http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2005&leaf=02&filename=8321&filetype=html EPW Reservation Controversy February 26, 2005
Understanding the Politics of Reservation A Perspective from Below Unless the government honestly debates all the issues relating to the proposal on reservation in the private sector, dalits will see it as only a political gimmick, that is, one, a ploy to garner their votes; two, intended to grant legitimacy to the private sector; and, three, an attempt to thwart the development of the emerging independent dalit assertion. Vivek Kumar The Congress-led UPA government has started a dialogue on affirmative action including reservation in the private sector for dalits. The Congress-led government in Maharashtra had even introduced a bill in this regard before the 2004 assembly polls. It is interesting to note that the Congress government in Madhya Pradesh had implemented a supplier and dealership diversity for dalits in January 2002. A question is why at all are Congress-led governments so eager to provide reservation to dalits in the private sector? This question is significant because there has not been any genuine demand by the dalits for reservation in the private sector. There have been no movements worth mentioning for reservations. Even the Backward and Minorities Communities Employees� Federation (BAMCEF), the biggest employee group of dalit employees, has not made this demand. Yet the Congress is thinking along these lines. In the past too it was the Congress, the then Indian National Congress led by Mahatma Gandhi, which forced Babasaheb Ambedkar to accept reservations under the Poona Pact, though Babasaheb had asked for separate electorates for dalits and had achieved that as well. But he had to sacrifice those achievements to save Gandhiji�s life. Since then it is an established fact that the Congress has benefited from the reservation under Poona Pact by getting elected only those dalits who speak its language [Ambedkar 1991: 88-102, Ram 1982]. Therefore, notwithstanding the importance of dialogue for reservation in the private sector, because of shrinking job opportunities in the government/public sector and the spread of the private sector in wake of liberalisation. The dalits have their own doubts about the policy. Is it only a political gimmick or is the government serious, they wonder. This scepticism is easy to understand. The various governments, in which the Congress has been most prominent, have not been able to fulfil the allotted quota of reservation of 15 per cent for scheduled castes and 7.5 per cent for scheduled tribes enshrined in the Constitution under Article 335 even after 57 years of commencement of this policy. Similarly, the governments at the centre took 44 years to identify OBCs and implement reservations for them. So the logical question is that if the governments have not been able to implement the reservation policy for so long, how long will they take to implement a policy which has not yet born? Can any one specify the time which the legislature, judiciary, and bureaucracy will take to dovetail the policy so that it can be implemented smoothly? Need for a White Paper If the government is truly sincere about opening up employment opportunities to the socially oppressed, it must first come out with a white paper on the present status of reservations. Such a document must detail how many jobs have been identified for reservation in all the sectors, how many jobs have been filled and how many vacancies have remained vacant. It should look into the causes of omission and commission, and help plug the gaps as well. If there are problems at the government end it should specify them, and if at the dalit community�s end then some immediate measures should be taken. Further, if the government is convinced that reservations can uplift dalits, it should outline the time table in the paper to fulfil the backlog of vacancies within the government and public sector. In the same vein, the government of the day should extend reservations to dalits and OBCs in the key offices of the country like the judiciary, army, vidhan parishads, Rajya Sabha and various regulatory bodies in different sectors which are still under the government�s control. Instead of taking these aforesaid steps the government is having a dialogue with the private sector and that too without any concrete preparedness. The government should have prepared itself on certain issues, which would help it in negotiating with the private sector. How Private is the Private Sector? For instance, the government should reveal what is so private about the private sector. The government has not analysed whether this sector should be called a private sector at all, especially in the light of the types of concessions given to it by the government � like land and registration charges at concessional rates, tax holidays, bank loans, besides the indirect contribution made by government in their development in the form of maintaining law and order, development of technology, research and development, trained human resources, road, rail and air and communication facilities, etc. Has the government documented the total cost of these subsidies? Had it done