DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: Law Needed to Get Private Firms to Hire Dalits

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

NEW DELHI, Jul 3 2006 (IPS) - With the public sector shrinking under the impact of economic reforms, India’s communist-backed coalition government is set on legislation to encourage private enterprises to reserve jobs for Dalits (the broken), or people at the bottom of Hinduism’s notorious social hierarchy.

While this move is being staunchly resisted by corporate captains, the government views it as necessary affirmative action. Talk of a compromise to provide tax incentives for firms hiring dalits is now rapidly giving way to mandatory reservation.

Leading the initiative to make privately-owned firms fix employment quotas for dalits is Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Meira Kumar. A former diplomat, she is the daughter of the late Jagjivan Ram, an influential dalit politician who held various high-ranking cabinet posts, including that of deputy prime minister, before his death in 1986.

Kumar, a soft-spoken member of the Congress party that leads the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA), has lately been expressing impatience with industry leaders for not acting on their promise of voluntary affirmative action. “There is a lot of pressure on me… I want it to be done amicably and without any type of confrontation. Time is running out’’.

Kumar’s ministry initially favoured the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the private sector to voluntarily accept the idea of quotas for Dalits. But a study she commissioned on the subject said without legal backing, affirmative action would begin to look like charity.

Last week, a panel under the prestigious University Grants Commission (UGC), which controls higher education in this country recommended enabling legislation on the grounds that the private sector had limited capacity in developing skills among Dalits.

Sukhdeo Thorat, chairman of the UGC said he believed that the way forward was for an ‘Equal Employment Opportunity Act’ to make job quotas legally binding alongside an ‘Equal Opportunity Act’ that would ensure equitable distribution of seats in private educational institutions.

Thorat told IPS that the steps now being considered by the government only address present discrimination and do nothing to ‘’compensate for historical exclusion that is reflected in low literacy levels, and insignificant share (of dalits) in the life of the nation’’.

The proposed quota in private enterprises is one of the UPA government’s electoral promises. Kumar began work on the idea in 2004, soon after the coalition government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh came to power.

At that juncture, she had ruled out legislation as a means to mandate job quotas in private firms and had initiated dialogue with associations of businesspersons such as the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the Associated Chambers of Commerce and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

In September 2004, a group of cabinet ministers was set up under the leadership of Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar to examine the issue. In a note to the cabinet submitted earlier this year, the Pawar committee hesitated to endorse the idea of mandatory job reservations for the socially underprivileged.

Noting that such a step would call for a constitutional amendment, the committee stated: “The political desirability…feasibility and legality of amending the constitution need to be carefully considered.”

For much of April and May, urban India witnessed large-scale protests against the government’s move to reserve 27 percent seats in elite educational institutions for middle castes, classified by a 1980 official commission as Other Backward Classes (OBCs).

The proposal for reservation of seats in elite educational institutions, to come into effect from the 2007-08 academic year, was spearheaded by Human Resources Development Minister Arjun Singh. At the height of that controversy, Kumar added fuel to the fire by announcing on May 22 that private firms had two years to undertake voluntary affirmative action.

A crucial difference between legislated and voluntary affirmative action is that under the former, the government may seek to establish a regulatory body along the lines of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the United States. Without legislation, “voluntary action” by the industry would be unverifiable and unaccountable, argue the proponents of reservation.

“I’m in favour of some sort of job reservation in private companies,” Alam Srinivas, business editor, “Outlook” magazine, told IPS. “Many manufacturing enterprises go to economically backward areas because of tax concessions granted by the government and employ local people, including Dalits. Why then are corporate captains opposed to a minimal level of mandatory job reservation for these sections that account for one-fourth of India’s population?” he asks.

Industry representatives are, however, unconvinced by such arguments. “In a world where meritocracy increasingly matters, Indian companies cannot be expected to become globally competitive if criteria other than merit have to be followed while recruiting,” says Vinayak Chatterjee, chairman, Feedback Ventures and head of CII”s national council on infrastructure.

Chatterjee told IPS in an interview that when Indian industry is busy removing the shackles of the past, “the last thing we want are fresh shackles that are not merit based.” At the same time, he is quick to add that corporate leaders are willing to participate in affirmative action programmes “that build appropriate skills and empower the socially underprivileged”.

The lower castes in India have politically risen over the last two decades through regional parties and caste leaders. The Congress was clearly seen as not having done enough for them. The epicentre of the electoral battle is north India, mainly the province of Uttar Pradesh, which elects the greatest number of parliamentarians.

With elections to the Uttar Pradesh provincial assembly slated for February 2007, Kumar cannot afford to toy with voluntary affirmative action and now firmly favours legislation.

Critics of reservation describe the move as a cynical manifestation of “vote bank” politics that cater to narrow sectional interests by overriding considerations of merit and institutional efficiency. Dalits form 17 percent of India 1.2 billion people while another eight percent are classified as tribals.

But, since 1991, when India began to liberalise its economy, job opportunities in government and in public sector enterprises have shrunk whereas employment has gone up in private (including foreign) corporations. Not surprisingly, there has been a clamour building up for reservation of jobs for disadvantaged groups in private firms.

In 2004, the then Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party-led coalition government ran a ‘’Shining India’ campaign that angered the masses. They lost the vote and a Congress-led coalition came to power, supported by the Communist parties. The new government has been trying to sell affirmative action as a measure of ‘inclusive growth’.

‘’Liberalisation has only helped about five percent of the Indian population (of 1.2 billion people) says Sharad Yadav, chief of the regional Janata Dal (United) party which was a constituent of the BJP-led coalition that came a cropper in the 2004 elections. ‘’No party will oppose legislation in favour of the Dalits,’’ he said. (END/IPS/AP/IP/DV/LB/CR/HD/IN/PS/PGT/RDR/06)