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Indian commercial and industrial advancement. Further the Jains are for the last so many decades the prominent indigenous bankers having branches all over India and even abroad and in this capacity they have catered to the enormous financial needs and transactions of all people.” Not surprisingly, the Jains have varyingly been described by scholars as "the Jews of India", "the middlemen minority", "the marginal trading community", "the capitalist without capitalism”, etc. (See Bonacich 1972; Hardiman 1996; Laidlaw 1995: 104; Nevaskar 1971).
The business and trading character of the Jain community has been continuing even today. Thus according to the 2001 Census, only 18.3% of the Jain population was engaged in "working class” jobs (11.7% cultivators, 3.3% agricultural labourers, 3.3% household industry workers); the rest, that is, 81.7% were in “other” occupations. These other occupations comprise various trade and commercial activities and the modern education-based professions such as teaching, engineering, medicine, law, accountancy, management, information technology, etc.
The Jains have also vigorously entered into some new professions such as business management, computer and information technology and healthcare related professions. Thus a large number of them own specialised medical clinics, nursing homes and even hospitals, etc. In the past few years, a number of them have also entered in the field of education by establishing schools and colleges. Some of them have even opened new universities. Theerthankar Mahavir University, Moradabad and Mangalayatan University near Aligarh are cases in point. In these cases it is the individual entrepreneurship rather than the institutional ones (eg. deemed/proposed universities at Ladnun and Shravanbelagola) that need to be underlined.
In recent years the Jains have themselves begun to take pride in their affluence and their contribution to the national exchequer. Thus it is claimed that in spite of comprising only 0.5% of India's total population, the Jains' contribution to the country's GDP is about 25%. The Jains' share in direct income tax revenues is about 24%. About 46% of the share market is held by the Jains. They also own up
121 | Jains in India and Abroad
