From Business World of 24 October 2004. Blatant discrimination against untouchables - renamed scheduled castes after they came to be listed in the Constitution in 1950, and later called Dalits (oppressed) - is very old. After independence, the government reserved a certain proportion of government jobs for them. In 2004, it decided to extend the reservation to jobs in the private sector. I suggested that the private sector should introduce reservations voluntarily, but should at the same time introduce entirely merit-based entry for both Dalits and Non-Dalits.
Removing job injustice
The UPA government wants to make the private sector
reserve a certain proportion of jobs for Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SCATs).
Anyone who believes this is right would argue that the
private sector does not give SCATs the jobs it would have to if it recruited
people by open and fair competition, and would point to the prevalence of
jobbery and sifarish in the private sector; where recommendations matter,
classes of people who do not have connections will suffer. Alternatively, he
must think in terms of classes rather than individuals. He must believe that
SCATs have been historically oppressed and discriminated against in India, and
that it is good justice if, in compensation for the suffering of one SCAT
individual, another who had nothing to do with the first was rewarded with a
job.
Many sociological generalizations are partially right;
just how right they are can be found out. For instance, SCAT applicants could
be made to apply for jobs in their own names and alternatively assuming
high-caste names, and the difference it makes to their employability could be
found out. In fact, discrimination based on caste, and even more on religion,
could be abolished if every citizen on birth was given a neutral state-approved
name. It would be possible to give names consisting of a three-syllable first
name and a two-syllable surname to the entire world’s population such that no
two persons will have the same name. If people are attached to the currently
favoured names like Jack and Jill for sentimental reasons, they can continue to
use them as nicknames within family and friends.
But societies do not usually like rational solutions, and
a more roundabout solution must be found. It must lie in enabling private
employers to recruit entirely on the basis of merit, and if they do not do so,
in revealing how far they have departed from merit. For this, it is necessary
to measure everybody’s merit accurately. Merit is contextual; it must depend on
the job people are supposed to do. But skill requirements must be defined as
objectively as possible for every class of job, and examinations devised that
would measure the skill as accurately as possible. Schools and colleges do the
latter routinely; what is needed is to review examination and selection
techniques and find the one that fits employers’ requirements as accurately as
possible. The government can supplement this process by setting up objective
nation-wide examinations for standard subjects – as closely tailored to the
needs of the job market as possible – to be taken at fixed stages in a
student’s life – in effect, a national equivalent of Senior Cambridge for
middle school, high school and college graduation.
Once this is done, it would be possible to measure for
each employer what proportion of jobs he gave to the best qualified person. It
may be that most private sector jobs do not go to the best candidates; but we
can know only if selection is carried out by objective agencies other than the
employer on the basis of objective examinations. Employers may have reasons to
depart from selection of best candidates; often they may also want candidates
that fit into an organization. But at least the influence of such subjective
factors would be quantified. If it is to withstand the pressure for SCAT
reservations, the private sector has to adopt unassailable recruitment
practices.
If it does so, it will also expose how far the
underrepresentation of minorities – whether they are SCATs, Muslims or
north-easterners – is due to lack of deserving candidates. It will thereby show
the government what it has to do: improve the education of minorities to give
them an equal chance in competition with the long-nosed, big-eyed,
brown-skinned caste Hindu majority. And the way to do so would be, not to pour
more money into government schools, but to give scholarships to the brightest
minority students for a certain proportion of seats – say, a quarter – in the
best schools and colleges so that they can live just like their richer upper
caste co-students without financial stress. That is the way to annihilate the
caste and religious biases that shame India. It will not abolish the curse of
poverty, but at least it will divorce it from caste and religion.
