India's "Untouchables" are an infamous and hidden blight on Indian Democracy. The very bottom rung of an ancient "caste" system that refuses to go away, members of the "Dalit" caste populate the impure and crappy jobs of the country, cannot own land, and have the privilege of passing their misery on to their children in a life crushing hereditary chain of chains.

Originally a tenant of the Hindu religion, the Dalit and caste system were outlawed in India with the birth of democracy sixty years ago. In theory, this should have been a bonanza for the 300 million plus members of the basement club, as they at least garnered the right to vote. But with no education or literacy to speak of, and virtually no resource what so ever, the 30-50% (so many and so remote, there is no agreement on even the size and scope of the class) of the population considered by the government as "Other Backward Classes" are prey to popular democracy's worst excess of promises, promises.

The Dalit of India could well number more than the population of the entire United States of America - fellow travellers in democracy with astonishing extremes of existence. Democracy without capital it appears, is no democracy at all.

India will have to test the foundations of free markets and democracy if the plight of the Untouchables is ever to be reversed. It will require that the classes with power and influence, as well as those who benefit from that power and influence around the globe, voluntarily set conditions for a mammoth demographic to wrest that power and influence away. Politics in India will have to demand the accommodation of a people who bring nothing but turmoil to the concepts of free markets, as over 300 million people will have to be given access to property and wealth, two things they have absolutely zero of right now.

The Dalit exist primarily in the rural areas of India - the largest cities have long ago scrubbed themselves of the issue for the most part by absorbing a few, forcing out what they could, and employing the rest to clean toilets (night soil) and butcher unclean meat (among other nasty things). Handling muck and mud is the Dalits ancient and venerable trade.

India is still a rural nation, and one where all the benefit flows to the urban areas. In this way the Dalit are not just untouchable, but invisible as well. However it appears technology and profit are making some small headway in opening the Dalit to the world outside their tribal villages. According to Rajashree Ghosh of the Boston Globe recently;

"It has been reported that “tele-density” has remarkably increased in the Indian rural scene. In rural India, carrying around a $44 mobile phone can be something of a status symbol. There has been increase in demand for cell phones from rural consumers, who typically earn less than $1,000 a year. These buyers haven't been affected by plunging stock and real-estate prices or tighter bank lending since they typically don't own land and don't borrow. A large majority of them don't have access to regular landline phone networks -- there are only about 40 million landline subscribers in India -- so once cellular coverage comes to their towns or villages they scramble to get their first phones. The world's biggest mobile phone maker, Nokia has launched seven mobile phones for the emerging markets in India. Nokia has launched these mobile phones to introduce low-cost mobile telephony service to India's rural masses."

Once the untouchables can reach out and touch someone things are bound to change, and when they do the world's largest democracy will include all its citizens for the first time. And while that appears a noble aspiration, one has at the same time to wonder what the effect will be on the "free" markets democracy demands, markets wrenched away from the few who control them now. Will democracy stand the test, and what if it can't in a nation of nuclear weapons and seething hostility?