Affirmative action, not quota, in private sector

The committee suggests that companies providing opportunity to all communities should be eligible for government incentives, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Dec 1, 2006, 02:04:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Sachar panel has recommended incentives for the private sector to get them to improve minority participation. The report talks of 'affirmative action' but does not recommend reservation.

In a specific recommendation on 'incentives for improving diversity', the committee has suggested that companies providing opportunity to all communities should be branded as 'Equal Opportunity Institutions' and should be eligible for government incentives.

It said such initiatives on diversity should be part of the 'corporate social responsibility' and that some affirmative action can help initiate the process.

But the champions of reservation do not have much to cheer. The report terms a separate quota 'constitutionally untenable'. When the issue was debated in the committee, everyone agreed that Muslims should benefit from reservation but there were differences over who among Muslims should get it. Some argued that this facility should be available only for 'Dalits,' others demanded reservation for all.

According to the 61th National Sample Survey, the OBC population among Muslims is 40.7 per cent and it is 43 per cent among Hindus. But of the total 40.7 per cent OBCs in India, 34 per cent are Hindu OBCs and 6.4 are Muslim OBCs.

But the committee believes that the percentage of OBC Muslims will increase if all backwards in the community are included in both the state and central list of Other Backward Classes.

The report says backward groups, including the Ashrafs and Ajlafs, should be identified with help from the Anthropological Survey of India.

The committee wanted backward Muslims to get benefits similar to Hindu OBCs. Only Arzals, who share a traditional occupation with the SCs, have been recommended for reservation since they were "cumulatively oppressed". "Arzals are widely believed to have been Hindu untouchables who converted. The change in religion has not brought about any change in their social or economic status," the report said.

To improve employment opportunities, the committee sought more jobs for Muslims in teaching, health services, police forces and in banks. In a bid to fix accountability, the report recommended that each government department should furnish details once every three months on its website about the money spent and action on schemes for minority welfare.

A different kind of affirmative action has been recommended in government schemes. To help minorities get loans, the committee recommended that they should have better access to institutions like NABARD and NMDFC.

All districts with 25 per cent Muslim population or more should be brought under the Prime Minister's 15-point programme, the report said. A special package for development of these districts should be started, it said.

In a bid to further improve inclusiveness, the panel has recommended that financial incentive should be given to builders to providing housing to diverse communities.

Email Chetan Chauhan: chetan @hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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