the following questions.
1.What are the significant differences between the Nakarattar bankingsystem and the modern Western banking system, according to the author?
2.What are the different ways in which Nakarattar trading andbanking activities are linked to other social structures?
3.Can you think of examples within the modern capitalist economy whereeconomic activities are similarly ‘embedded’ in social structures?
Answers
Explanation:
Caste-based trade among the Nakarattars of Tamil Nadu This is not to say that the Nakarattar banking system resembled an economist’s model of Western-style banking systems … the Nakarattars loaned and deposited money with one another in caste-defined social relationships based on business territory, residential location, descent, marriage, and common cult membership. Unlike in modern Western banking systems, it was the reputation, decisions, and reserve deposits shared among exchange spheres defined according to these principles, and not a government-controlled central bank, that … assured public confidence in individual Nakarattars as representatives of the caste as a whole. In other words, the Nakarattar banking system was a caste-based banking system. Individual Nakarattars organised their lives around participation in and management of various communal institutions adapted to the task of accumulating and distributing reserves of capital. Source: Rudner
Read the extracts from Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India(Rudner 1994) in the box and answer the following questions.
1.What are the significant differences between the Nakarattar bankingsystem and the modern Western banking system, according to the author?
2.What are the different ways in which Nakarattar trading andbanking activities are linked to other social structures?
3.Can you think of examples within the modern capitalist economy whereeconomic activities are similarly ‘embedded’ in social structures?