http://www.indianexpress.com/news/India-s-Missing-Inc/741025India's Missing Inc
P. Vaidyanathan Iyer Posted online: Sun Jan 23 2011, 00:37 hrs
It was a wake-up call for India Inc, recalls Jamshed J Irani,
Director, Tata Sons, when in early 2006, the then Minister for Social
Justice and Empowerment and the Congress party's Dalit face, Meira
Kumar, started meeting top CEOs to seek their support for a
legislation on employment reservation for Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes in the private sector. In an interview with The
Indian Express some time back, Irani who leads the affirmative action
plan in the Tata Group that employs some 3.75 lakh people—tacitly
admitted that the corporate sector had not quite consciously worked to
mainstream the idea till five years ago.
To create more jobs for SCs and STs, Meira Kumar said there was no
third way besides voluntary action by India Inc. or a legislation
mandating reservation. The idea of a statute gained political traction
in the first term of the United Progressive Alliance government,
particularly with the Left demanding that the industry play a leading
role in empowering the less privileged—the SCs and STs—who account for
almost a quarter of the country's population.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was, however, more subtle in his message
to India Inc. In his address to corporate honchos at the annual
meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on April 18,
2006, he asked the industry to assess, at the company level, the
diversity in its employee profile and voluntarily commit to broad-base
it.
Almost five years later, the CII, India's largest industry chamber,
undertook the first-ever caste census of its member firms--numbering
8,250 and employing 35 lakh--across the country. This, arguably, is
also representative of India Inc. The survey, at first glance, shows
the private sector in poor light, especially in states like
Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka, if one looks at its results from a
narrow prism of the share of SC/STs in the workforce compared with
their strength in the total population. In these two regions, SCs/STs
are just about 16 per cent of the workforce. In the northern and
eastern regions, they are 22 per cent and 24 per cent, respectively,
reflecting the average national
SC/ST population.
With the threat of a legislation looking real, the corporate sector's
response, according to Irani, was two-fold, and he explained this in
detail to the Prime Minister. "It (quotas) is not really going to help
them. Corporate India could challenge it, but would like to avoid this
situation. So, let us cooperate. The CII and others will cooperate
with the government on affirmative action and this will bring more
benefit to SC/STs." The government saw merit in the argument, and in
the last five years, India Inc has made progress, but just enough to
keep the government off from passing a law.
"If you ask me, if I am satisfied, the answer is 'no'. But the
progress is better that what it was four years ago," says Irani, who
kick-started a sensitisation drive among the CII members as the first
chairman of the CII Affirmative Action Council. He undertook an
all-India tour from Delhi to Bangalore, talking to all companies,
enthusing them to see candidates from the disadvantaged sections with
a positive bias.
"Within the Tata Group, we saw it as the right thing to do. So, we
have a positive discrimination policy. That is, we prefer a
disadvantaged community candidate," he says. Like Tatas, there are
others, including Thermax, Maruti, Forbes and Mahindras, who have
taken affirmative action seriously...
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, FEW BUYERS
...but the corporate sector is not just a handful of companies. It is
hugely divided on the very idea of affirmative action. Sanjeev
Bikhchandani, founder and Executive Vice Chairman of naukri.com, a
portal which offers a 24.3-million strong database of searchable
resumes to job providers, says: "Affirmative action has not really
caught on in India. Most private sector companies, at best, regard
this as a part of their corporate social responsibility. There are
multinational companies that look specifically for women candidates.
In fact, some of them have a target too. But caste-based recruitment
is not mainstream yet."
