On Ambedkar Jayanti, I want to share my favorite Ambedkar quote which I think is crucial to understand as an economist and student of the market process. "The Caste System is not merely a division of labour. It is also a division of labourers.“

Often the division of labour, a natural feature of the market process (or any civilized society as Ambedkar says) is conflated with the caste system and is used as a justification to propogate the caste system. This is economic illiteracy turned into propaganda.

The caste system is fundamentally anti market process. Because the market process requires all resources, especially human capital, to be able to move to the highest valued use. Not be stuck in watertight compartments. The caste system is anti merit and anti markets.

This quote is not surprising because Ambedkar was also an excellent economists, though this economic writings are less known and quoted. He was Edwin Cannan’s doctoral student at the LSE. He understood the core of the market process (even though he critiqued it).

Economists who justify the caste system as a consequence of division of labour or worse as a necessity for the division of labor in the market process are charlatans (likely savarna charlatans).