Courses

Malavika Nair

Assistant Professor of Economics

Troy University

Dr. Malavika Nair is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Troy University and a member of the Johnson Center for Political Economy. She received her PhD in Economics from Suffolk University. She was an Assistant Professor of Economics at the College of Charleston before joining Troy University. Her research focuses on questions related to monetary and financial institutions, private enterprise in money production and as well as the economics of caste. Her research is published in The The Journal of Institutional Economics, Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Journal of Business Ethics, The Independent Review, The Review of Austrian Economics, and the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.

Blog Posts

Markets Are Breaking Down India’s Caste System, Turning Untouchables into Millionaires

September 10, 2016
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Free Markets and Capitalism

This year marks the 25th anniversary of liberal reforms in India that led to the dismantling of many socialist economic policies and the end of the draconian License Raj. Liberalization has changed life for many in India over the past couple of decades, although much more remains to be done. Just the middle class alone has exploded from 30 million people in 1991 to 300 million in 2014. So this is a good occasion to tell the story of perhaps the most unexpected beneficiaries of these reforms: the rising Dalit millionaires. In recent years, many thousands of so-called “untouchables,” or Dalits,