When union minister Ram Vilas Paswan, who fashions himself as a pan-India Dalit leader, suggested recently that there should be reservations for SCs / STs and OBCs in the private sector, he was merely reiterating what various Dalit groups and parties, including the BSP and the Republicans, have been saying for a long time.
The moot question is: Will it translate into some meaningful action, now that Paswan is an important NDA ally at the Centre?
The question acquires some urgency because even the National Commission for Backward Classes recently recommended to the government for extending 27 per cent OBC reservations to the private sector.
The rationale for the private sector quotas is simple: “Government jobs are shrinking; and newer opportunities are to be found in the private sector alone. Secondly, even bright Dalit graduates, passing from IITs and IIMs, find it difficult to find the right openings in the private sector”.
The industry, however, remains dead against any “imposed quotas”. When the Congress-led UPA I included the private sector quota demand in its Common Minimum Programme (CMP), and then PM Manmohan Singh asked the private sector to act on it, the latter had rejected it outright, saying it was open to the concept of affirmative action through the implementation of various social justice schemes for these sections of the population.
The industry position remains more or less the same. “There’s no question of accepting imposed quotas on the private sector. We cannot compromise with the principle of merit,” says CII president Sumit Mazumder.
While it’s open for debate whether the private sector has done enough towards affirmative action for the marginalised, what’s not open for questions is that the political class is hypocritical at best, when it pays lip-service to the cause.
When asked why Congress could not get the measure implemented even though it got two five-year terms, Congress’s SC Department chairman K. Raju said the “government wanted to take the industry along with it” rather than bulldoze it by imposing its decision.
“We must keep in mind that Singh’s government was undertaking reforms and the idea was to work in tandem with the industry. We undertook vigorous consultations with them but noting definitive could be arrived at. There’s, however, an urgent need for quotas for the depressed sections of the society in the private sector,” adds Raju.
The issue has so far not snowballed into a crisis for the Narendra Modi government and it has not taken a position on the matter.
Its social justice and empowerment minister Thavar Chand Gehlot, however, says that though his party was in favour of such a move, it would take no such decision in haste, as it would be struck down by the courts.“We want to take the industry along in any such move. Consultations are the only way out. A committee of secretaries, which includes senior officials from my department, PMO, and DoPT are carrying forward the consultations and we hope to take a decision by having everyone on board,” he adds.
However, while the Congress had included the private sector quota demand in its CMP, there’s lot of ambiguity in the BJP over the demand. One spokesperson told Businessworld that the “party is yet to formulate its position on the matter”, while another requested not to be quizzed on this particular subject.
Yet another party spokesperson, Bizay Sonkar Shastri, however, was more forthcoming on the subject. Maybe because he is a Dalit. Shastri says the party remains wedded to the position taken during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee years. During his regime, Vajpayee had called a meeting of the industry leaders to explore ways in which this private sector quota demand could be implemented with least resistance, recalls Shastri.
Former secretary in the union government P. S. Krishnan says “his experience with all political parties showed that the mainstream political parties were just not interested in private sector quotas.”
This might well be true. With the private sector not willing to budge from its stated position on the matter, maybe a middle path could be found out, to begin with. Like affirmative action and diversity Bill that the US has implemented in its private sector, maybe the Indian private sector, to begin with, could use its CSR spend — mandated currently at 2 per cent of profits — to train bright youth from the depressed classes, to be absorbed by them at a later stage.
suman@businessworld.in; @sksjumankjha
BW Reporters
Suman K Jha was the deputy editor with BW Businessworld
