Prime minister Manmohan Singh’s somewhat contradictory assertion made in Mumbai on October 6, to the effect that the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) government is committed to job reservations in private sector industry for scheduled castes and tribes and his subsequent clarification that job quotas will be “voluntary”, reflects the national confusion on the issue of affirmative action. For over half a century since the Constitution of India was promulgated in 1950, 22.5 percent of jobs in the Central and state governments have been reserved for SC and ST comprising citizens born into the most socially disadvantaged castes and forest tribes who for several millennia have been denied basic human rights, especially the right to education and to practise trades and professions of their choice.

The rationale of the Constituent Assembly which drafted the Constitution and mandated job reservations for these historically under-privileged citizens is unexceptionable. The SC and ST or Dalit (their preferred descriptive) communities have suffered unremitting social oppression from the upper castes in the Hindu varna hierarchy for so many centuries that their collective spirit and self-esteem has been crushed. Therefore the live example of Dalits serving in positions of power and responsibility within governments at the Centre and in the states would boost the self-confidence of members of this community and prompt them to break with the past and become fully-fledged, participating citizens of free India.

Unfortunately the performance of government in post-independence India which ill-advisedly took upon itself the additional burden of capturing the “commanding heights of the economy”, in all spheres of administration, maintenance of law and order, providing social services and in managing its huge chain of public sector enterprises, has been pathetically inefficient. Inevitably, the relatively educated upper castes who dominate the nation’s 20 million-strong bureaucracy have been quick to cite job reservations mandated by the Constitution as an alibi for failure. Yet the plain truth is that the upper castes constitute 77.5 percent of the nation’s failed and notoriously corrupt bureaucracy while notwithstanding government job quotas, Dalits have been stagnating in the lower rungs of government.

It’s against this backdrop that the pros and cons of the proposal to reserve jobs in relatively more merit-driven and efficient private sector industry should be weighed. Because of the foolish decision of upper caste intellectuals to adopt the inorganic socialist development model resulting in stagnation of the Indian economy for half a century, the socio-economic condition of the nation’s 300 million Dalit community at the bottom of the social pyramid continues to be of miserable denial. Therefore there is a strong case for affirmative action by private sector industry in favour of the Dalit community.

However post-independence India’s experiment with mandatory job quotas in government which has created a reservation mindset (with virtually all castes and minorities clamouring for job quotas) has proved that voluntary affirmative action is a preferable alternative. The time is ripe for industry representative organisations such as CII, FICCI and state-level chambers of commerce to certify corporates which practise affirmative action in favour of minorities of their choice — caste, religious or the physically and mentally challenged. They should be classified and celebrated as affirmative action companies or firms, a badge of honour and achievement on a par with ISO and other standards certification. That’s the way forward. 

Restrictive trade practice not positive discrimination

Somewhat overshadowed by the legislative election in Maharashtra in which the Congress-Nationalist Congress coalition overrode an anti-incumbency wave and won a comprehensive victory, a reservations drama of another type with profound implications for every citizen’s right to freedom of speech, the right to carry on a business, trade or profession in any and every part of the country, as also for national unity is being staged in Karnataka, with the full and ill-advised complicity of the state government.

In late September, the Bangalore-based Karnataka Film Producers Association (KFPA), reportedly alarmed by the dwindling audiences for the estimated 100 Kannada language feature films its members produce annually, browbeat the Karnataka Films Chamber of Commerce (KFCC), a representative organisation of feature film exhibitors and theatre owners to impose a moratorium on the release of all non-Kannada language feature films for seven weeks after they are released elsewhere. Moreover even after the stipulated moratorium of seven weeks, the number of prints for each new film released in the state is restricted to seven for 1,200 cinema halls.

The rationale of this quintessentially restrictive trade agreement — which was brokered by a state government minister and therefore has its endorsement — is that in the interim period exhibitors and cinema theatre owners in particular, will be obliged to distribute and screen Kannada language films which will revive the languishing Kannada film industry. Not surprisingly several aggrieved exhibitors and theatre owners moved a writ petition alleging infringement of their fundamental right to free speech and the right to carry on a business under Article 19, and discrimination against them by the state government (prohibited by Article 14). Not surprisingly either, on October 16, the Supreme Court imposed a seven-week stay against the moratorium.

Meanwhile with the tacit backing of the state government the agreement between KFPA and KFCC has been renegotiated and the moratorium period has been reduced to three weeks. This is being hailed by the state government and regrettably by the media as well, as a great triumph of accommodation and good sense.

Astonishingly there seems to be little public awareness that far from being affirmative action in favour of producers of Kannada language cinema, the predecessor and amended moratorium agreements are restrictive trade practices of the worst sort manifestly against the public interest, dressed up as positive discrimination. Not only has it attracted retaliatory action in other states against Kannada language films, this restrictive trade practice transgresses the fundamental rights of consumers, producers of other language films, distributors and cinema theatre owners. That things have come to this sorry pass and new English and several Indian language films are not being screened in Bangalore and Karnataka for fear of violence by Kannada language zealots, is a sorry indictment of the state government’s administrative ineptitude.

In the larger public interest the state government should immediately disassociate itself from the moratorium agreement and prosecute miscreants who attempt violence against distributors and cinema theatre owners exercising their fundamental right to carry on legitimate business activities.