10 highlights
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“Major American businesses have made it clear that the skills needed in today’s increasingly global market place can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas and viewpoints.”
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Caste is also being raised as a factor of discrimination in the U.S.
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It is a sad comment on the state of Indian industrialists’ social consciousness that such discussions have begun in an organised way in the U.S. before they have been thought of in India itself.
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Many commentators have remarked that the need to show diversity reflects some of the global concerns of multinational companies: they lose if their power structure appears to be entirely white.
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In contrast, Indian industry sees competitiveness as crucial in a global era - and sees “reservations” as contrary to competitiveness.
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In the U.S. it is now assumed by most that that there is an equal distribution of capacity among all social groups, that apparent differences are social and not biological - and that the very existence of diverse social groups means that the businesses which seek to provide commodities for their markets have to have representation. Thus U.S. companies supported the affirmative action case not out of altruism, not out of some perceived recompense for past oppression, but out of their own perceived self-interest.
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Dalits and OBCs have generally argued for reservations in terms of their own needs, largely in terms of the requirement of social justice which India has committed itself to from the time of independence. This is of course quite justified, but that has left a vacuum regarding the social consequences of reservations, which has been filled by the reactionary assumptions that have always underlain caste hierarchy: it has allowed opponents to talk of “merit.”
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It is as if inferior, incapable candidates from low castes are to be promoted at the cost of the overall efficiency and effectiveness of an enterprise or organisation.
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The idea of “economic reservation” or “reservation designed to relieve poverty” is another way of ignoring the social realities of caste. Here the idea of “social justice” is extended to take in the poor among the upper castes. In fact, the Supreme Court of India itself began this when it imposed the idea of “creamy layer” on OBC reservations.
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It is only when this is recognized and all-around remedial steps began to be taken - at the level of providing for all the poor and discriminated against by measures such as truly universalizing education, and at the level of affirmative action designed speed the attainment of diversity - that Indian society will truly universalize itself, and Indian industry will achieve goals of true competitiveness and efficiency.