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You can't wish away reservation |
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Written by Sunil Sethi
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Monday, 24 April 2006 |
Sunil Sethi / Business Standarard, New Delhi April 22, 2006
“Toofer” is popular slang in America for “two-in-one”, the sort of
phrase one sees in ice-cream parlours or shopping malls, advertising
two scoops of ice-cream or two pairs of socks for the price of one. But
in the backrooms of corporate America “toofer” has a more insidious
meaning: it means hiring two minorities for the price of one. So if you
hire a woman who’s also black, it’s a “toofer”. You appease the
feminist lobby that demands gender parity in jobs and also practise
affirmative action by employing blacks. In short, you get two
minorities for the price of one. It is one of the curious by-products
of enforcing a policy of affirmative action through peer pressure.
Economic surveys show skewed results, with unexpected new forms of
discrimination emerging—many more black males, for instance, tend to be
less educated, and therefore unemployed and dependent on social
security, than black females.
The search for equal opportunity in education and jobs by the
underclass is by no means exclusive to India; it engulfs the most
affluent societies and welfare states, including Japan, where 3 million
Dalits known as burakumin, having benefited from the fruits of economic
integration, continue to battle against centuries of social exclusion
and injustice. Why should our settlements be placed outside village or
city limits, they ask. Why should our community halls and museums be
segregated from the mainstream?
Even in the early 21st century, discrimination against Japan’s Dalits
is akin to the ostracism of Indian Dalits, who continue to be denied
access to the village well and village temple and often to the local
school and jobs.
It is just as well that the debate for reserving jobs for the
underprivileged in the private sector has just got going. The political
demand is backed by fact: as employment in government and the public
sector slows down, the pressure on the private sector for job quotas is
bound to grow. Even with built-in reservation, the Indian government
sector, contrary to popular perception, is actually a poor employer of
the total workforce: only about 10 per cent as opposed to 37 per cent
in France, or 24 per cent in the US. There are few equal opportunity
regulations in place, as in richer economies, that can ensure that the
underprivileged can put up an equal fight.
What is surprising therefore is the vehemence with which India’s
captains of industry have reacted against the Prime Minister’s
proposal, several arguing that there is no room for reservations in
companies that compete globally. Others, adopting measured tones, have
said that job quotas should be voluntary, not mandatory. High-powered
business associations such as the CII have fallen back on the promise
of appointing committees, which is the time-honoured ploy for deferment
and delay.
Now that the cat is out among the pigeons, it will be edifying to see
how the debate will be played out and what kind of consensus emerges.
Because if educated, rich and powerful employers can’t come up with
good enough ideas to guarantee quality education and jobs, why blame
the state, which has already tried for nearly six decades and appears
defeated by the task?
Of course, some of the best-intentioned ideas can end up warped, like
the pernicious American system of “toofers”. What good would it be for
Indian corporations to come up with purposeless headcounts of the
number of SC/ST candidates they employed as peons or sweepers if it was
only a matter of filling up mandatory quotas? Or for politicians to
force their constituents into private sector jobs, as they used to (and
still do) in bloated public sector enterprises?
In a recent survey carried out by a news weekly, several SC/ST
professionals interviewed admitted that the jobs they held would have
been unthinkable without compulsory reservations in schools and
colleges, which enabled them to acquire higher education. If
reservation in education has helped to some degree, so can reservation
of jobs in the private sector. It is an idea whose time has come.
Reprinted from
http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage.php?storyflag=y&leftnm=lmnu5&leftindx=5&lselect=2&chklogin=N&autono=223402
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Sunday, 20 July 2008
