From reservations to affirmative actionRajiv DesaiAt a recent meeting with prime minister Manmohan Singh, I expressed concern about the Congress Party‚s proposal to introduce reservations in the private sector. I told him that it was a retrograde step. His response surprised me. Given the increasing role of the private sector in the economy, he said it was time business leaders understood social realities. As long as government was the key player in the economy, it ensured reservations in its own schools, universities and companies. “Now that the private sector is playing an increasingly important role in the economy, its leaders must come to terms with the realities of India,” he said.”Educated young people from backward segments of our society are unable to find jobs and are therefore recruited by militant organisations in central India, the north-east and Kashmir. There is nothing that threatens national security more than graduates with guns,” he added.This unexpected response from Dr. Singh set me thinking. He is a man of unimpeachable intellectual integrity. When he says something that is seemingly contradictory to your beliefs, you are better off questioning your beliefs than challenging his view. I began to question my unremitting hostility to the idea of reservations in the private sector.Caste and tribe-based reservations for government jobs and school admission were first introduced in India under Article 334 of the Constitution. The policy was supposed to remain in force for 20 years, at the end of which the “historical wrong” would be deemed to have been righted. However, reservations became a political vested interest. Thus in 1969, just before the provision lapsed, Parliament passed the 23rd Amendment, extending reservations for another ten years. Beyond that, Parliament passed the 45th, 62nd and 79th Amend-ments extending reservations through to the year 2010.The inability of Parliament to end the reservations policy came to be regarded as rampant populism. Not just that, in 1978, the Janata Party government of Morarji Desai set up the Mandal Commission which recommended extending the reservations policy to other backward castes. Mercifully, the government did not last long. The Mandal report was buried and the newly elected Congress government led by Indira Gandhi passed the 45th Amendment continuing the reservations policy for another decade.In 1989, V. P. Singh‚s Janata Dal government dusted the Mandal report and proposed to implement its recommendations. It set off a firestorm that swept away the government. The Congress-supported Chandrashekhar government installed in its wake enacted the 62nd Amendment and gave the reservations policy another decade‚s lease of life. In October 2000, the BJP-led government passed the 79th Amendment to extend the life of the reservations policy for another ten years.The inability of successive governments to take an enlightened view of the reservations policy created the feeling among opinion-makers in the academy, media, in business and the professions that reservations were a populist political gimmick and promoted mediocrity. This attitude persists even today. In raising the issue well before the 2010 deadline, prime minister Manmohan Singh has ensured a reasoned debate. To begin with, he is talking about “affirmative action” rather than reservations. This is an important shift in policy. Reservations are about “righting historical wrongs”. Affirmative action is about enlightened governance. By the end of the decade, government‚s role in business and education is expected to shrink substantially. In urging voluntary adoption of affirmative action, Dr. Singh has signalled that the reservations policy is in for a major overhaul ‚ in the way it is perceived and in the manner it is implemented. It is a far-sighted move.Affirmative action is a quintessentially American idea, going back to the passage in 1964 of the Civil Rights Act. It gave a legal platform to opponents of racial discrimination. Provisions of the act were used to introduce preferences in government jobs and school admission for minorities. At the time, quotas in government jobs and state-funded educational institutions were justified on the basis of righting historical wrongs.Since the 1990s, affirmative action has begun to be viewed differently: as a guarantor of diversity in schools and in the workplace. In June 2003, the US Supreme Court handed down a landmark judgement. It upheld the University of Michigan‚s use of racial preferences in admissions. Specifically, the court endorsed its law school‚s admissions policy which actively sought out minority applicants, ruling that diversity in the student body is a compelling national interest. Justice Sandra Day O‚Connor, who wrote the majority opinion, asserted that the benefits of diversity “are not theoretical but real”.The notion that affirmative action encourages diversity and that diversity is a positive contributor to society and its various institutions is beginning to spread. As far back as 1994, the management development programme at Kraft Foods, a respected multinational company, embarked on an aggressive outreach strategy to recruit women and minorities. Similarly, Silicon Graphics, the highly regarded IT firm, created an office of ‚Ëœdiversity initiatives‚, with a view to attracting minorities into its workforce.Dr. Singh‚s stewardship of the debate on affirmative action in India raises a plethora of complex policy issues from the standpoint of governance. It must be assessed against the backdrop that enlightened leaders in the West, especially in the United States, have managed to convert the debate into an issue of governance, a positive strategy that advances the public interest.(Rajiv Desai is the Delhi-based president of IPAN)