The CII's caste census also bears it out. Maharashtra, Gujarat,
Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and West Bengal, some of the most
industrialised states, show a sharp mismatch between SC/STs as a
percentage of the total workforce in the private sector and SC/STs as
a percentage of the state's population. In Maharashtra, SCs and STs
make up 19.1 per cent of the total state population, but their share
in private sector employment is only 5 per cent. In Gujarat and
Karnataka, SCs and STs constitute just 9 per cent of the staff
strength, but account for 22 per cent and 23 per cent, respectively,
of the state population. Ironically enough, these are the states that
rank high in the pecking order, both in terms of the number of
factories and employment. The only exception is Tamil Nadu, which
ranks number one in industrialisation and employment and where SC/STs
account for almost 18 per cent of the industrial workforce and 20 per
cent of the state's population.
The states in east India, where jobs are far and few, have the highest
percentage of SC/STs. So, in Bihar, which has little to show in terms
of industrialisation, SCs and STs constitute a fourth of the total
workforce, much higher than their 16.6 per cent share in the state's
population. Similarly, the private sector in Chhattisgarh has almost
half its workforce from the SC/ST community, comparable to their
strength in population (See map).
SERVICES, THE SILVER LINING
Services today account for almost 60 per cent of the country's
economy. In Maharashtra, according to the same CII survey, banks,
financial institutions and information technology or software services
companies contribute almost 18 per cent to the total employment. And
within services, SC/STs account for a quarter of the total workforce.
"Most private sector is caste and religion agnostic," says K Ramkumar,
Executive Director, ICICI Bank, who is responsible for human resources
in the country's largest private sector bank. "In Maharashtra, Tamil
Nadu and Karnataka, a lot more people are eligible to apply for jobs
because they are graduates," he says.
Down south, barring Karnataka, private sector in the other three
states—Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala—can pull their collars
up. Infosys board member Mohandas Pai, who is responsible for human
resources in the most-celebrated software company, says, "If you look
at fresh hiring at Infosys, much of it is from the disadvantaged
section. Both the parents of 17 per cent of our fresh hires in Mysore
are non-graduates. Almost 40 per cent of these hires had only one
graduate parent." A silent revolution seems to be happening from the
bottom. "And this is happening in high-paying jobs, going right up to
the top," says Pai.
Indeed, according to the CII survey, in all four southern states
combined, the share of SC/STs among trainees in the IT and IT-enabled
services sector is 10 per cent of the total trainee strength. If you
look at the total employee stock across all levels of management, then
it is only 5 per cent. IT and ITeS account for 26 per cent of the
total employment in southern India and CII members alone employ about
1.5 lakh in the region.
DRAWING THE RIGHT LESSONS
Manish Sabharwal, Chairman, TeamLease Services Ltd, the country's
biggest player in the temporary staffing industry, notes that the only
macro economic variable that has stayed where it was in 1991 is the
high proportion of labour force in the unorganised sector—at 93 per
cent. "The organised sector that accounts for a mere 7 per cent of the
labour force enjoys disproportionately the fruits of higher incomes.
Economic reforms, at the end of the day, is not just about goofy rich
guys buying Mercedes."
Sabharwal and Infosys' Pai are least surprised by India Inc's good
show in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. These two states have blended
huge capacities in higher education with generous scholarships. "Tamil
Nadu's 300 colleges have 1,20,000 seats. A larger proportion of
disadvantaged population goes through colleges," says Pai. "Even
Karnataka has reservation, but the key is to create large capacities.
Otherwise, even from the SC/ST communities, the upward layers crowd
out capacities," he points out. That, in a way, explains the private
sector's poor show in affirmative action in Karnataka.
Uttar Pradesh, in another 10 years, will fare better than most other
states. Mayawati has started 270 engineering colleges this year. The
UP Technical University has added 1,00,000 seats in the last three
years. "But the Ayatollahs of education have tried to control quality
by controlling quantity," says Sabharwal.
All this is not to say that India Inc is doing a great job on
affirmative action. "But in board rooms, there is serious awareness
today," says Ramkumar, who sits on the board of ICICI Bank. Only
better education and skill development will expand the catchment area
for SC/ST recruitment. In India, there is no shortage of jobs, only a
scarcity of qualified people.
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