With the UPA government going ahead with the move to reserve 27 per cent of seats in higher educational institutions for the OBCs beginning June 2007, and with the NDA hardly raising a whimper, the stage seems set for the next phase of “social justice”: reservations in private sector companies, industries, corporates and businesses.
Questions: Will Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Meira Kumar carry out her threat of getting industry to toe the UPA line in two years? Will industry resist or will it quietly cave in, out of fear if not repraisal? Does the private sector have a duty to shoulder part of the social burden? If it does, at what cost and to what extent? Will quotas affect India’s competitiveness and spell finis to the India Inc Story?
Also read: 58 per cent want quotas in private sector
churumuri 
By going in for the OBC reservations at this breakneck speed, sans any debate, sans any opposition, sans any survey of demand and supply, we have now embarked on a scary road from which there can be no turning back. So, yes, the private sector quotas will come because the buffoons of industry were too buy counting their cash and pretending not to notice when they should have been in our (and the politicians’) faces explaining why this should not be done this way.
But should private sector quotas come? I think yes. The corporates use the government to take the land from the poor; they get tax holidays form the government, they get subsidised power and water from the government, they get red carpet treatment from the government. So, their social commitment should extend beyond generating profits and contributing to the national exchequer.
Plus, the government has very nearly ceased to be the primary generator of jobs. So, that makes it all the more important for them to alleviate some of the government’s burden. We cannot be producing millions of graduates and not having jobs for them, can we?
And if the great Mr Narayana Murthy who came to Washington to oppose reservations in the private sector (in 2000 if I remember right) has now turned around to say that reservations can be considered at “non-technical levels”, then there must be something to be said in favour of quotas. There is no running away from this. A few companies might threaten to go to China, but how many?
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It is a huge social service in the fact that private companies generate so many jobs! What is this need we feel for private corporates to be ‘socially’ responsible?? They generate jobs, they generate profits, they generate taxes. Why is it their job to do social service?
If at all the corporates are being manipulative or bending around laws, it is the government’s fault that its laws are not effective enough!
Stop with all this CSR talk already.
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@Aatmasakshi:
“So, their social commitment should extend beyond generating profits and contributing to the national exchequer. ”
Why?
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Nobody took notice when the Common Minimum Programme of the UPA had a line about reservations for the SCs and STs. It seemed totally impractical. Now, the OBC has let the genie out of the bottle. I think the time has come to revive the Swatantra Party to air the middleclass angle on all these issues. Jaytirth Rao of Mphasis has beent talking about it. He or somebody like him should take the lead or else we are all going to sink. The politicians don’t care as long as they get their votes. Whatever we are seeing has nothing to do with social justice, it is all about personal aggrandisement.
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Because of the sentence preceding and following it.
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One call from Bill (of the Gates fame) to the PM (whoever the person is at that time), and all this will be put to rest. The MNCs are mercenary in their attitude. They want the best and dont give a hoot about what someone was born as. So if they cant find the best here, they will move on.
Will India kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?
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Some of the knowledge industry representatives have expressed their opinions about the quota in general. Now this issue will be a pain as it is going to hit them directly. As many of them fund elections, it remains to be seen how well they handle this issue. The Congress while in power for 40 odd years did little to provide “social justice” to the backwards. Good elementary education during these 40 odd years would have reduced the number of backwards. Rather they were allowed to remain backward and multiply in numbers. The NDA has nothing to say against as this would rock their boat causing more trouble and further disintegration. It is sad that these cheap politicians are stealing the sheen off India Inc at this critical juncture where performance was the driver. Will this mean that an OBC salesman should sell 40% of the targeted numbers to qualify for incentives? Will this mean that an OBC Manager will become Senior Manager after completion of 5 years of service? Or is that a software code written by an OBC engineer should perform only a part of the function for what the code is being written? …well jokes apart, but isn’t this ridiculous? What about those who are non-OBC but are economically backward? The Government remains oblivious to this matter. For the first time, a politician who addressed this was Prakash Jawadekar of the BJP in an interview with CNN-IBN.
The private sector certainly has to play its part and be socially responsible. There are many ways of doing it and some for sure that are relevant here, are to make these companies adopt certain backward areas to provide good education, healthcare, food, clothing, etc., and definitely by not hiring those from certain backgrounds compromising on merit. A classic case for compromising on merit is the slump in the quality of Public Administration, where reservations are in place. All the sops from the Government are fine, but a Corporate has its responsibilities towards the investors and other stake holders who keep them running. Let us not forget, if not for these private companies who have rewarded merit, the Indian economy would have been in tatters (making this entire discussion void) and India would still be perceived as a country that exists near the Himalayas where people eat spicy food.
Unfortunately this has to be tagged as ‘social burden’ because of our political parties, who never made any attempts in earnest to improve the situation. All that they have done is play around with the provisions provided in the Constitution of India. The Government with this policy is going to create lot many professional eunuchs, and why would a competitive world hire them?
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It is incorrect to state that private sector companies / MNCs have always given priority to merit, and not considered the background of the applicant.
Even to this day, jobs are readily available in private sector for those who are close to the management, as opposed to those who apply via newspaper advertisements / employment agencies, irrespective of merit. Similarly, in most MNCs, the colour of your skin, or a non-Indian college degree, unfortunately, plays a major role. Supposedly, caste does not play a major factor here, but other forms of discrimination remain.
In our examination of the ills that plague higher education / public administration due to reservation, let us not paint a rosy picture of what goes on in the private sector in the name of merit.
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The government might have imposed the quota. But it is unlikely to be accepted without a big fight. Quota will not serve the cause of social justice. How can you construct a superstructure without any foundation. When the government does not even provide simple primary education to SCs, STs and OBCs, how can they serve the cause of social justice. If the government is serious, they should nationalize the entire primary education system and create a level playing ground for all. Are we prepared for that?
