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Journalism of Courage
Voluntary has a root in the Latin ‘voluntas’, meaning choice. A voluntary act is something done of one’s own free will, without constraint and even without expectation of a quid pro quo. If industry chambers agree on a ‘voluntary’ policy of affirmative action, why does a government-appointed coordination committee, chaired by the PM’s principal secretary, have to approve the consensus and why does it have to be ratified by the cabinet? Is this code of action on affirmative action mandatory on all chamber members? Corporate governance codes aren’t mandatory. If they are mandatory, why should there be an ombudsman to monitor compliance? Legislation mandating positive affirmation, a euphemism for job reservations, wouldn’t have been voluntary.
Medically, a spasm is an involuntary movement of a muscle, ranging from small twitches to full-fledged seizures. This seizure by industry bodies is no less involuntary than mandated legislation. Samuel Johnson wrote, “Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal.” Why don’t industry chambers have the guts to stand up to what is a patently silly decision is an interesting question in itself. I mean the three big chambers. OBCs (other backward chambers) don’t count. The answer has a lot to do with skeletons Indian industry hides in cupboards; these skeletons explain the arm-twisting clout government possesses.
India’s labour is around 400 million, of which less than 30 million is employed in the organised sector. Of this 30 million, less than 10 million is employed in the private organised sector. In the unorganised sector, thanks to the poor state of governance, we can’t even enforce minimum wage laws. Therefore, this compromise can only be implemented in the private organised sector (largely manufacturing), thereby achieving five end results, two minor and three major.
On minor points, first, in addition to existing labour market rigidities and fiscal distortions, we create another incentive to remain small and unorganised and not graduate to the organised sector. Second, in the 2001 Census, SCs account for a little over 16 per cent of population and STs for a little over 8 per cent, say, 25 per cent collectively. Had baseline data existed, SC/ST shares in private organised sector employment would have been either more than 25 per cent or less. No other logical option is possible. If the figure is more than 25 per cent, no consensus on positive affirmation is needed. And if it is less, industry will now be forced to employ people it wouldn’t have otherwise employed. That is, this adversely affects competitiveness.
However, we now get the thin end of the wedge in and states will insist on reservations for OBCs and higher figures (than 25 per cent) for SCs/STs. Let’s also not forget that the issue is not just entry, but vertical mobility too. We will insist on annual reporting for the private sector, but do people know we don’t have data for government services, where reservations already exist?
We have data for the Centre (with a large time lag), but not states. At the Centre, SCs have reservation of 15 per cent and STs of 7.5 per cent. In 2001, actual SC share was just above 15 per cent and actual ST share just below 7.5 per cent. But these are overall figures. Disaggregated, SC/ST jobs are concentrated in Group C and D segments; there are few in Groups A and B. If reservations are the answer for SC/STs, one can’t duck the question why it hasn’t worked for government jobs.
Let’s move on to three major issues. First, deprivation is an individual (class) problem, not a collective (caste) question, and instead of addressing deprivation, we simplify and assume caste is a good surrogate indicator of deprivation. It isn’t. By equating it with caste, we not only exclude the disadvantaged outside the SC/ST fold, we include those from within the SC/ST fold who don’t deserve reservation (the creamy layer). Yes, there are caste-based atrocities in rural India and inequities in land and credit markets. But urbanisation breaks down caste identities and, remember, India’s urbanisation rates are low.
Instead of breaking down caste identities, this new policy reinforces it. Let’s also not forget that there isn’t anything sacrosanct about schedules of SC/STs included in the Constitution. This was effectively an outcome (in 1935) of subjective preferences of ‘His Majesty in Council’ and resulted from colonial legacies, reflecting problems of both inclusion and exclusion.
Second, we probably have the beginnings of messing up tax reform, since this new consensus also talks about investments (public and private) in districts with SC/ST concentrations. For STs, geographical identification is plausible, but not for SCs. However, we will probably have a positive affirmation cess to fund public investments and fiscal incentives for private investments in these districts.
Third, there is a fallacy that providing employment is the answer. SC/STs have 100 million representatives in the labour force. Are they all going to get jobs in the organised sector? In 2004-05, 51.7 per cent of India’s rural working age population reported itself as self-employed. The figure was 37.5 per cent for urban India. Rural doesn’t mean agriculture alone. Let’s focus on rural figures. Urban ones have a similar trend.
For SCs, reported self-employment is 45.7 per cent while it is 34.2 per cent for STs, 56.2 per cent for OBCs and 61.4 per cent for others. Hence, there is a self-employment problem for SC/STs and it is more serious for STs. The diagnosis should be obvious enough, inadequate access to land, credit and skills, even physical infrastructure (important for STs).
That’s what should be corrected. There’s public intervention and expenditure in all these. Why has public policy failed? Skills (school and vocational) are also delivered by public institutions (though not exclusively). Had these been efficiently delivered, we wouldn’t have needed a government-appointed co-ordination committee. The private sector would have ‘voluntarily’ employed SC/STs, the word ‘voluntarily’ being used in its true sense.
But the government doesn’t want to solve the problem, it wants to create an impression of solving it and there is a difference. As for industry chambers, “their’s not to reason why”. We usually remember the line that follows. More pertinently, the preceding lines talk of “their’s not to make reply”, though “someone had blundered”. As everyone knows, this is Tennyson in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’. This is apt because that charge was symbolic, achieved nothing and ended in disaster.
bibek.debroy@expressindia.com