so, it would have been easier for it to show the real worth of the private sector. There is also a need to tell the masses how government money was provided as doles during the private sector�s infancy. The Tatas and Birlas have thrived only on public money of the past and enjoyed government the patronage. Under these circumstances, can we call the private sector really private? Evaluating Merit and Efficiency Similarly, the government should have prepared a concept paper on the issue of �merit� in general and �merit and efficiency� in the private sector in particular. This is necessary because whenever the issue of reservation crops up, it is certain that the whole dalit community is portrayed as devoid of any merit. Nobody even cares to note that there are millions of dalits who survive without availing of reservation. In this evaluation the rest of society is depicted as meritorious while the merit of the other side has never been assessed. The government should critically evaluate the performance of the private sector in terms of its inefficiency, and uncompetitiveness. For instance, by telling the citizens the amount of money lost by the public sector banks because of the �Non-Performing Assets� of the private sector and the large tax evasion. The government should also reveal the number of private industries which die every year or which declare themselves bankrupt. It must declare the number of fraudulent non-banking financial companies, which have duped the public of their money. In this regard, � The Ministry of Company Affairs (MCA) has released a concept paper on the Companies Act. In this lengthy document, the MCA has dealt with the concept of �vanishing companies� � The concept paper has identified 122 such companies (which raised public money to the tune of Rs 838 crore)� [Bhutani 2004]. The government can draw on such material. The merit and efficiency of the private sector can be easily assessed by the contribution it makes to the world export market, it is a meagre 0.7 per cent only. Similarly, the same private sector has been demanding a level playing field for itself with the onset of the process of liberalisation. How can the private sector yet boast of its efficiency and merit? If Indian industry was so meritocratic why is it that it has not produced a single brand or item, which can be called an international commodity? Above all, what right do the industrialists of today have to call themselves as meritorious when most owners of established business houses have inherited the companies. None of the top industrialists is a first generation industrialist. They might have expanded the business but they could do so only because they belong to a certain pedigree. That is why a number of social scientists have rejected the view of �merit�. They have argued that the rewards in the educational and economic system are not based on merit. The educational and occupational attainments are related to the family background rather than talent and ability. Thus, the children of the wealthy and powerful tend to obtain high qualifications and then highly rewarded jobs irrespective of their ability. It is this that the educational system disguises with the myth of meritocracy [Bowles and Gintis 1976]. In the same vein the social scientists have also rejected the narrow definition of merit in terms of intelligence, which is a measure of just one portion of the total spectrum of human mental abilities associated with knowledge and memory rather than the ability of reason [Jensen 1973]. Therefore, the government should, in fact, seek responses from the intelligentsia � particularly the dalit intelligentsia � to explode the myth of merit once for all. Theories to defend the dalits on the issue of merit are needed. Starting from the contribution made by dalits� labour in running the economy and polity of the nation to the role of mid-wives played by the dalit women, should be evaluated and highlighted. Who decides which occupation is of a �functional importance� and therefore accorded higher prestige [Tumin 1967]? And why should merit only be evaluated in terms of performance of these �functionally important� occupations? Why cannot the labour of the dalits be a commodity worthy enough to be called creative, artistic, and hence prestigious? Secondly, to detonate the myth of merit the government should use its own data to show that enough trained and qualified dalits students are available for jobs in the private sector (see the Table). This can negate the argument put forward by the private sector that the dalit candidates are not available or suitable from the available data. Further, the government should also start collecting data on other streams of professional education gained by dalits to show the true size of the pool of talent among the dalits. Until now the data published by the SC/ST commission includes only the traditional educational degrees like the BA, MA and BE, which does not indicate the real potential of the dalits. Table: Number of Dalit Students in Different Streams -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Arts Graduates (1) Science Graduates (2) Commerce Graduates (3) BEd (4) MBBS (5) Bed (6) MA (7) MSc (8) Professionals (4+5+6) Total (1-8) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3,61,894 1,42,686 82,118 30,193 12,615 13,004 44,093 10,134 55,812 6,32,689 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Source: National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Sixth Report, 1999-2000 and 2000-01. Evaluating Merit Are the communities who do not avail of constitutional reservation necessarily meritorious, dalits wonder. They evaluate the Indian performance on the basis of the traditional social structure to asses the �merit� of the aforesaid groups. There were varnas � brahman, kshatriya and vaishya assigned with particular functions, which were initially open but became closed later. The brahman had the privilege of teaching, the kshatriya of protecting all creatures, and vaishya living by commerce [Dumont 1970:69]. Today dalits ask if the brahmans were so meritorious then why is it that half of the country�s population is still illiterate? If the kshatriyas were so meritorious why then could they not defend our borders? The Tartars, Mughals, British, etc, all defeated them and subjugated us. Similarly, if the vaishyas were so meritorious then why is the trade and commerce of India in a shambles? In contemporary times as well, look at the low Human Develop Index (HDI) of India. In terms of HDI, India is placed at the 124th position in the group of 174 countries. Similarly in the �Corruption Perception Index� for the year 2004 India ranks 90th in the group of 146 countries (Transparency International India Report 2004). Above all the external debt of India is a whopping Rs 5,11,861 crore [Economic Survey 2003-04:128]. All the meritorious economists and administrators are managing the affairs of the country without any reservation, even then why is the situation so bad? The situation in science and technology which is considered the realm of high specialty and hence kept out of bounds of reservation is also not very encouraging. In this regard, �Professor Nian Chai Liu and his colleagues at the Shanghai Jio Tong University in China spent two years collating and analysing the output of 2,000 universities worldwide and �published their results by ranking 500 universities. Only three universities/institutions from India figure in the top 500 � the Indian Institute of Science (260) and the Indian Institutes of Technology at Kharagpur and Delhi (459) and (460)� [Mohan 2004]. In this context it will be worth mentioning to look at the merit of the doctors working in the most prestigious hospital of the country. If the Indian doctors and medical specialists are so meritorious then why is it that most of the VVIPs run away to foreign countries for treatment of the simplest of their illnesses. Even the former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, an ardent supporter of �Swadeshi�, had to call in an NRI orthopaedic surgeon for his knee operation. Last but not the least, is it really logical and possible to measure the merit of the professionals passing out from the various private engineering, medical, management, etc, colleges where a seat can be bought for few lakhs of rupees? Private Sector: Discrimination It is a fact that there exists discrimination in the private sector. Beteille (1997: 203) accepts that �Although the new occupations in the office and factory are in principle caste free, the association between caste and occupation is carried over from the traditional to the modern occupational settings. The various castes are not represented in the occupations according to their proportions in the population. The inferior castes in general, and the scheduled castes in particular, are very thinly represented in the superior administrative and managerial occupations. In a society which has adopted the principle of equality of opportunity but whose members remain acutely conscious of caste distinctions, these disparities are now a source of anxiety and concern.� Further, he argues that, �There are several reasons why the untouchables and other inferior castes are so thinly represented in the higher occupations. While Article 15 prohibits discrimination on the grounds of caste and Article 16 guarantees equality of opportunity in public employment, there is, in fact widespread prejudice against the inferior castes in general and the untouchables in particular. This prejudice is not easy to measure and by its nature it is difficult to establish in the individual case. It operates more actively at the lower levels of employment where recruitment, tenure and promotion are to a large extent personalised than perhaps at the higher levels where these processes are organised in a more impersonal way. But there is reason to believe that some candidates are at every level rejected on account of prejudice even when they have the necessary qualification� (ibid:203-04). Similarly, the discrimination exists in the private sector of account of denial of equal employment opportunities especially because of an informal and opaque medium of recruitment. In the name of cost-effective choices of the most suitable person, these private sector industries make appointments of personal choices without adverting the jobs. Vernacular newspapers and backward areas are deliberately blacked out to reduce the pool of talent; a foreign degree and high pedigree become the basis of evaluating merit. This recruitment pattern is increasing day by day. Human Resource Head of the software company, Adobe India, says, �Employee referrals are a major source of recruitment for us. Our employees understand our requirements very well and have friends with a similar academic background and skills.