Let us assume for the sake of the argument that 27% does indeed serve the cause of social justice. Let us also assume that the only way we can help SC-ST-OBCs is through quota. It should then lead us to believe that with higher the quota, we will serve the social cause even better. Why don’t we reserve the remianing 77.5% for OBCs? All through thewritten history for more than 4000 years, 100% of the seats were resrved for the so called forward castes. Now that we have democracy, we should be guided by the majority which belongs to SC-ST-OBCs.
Well if the constitution does not allow it, let us alter the constitution. Well if the supreme court says that we cannot alter the basic nature of the constitution, let us call a new constitution assembly, re write the constitution based completely to right the wrongs of the history and make quota system a major feature of the constitution.
One may say this is all impractical. One would have said the same about 49.5% reservation in 1950. Not only we did not eliminate the quota system as expected by the constitution, we are increasing it and also extending it to more castes. Not only have we not eliminated the caste system, we are making it a permanant part of our society.
The next step for Meira Kaporr after implementing the quota sytem for private sector is to compute the caste percentage of CEOs. We need to have at least 49.5% of CEOs belonging to the right castes. Then we can turn to the scientific pool and ensure that we have at least 49.5 % of it belong to the right castes. Promotion should be based on caste and not on “merit”. Should we adapt the same rule for news papers, TV studios, etc. In other words, we should ensure at every level, for every sector, we have proper caste alloaction. One may say this is all absurd and I am writing some non sensical things. Am I ?
Let us not stop just with our reservation policy for the private sector at a macro level,. Let us take it to a logical conclusion to maximize the utility for majority.
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Minister Meira Kumar does’t have any credentails except she is daughter of B R Ambedkar. What the hell Govt has nothing to say if onc puts his skill, time and money to set up a business to tell him who he has to hire,
This Govt and thier thinking really sucks…………..
India will be doomed if reservation will happened in private sector. Govt bodies already rotten with reservation where unqualified people are sitting in places where their only qualification is they are borned in some backword community.
Lets have reservation only in Railways no where else…………..
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Meira Kumar is the daughter of Jagajivan Ram, former defence minister.
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Reservation in Private sector NO NO…………….. We should n’t allow sub standard & inefficient people to spoil the vibrant private sector. Private sector pays tax. Their responsibility ends there…………..
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the most disturbing aspect of this whole reservation episode is the silence of PM …what a spineless guy, my mind is still vivid of an image of PM and Arjun Singh on a leash held by that 21st century’s Machiavelli
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@Aatmasakshi: Pray tell me, which is this law that defines what social commitment is? And who decides that generating profits, and in turn, taxes is not social commitment?
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I run a company today that has a little over a 100 people. We dont ask people what caste they are. That means there is no discrimination. We are selfish in a way that if the person meets our criteria he or she gets hired. Simple !!
If tomorrow I need to ask a person what caste he or she is, it automatically triggers a discriminatory process. It would greatly affect morale in the workplace. The ramifications of this can only be imagined.
Maybe the China office isn’t a bad idea after all. Other countries like Sri Lanka will benefit from this idiot Arjun Singh.
As Vinay says in the post above…. spineless !!! These guys are “keeps” of the Gandhi family.
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The problem with most Indians (and not just politicians) is that they have a mind-set that views profit as bad. Till a decade back, major industries were owned by government and functioned as huge, slow-moving, loss-making mammoths that generated employment, but had nothing to show for in terms of carrying the economy forward. So, any company that generates profits is viewed suspiciously and we feel they are robbing the country of wealth! It is sad to CEOs appear on news programs, painfully trying to explain how they have not generated ‘huge’ profits and they are initiating social activities!!!
By the same token, I am sure the private-sector reservations will earn a lot of support from similar-thinking advocates, who feel that the private companies can ‘afford’ to have reservations and ‘give’ jobs to the ‘under-privileged’ since they earn so much of money already! The government will do much better to leave it to the market forces. Many IT firms, around 5 years back, explored rural areas to find resources from the colleges there. They also set up training centres and schools. All this happened because there was a demand for skilled engineers.
As I said before, the government’s only job is to frame and implement effective laws for the institution of a just and fair environment for industries to operate in.
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Look at this situation.
A producer while making a movie should have
1 OBC cameraman out of 3
Either Hero/Hero-in should be from OBC
If OBC is the producer, censor committe should ask to do 70% of cuts they have identified. Theaters should charge 80% of the ticket cost
Stunt director should have 27% of stunts man from OBC and when hero is hitting them, he should hit them wih 80% effort and not 100%
God! where are we heading to….
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@S Murthy:
“Even to this day, jobs are readily available in private sector for those who are close to the management, as opposed to those who apply via newspaper advertisements / employment agencies, irrespective of merit.”
I think you are highly misinformed or are making judgements on the basis of what might have happened in a negligibly small number of companies. I don’t think any software professional (at least) would disagree with me on this.
“Similarly, in most MNCs, the colour of your skin, or a non-Indian college degree, unfortunately, plays a major role. Supposedly, caste does not play a major factor here, but other forms of discrimination remain.”
There are at least a hundred shades of brown available in the Indian skin. What color are you talking about? We are definitely not talking about black and white here. Followers of every caste of every religion in India have skin colors that occupy the entire array of shades of brown. There are fair complexioned village dwellers and dark complexioned city dwellers AND vice versa. Then, pray tell me, how does color discrimination hold good in a country like ours?
“let us not paint a rosy picture of what goes on in the private sector in the name of merit.”
Sir, its not a rosy picture if its about merit. You work hard, excell in your academics and you get your due. Now, that’s definitely NOT rosy.
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