ABSTRACT
‘Unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him’. Luke 19:26
Development economists have been preoccupied with the problem of increasing the size of the GNP pie to the relative neglect of the distribution of this pie. Despite the recent disenchantment with the viewpoint that all classes share in the benefits of industrial growth, empirical data on the distribution of income, business opportunity, and economic power are in short supply. This study, which focuses on the origins of manufacturing entrepreneurs in a newly industrializing city in coastal Andhra, India, offers one perspective on vertical socio-economic mobility, and the differences in economic opportunities between the privileged and underprivileged portions of the population. A highly disproportional number of the entrepreneurs (especially successful ones) are from twice-born castes and from families with a high economic status. Members of the dominant castes, leading classes, and large business houses can avert the threat of democratization, industrialization and modernization to the positions of their families by using the advantages of the past—property, influence, status and so forth—to obtain the concessions, experience, education, training, and industrial capital usually essential for successful industrial undertakings.
