The 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics has reignited public interest in the connection between innovation, disruption, and economic growth. Awarded to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt, the prize recognised their contributions to explaining how technological progress and the process of ‘creative destruction’ enable long-term growth.

Building on Joseph Schumpeter's work, who, in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), described capitalism’s ‘perennial gale of creative destruction’ as the force that ‘incessantly revolutionises the economic structure from within,’ this year’s award upheld innovation as a key mechanism driving contemporary economies. 

In India, however, public discussion took a different turn. Across media platforms – from Sansad TV’s Perspective to national newspapers, televised debates, and YouTube explainers – commentators invoked Hindu mythology to interpret Schumpeter’s idea. Many drew direct parallels between the ‘perennial gale’ and Shiva’s tandava, the cosmic dance of creation and dissolution.

One widely shared commentary noted that in Shaiva traditions, the tandava ranges from the softer Ananda Tandava, symbolising gradual change, to the fierce Rudra Tandava, which destroys the old when gradual transformation is no longer enough. In these interpretations, Shiva’s cosmic dance serves as a metaphor for capitalism’s regenerative power; just as endings allow for renewal, obsolete firms and technologies must give way to foster innovation and growth. 

Altthough often brief, the repeated use of this analogy indicates a persistent tendency to link modern economic ideas with spiritual or civilisational narratives. In doing so, they contribute to the naturalisation of spiritual narratives as self-evident truths and hide the historical and social structures, specifically caste-based inequalities, which shape the functioning of capitalism in India.

Caste and the myth of a universal capitalism

By invoking Shiva as a universal symbol of renewal, media discourses have overlooked the structure of Indian capitalism, which is inextricably entangled with the caste structure. The concept of creative destruction, to which such analogies refer, was first articulated by Joseph Schumpeter. Inspired by Karl Marx, Schumpeter defined the ‘gale of creative destruction’ as a ‘process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionises the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old, incessantly creating the new.’ According to him, disruption was the engine of capitalist progress, and without disruptions in the market, there would be no development. 

Also read: 2025 Economics Nobel Prize Shows Why Innovation Alone Won't Secure Growth

The 2025 Nobel laureates in economics are celebrated for refining this idea that growth emerges when capitalism is allowed to reinvent itself through innovation and creative destruction.

Ideologically, according to this view, modern prosperity is the outcome of innovation, maintained by free-market capitalism. It rejects revolutionary change and presents capitalism itself as the guarantor of progress, renewed through ‘creative destruction’. This narrative conceals capitalism’s recurring crises by presenting them as stages of renewal The notion of innovation-driven growth through creative destruction rests on the principle of planned obsolescence. This is a mechanism that ensures continuous profit by rendering previous products and technologies outdated. This process has evolved from industrial to today’s platform capitalism, where data and algorithms define power. However, what remains consistent is that the labour – the real source of creativity and productivity – remains undervalued and diminished by technological dominance.

This paradox is most evident in India’s IT sector, often seen as the symbol of innovation-led growth. The industry thrives on rapid innovation cycles that make older technologies obsolete; for example, cloud computing replacing data centres, to AI automating coding and analytics. However, the gains remain unevenly shared. The beneficiaries of the caste system, the ‘Upper-castes’ and urban workers dominate high-skill roles, while routine, automatable jobs are largely held by the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) and the Other Backwards Classes (OBC) workers. Far from equalising opportunity, creative destruction in this context reinforces existing social hierarchies under the guise of innovation.

An empirical assessment of the IT sector’s image as a driver of social inclusion, based on NSSO data, reveals a starkly uneven reality. SCs and STs have only a 10 per cent chance of IT employment, compared to 27 per cent for upper castes. Even when employed, SC and OBC workers face segmentation and earn 24.9 and 22.5 per cent less, respectively, than upper-caste counterparts. Despite its association with modernity, IT employment remains shaped by caste and social capital.

A complementary study by the Digit Research Centre shows that technological change continues to reproduce caste disparities, where disadvantaged groups cluster in routine, automatable jobs, while privileged castes dominate higher-paid analytical and interpersonal roles. Together, these findings show that digital transformation in India has deepened, not flattened, caste inequalities.

Similarly, Kain’s (2024) ethnographic study illustrates how social hierarchy and exclusion affect gig workers in India. Platforms insist on branded “uniforms”, bright shirts with bold logos, as markers of professionalism. But these same uniforms also signal workers’ social identity. In many restaurants, separate passages are designated for the entry and exit of gig workers, reflecting caste-based segregation intended to deliver goods and services without “polluting” the spaces of largely middle-class, upper-caste Hindu consumers.

These studies show that technological progress in India is neither neutral nor purely economic but is embedded in existing social hierarchies. Far from reflecting a universal rhythm of renewal, as the Shiva analogy suggests, creative destruction reproduces inequalities in new forms. The celebration of disruption and innovation as engines of progress obscures the continuity of caste, the structure that continues to determine who benefits from growth and who is displaced by it. 

Myths and hidden inequalities 

Even when media references to Shiva’s tandava are not always intentionally ideological, presenting economic disruption as a spiritual or timeless cycle repeatedly can reinforce existing social hierarchies. In Mythologies (1957), Roland Barthes, a French essayist and social and literary critic, argues that bourgeois culture creates myths that make its own values seem natural, universal, and obvious. Through such myths, everyday cultural signs, such as images, words, and stories, work to normalise and legitimise social hierarchies, including those of class and economy. 

In the Indian context, the tandava, which is already a myth of cosmic destruction and renewal, becomes re-signified or reinterpreted through contemporary media as a second-order myth in Barthes’s sense. Tandava’s original theological meaning is appropriated to symbolise the turbulence of capitalist transformation.

Economic disruption is thus reimagined as part of India’s spiritual continuity and civilisational wisdom. In this process, a historically specific and politically charged phenomenon (like creative destruction) is made to appear inevitable, timeless, and morally neutral. This naturalisation obscures the structural inequalities it produces.

This analogy functions in two key ways:

1. Naturalisation of capitalism: Economic disruptions, such as job losses, inequality, and social dislocation, are framed as cyclical and inevitable, reiterating the rhythm of the cosmic dance.
2. Depoliticisation of inequality: By turning ‘creative destruction’ into a sacred rhythm instead of a social process, the analogy obscures how caste and class shape who benefits and who is displaced by growth. This makes systemic inequalities appear culturally accepted and beyond critique.

Indeed, media references to Shiva’s tandava can have both rhetorical and pedagogical effects as well. For instance, linking abstract economic ideas to familiar religious imagery may make concepts like innovation and creative destruction more intelligible to wider audiences.

In the postcolonial context, such comparisons can also work as a form of soft power. They link modern economic ideas to ancient Hindu philosophy, suggesting that these concepts can be explained through local, and not merely Western traditions.

But the point is, while such references can make complex concepts more visually and conceptually familiar, they also push structural inequalities into the blind spot of public perception. By framing economic change as something that is culturally continuous and sanctioned spiritually, these narratives obscure how caste continues to determine who benefits from innovation and growth and who is displaced by it. 

Shefali is an MPhil graduate in Modern South Asian Studies from the University of Cambridge.

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