� In the same vein, the director of MAQ Software argues, �we reach candidates with better profiles who cannot be reached otherwise through other channels like online sites or placement agencies�. Apart from Abode and MAQ Software, there are a few more in the same league like Infosys and Wipro who have internal employee�s referral schemes for employment. Not only that, if they hire an employee on the basis of referrals then the employee who has referred the new recruit is paid an increment as well [Singh 2004]. This is discriminatory practice, which has gone on for long in the private sector in India. Though there is no research on the demerits of this system of recruitment in India, studies abroad suggest that the discrimination does exist. Commenting on the demerits of the informal system of recruitment in UK, the Commission for Racial Equality once observed, �As far as informal recruitment methods in many industries are concerned, ethnic minorities never come to know of vacancies because they have never worked in those industries. They are unable to pass on to their friends and children the information on vacancies. Therefore such establishments will always remain all white� [Anwar 1990: 58]. Further, �The commission�s investigations have shown that the word of mouth recruitment is unlawful as it discriminates indirectly against particular racial groups. However, even when these methods of recruitment are corrected to remove their unlawful effect, it can take many years before an impact is made on the opportunities for ethnic minority people.� Though the aforesaid fact is from abroad they can just as well be relevant for the Indian industrial system and the plight of the dalits who are under-represented in the private sector. Therefore, unless the government debates, highlights and discusses the aforesaid issues, the general masses and dalits will not be aware about the myths of reservation. If they fail to do so, then the dialogue on reservation in private sector will be considered only a political gimmick on more than one account. One, a ploy to garner dalit votes. Two, to grant legitimacy to the private sector and that too by using the most deprived section of society. And last, but not the least, to thwart the development of the emerging independent dalit assertion and thereby the independent dalit movement. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] References Ambedkar, B R (1991): �What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings And Speeches, Vol 9, Education Department Government of Maharashtra, Mumbai. Anwar, Muhammad (1990): Redressive Action Policies in the United Kingdom, Popular Prakashan, Mumbai. Beteille, Andre (1997): Society and Politics in India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Bhutani, Mukesh (2004): �Keeping Company with Phantoms�, The Indian Express, September 25, New Delhi. Bowles, Samuel and Herbet Gintis (1976): Schooling in Capitalist America, Routledge and Kegan Paul, US Dumont, Louis (1970): Home Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications, Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Jensen, A R (1973): Educational Differences, Methuen, London. Mohan, Dinesh (2004): �The Science of Dumbing Down�, The Indian Express, July 16, New Delhi. Ram, Kanshi (1982): The Chmcha Age (An Era of the Stooges), Vedic Mudranalaya, Delhi. Singh, Rupashree (2004): �Refer to Win�, Hindustan Times, New Delhi. Tumin, Melvin, M (1967): Social Stratification: The Forms and Functions of Social Inequality, Englewood Cliffs, Princeton Hall. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> DonorsChoose. A simple way to provide underprivileged children resources often lacking in public schools. Fund a student project in NYC/NC today! http://us.click.yahoo.com/5F6XtA/.WnJAA/E2hLAA/1dTolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> �������������������������������������������������������� This is ZESTCaste whose members watch India's painful journey to society's de-casteisation. Members are encouraged to post messages to [email protected] If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join ==theZESTcommunity====================================== [1] ZESTCurrent: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCurrent/ [2] ZESTEconomics: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTEconomics/ [3] ZESTGlobal: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTGlobal/ [4] ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/ [5] ZESTPoets: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/ [6] ZESTCaste: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ [7] ZESTAlternative: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTAlternative/ [8] TalkZEST: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TalkZEST/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
