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 | Say no to reservations in private sector Ravi Shanker Kapoor The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government continues to confuse businessmen and common people on the issue of reservations in the private sector. Typically, a minister announces that the government is committed to ensuring quotas in the private sector; the next day, another minister tries to assure the business chambers that there would be no compulsion to offer quotas. A group of ministers (GoM) was set up last year under Union Agriculture, Food & Civil Supplies Minister Sharad Pawar to sort out the issue of reservations in the private sector. GoM members have been talking to the representatives of industry associations. While the politicians play their blow-hot-blow-cold game, the business community is dying of anxiety whether or not they would be shackled by yet another instrument of “social change.” Meanwhile the champions of dalits, other backward castes, etc, continue to cry hoarse about reservations which, they claim, would redeem the “weaker sections of society.” They claim that reservations, and those too caste-based reservations, alone can guarantee “social justice.” Nobel laureate Fredrick Hayek called the concept of social justice a “mirage.” India is, of course, light years away from the great philosophy of Hayek, mired as its public discourse is in the choppy waters of political correctness and cretinism. This makes it easier for the self-styled messiahs of the poor to peddle their spurious doctrines to a paradise on earth. According to Social Justice Minister Meira Kumar, industry should not be “insensitive” to the plight of dalits and support reservation in the private sector. The rationale? When industry needed help and protection in its growing years, “the government did the maximum possible” for it. It’s payback time for industry, thundered the minister some time ago at a function organized by Assocham (Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry) in the Capital. “We are asking them (businessmen) to give concessions and quotas to the deprived sections, as they themselves availed of such quotas,” she said. “They got land at concessional rates, exemption of stamp duty, waiver on registration duty, subsidies in capital investment, transport, and exemption, and refund in octroi duties and taxes.” Kumar’s arguments are flawed on many counts. To begin with, industry is not insensitive to the needs of the poor. Almost all major business houses are involved in philanthropic activities, from building schools and colleges to setting up medical facilities. The Tatas even went to the extent of helping out fundamental research, something from which the business group could hardly benefit. To say that “the government did the maximum possible” to benefit industry is incorrect. After independence, Kumar’s party, the Congress, did the maximum to cripple industry. A variety of laws were formulated to strangulate industry; licensing was introduced in almost every sector; novel forms of controls and regulations were imposed on entrepreneurship; a plethora of rules and regulations created the Inspector Raj, a menace every prime minister has promised eradicating—and failed to do so. The sops mentioned by the minister—land at concessional rates, exemption of stamp duty, waiver on registeration duty, subsidies in capital investment, transport, and exemption, and refund in octroi duties and taxes—did not alleviate the misery of business by even a fraction. Indeed, industry would have done much better without such “help.” As for protection, it was not as much industry’s demand as government policy that tariffs were raised and the domestic business shielded from global competition. In any case, the government had crippled the domestic sector by insane controls to such an extent that protectionism was unavoidable. When the government decided to open up the economy because of the 1991 crisis, it did not heed to the domestic industry demand that liberalization should precede globalization. Kumar’s arguments are not only fallacious but also based on the further perversion of the fraudulent and illiberal concept of social justice. Even the most prominent egalitarians in India like Jaiprakash Narayan, Acharya Narendra Deva, Acharya Kriplani, and communist theoreticians would never have approved of social justice as championed by the like of Kumar; for, in Kumar’s scheme of things, social justice is reduced to reservations and that too caste-based reservations. But, obsessed as they are with competitive populism, Kumar and other casteist politicians have little regard for even their own icons. So, according to a report in The Times Of India, “A ginger group of OBC politicians has linked up with the National Commission for Backward Classes to lobby for finishing the proposals of Mandal panel: extension of 27% quota to central universities and in institutions like AIIMS, IITs and IIMs. The demand covers admissions and appointments. They have astutely backed the proposed quota for SCs/STs in private sector on the condition that OBCs are also given a piece of the pie. The collaboration, it is calculated, would invest the demand with considerable force.” Meanwhile Kumar says the ruling UPA has a “strong will” to grant reservations to SC/STs in private sector but it doesn't want any confrontation, clash or friction between the government and the industry on this issue. However, “the government will do it gracefully in a positive atmosphere and amicable manner,” she said. Thank god for small mercies! It is time industry woke up to the new threats emanating from irresponsible politicians and took concerted action to get reservations in the private sector nipped in the bud. Unfortunately, Kumar is not alone in promoting the idea of reservations in the private sector. Her ministerial colleague Ram Vilas Paswan regularly horrifies the business chambers by espousing the cause of quotas. What is even more unfortunate is the fact that the idea of reservations finds favor with not only the UPA but almost the entire political class. Even the Bharatiya Janata Party, the supposedly business-friendly and pro-upper caste party, announced in its Vision Document just before the recent elections its desire to introduce reservations in the private sector. It is time for the business community and all patriotic Indians to oppose the idea of reservations before it is too late. For reservations would be a repellent to investment in India. And it is only investment and augmented economic activity that can bring in prosperity, increase employment, and eliminate poverty. Posted on : 2/4/2005 Mail this article to your friend |