Employment Equity in India’s Private Sector

urstruly
//So my original thesis that `Muslims in India stand no chance` was correct..//

Not really. Actually muslims in India stand better chances than muslims in pakiland - as long as they study hard and work hard ..... and donot go into whining mode like farzana.

If they are expecting freebies (which I don`t think they are doing ) then yes - there is no chance of that happening. Like Jang said - we have just too many poor looking for something - if you want freebies then get in line.

So in summary - study had and work hard. No whining. No freebies. Because that`s how Premji and Kalam are where they are today. That`s how so many muslims are doing it. In IT, in movies, in other businesses.

tahmed32:
I was not referring to the particular program you mentioned which seems to be quite okay but to the general tripartite model followed by the ILO.

Ref tahmed32 #117

[As for caste-based organizations that you say you prefer, I thought the basic point of your article was for government to establish quotas for low caste/muslim hiring in India.]

That ``/`` in the phrase ``low caste/Muslim`` does not have to denote ``or`` anymore.

Just a couple of days back, some Christians have gone to court arguing that BC/OBC quotas should be extended to converts to Christianity since the stigma attached to low caste is not erased by conversion. The idiotic Supreme Court, instead of telling the Christians to go fcuk themselves or ask for divine help, has asked the Government of India for its opinion on the matter. We KNOW what the government`s stand is going to be: yes, give them quotas too!

So, this quota system will further encourage conversion away from Hinduism, as if such conversions are not facilitated by money coming in from Saudi Arabia or Christian churches in the US.

Time to demolish a few churches, I think. If these guys want a grievance, we should give them several.

Ref masanamuthu #66

[-- I don`t think you know how the education system works in TN.. ask some of your relatives (if u still have any left in TN..).. ]

I have several relatives left in TN and a whole slew of my nephews and nieces studied there.

[The marks in the board exams whether it is state/central board get a weightage of 200/300 and the common entrance exam which is the same for all the students irrespective of their boards, account for the remaining 100.. ]

Which means that the Plus 2 Exam (high school for the rest of the world) results still carry twice the weight of the entrance exam.

And you conveniently forget the fact that after this charade, the BC/OBC/SC/ST has lower admission criteria than the forward castes.

[And it is a big stretch to say all the so called ``FC```s study in the ``tough`` central board and all the ``masanamuthus`` studied in the ``easy`` state boards..]

I do agree that a few upper caste students take the State board but a vast majority (those who can afford to pay the tuition in such schools) take the Central board so that they can apply to all-India institutions such as BITS-Pilani, which by the way refuses to admit a single candidate on the basis he is an SC/ST/BC/OBC. They can do it by not taking one penny of government money.


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[``I suppose that is why Murasoli Maran spent 10 months (and the government`s money) in a hospital in Houston, TX.``.

``Just last week, Stalin left for the US ostensibly to visit his daughter but also to get a medical check-up, having been rushed a few days earlier to Apollo Hospital in Chennai at 9 pm with chest pains``

``And of course your own Great Intellectual Elder Brother was treated for cancer in the US, MGR underwent treatment in Maryland, and the Fund of Compassion gets his medical check-ups in the US too. ``

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This is ridiculous, ppl go where they can get the specialists. It`s not just folks from India, but rich ppl from all over the world come to the US for treating their medical conditions.. It`s a wrong notion that Murasoli maran got treated thru` the govt. money. His son clarified that all the expenses were paid by him. And I`m no lawyer for Maran/Karunanidhi.. To hell with them.. ]

As I had mentioned in another board, my friend visiting from the US had to have surgery to his skull (he had internal bleeding). He had it treated at Apollo Hospital in Chennai. By the way, his own wife is a physician who had flown down here and she was completely satisfied with the treatment he received. The doctor who treated him is named Kalyanaraman and not Sudalaikkannu.

So, if a US resident Indian can get treated at Apollo, what prevents Stalin from getting treated here? What is he afraid of? He thinks someone named Dr. Ramaswamy Iyer or Sridhar Iyengar would kill him? Dr. Karuppannan might, due to his incompetence.

As to Murasoli Maran`s treatment in the US, there was never a question of payment by his family as he was a government minister at that time. Let me also check my sources to find out if his family reimbursed the Indian government or they just talked about it like politicians do.

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[``I went to a Tamil-medium ``private`` school where the tuition was all of Rs. 3 a month till the 8th grade and Rs. 7 thereafter. And to ease the burden on large families, the school waived the tuition for the third child if three brothers were in school at the same time. A few years later, the state made secondary education free and paid the school the loss in revenues so the same education I received was available to all and sundry. So stop your baloney about lack of quality education

-- Good to know that.. Wow, Rs 3 a month.. looks like you`re pretty old.. i can see that from your outdated views.. same education and ``private``, just wondering how many ``masanamuthus`` studied with u, or did u study in those ``agraharam`` type schools where only certain ppl are allowed..... I bet you had your relatives either as govt. officers, doctors, maybe one or two in america..
See, I dont begrudge the fact that you did well, came up on your own etc.. etc..]

My school admitted people of all stripes. It was not an agraharam type school but the fact that for several decades the ones who worked at low salaries at the thankless job of a schoolteacher were brahmins were reflected in the fact that school started at 11 am on Amavasya days so that the teachers could perform ``tarpana`` for their ancestors. School also let out early on the days of the ``rath`` festival at the local temple so Saivites were catered to. School closed for Christmas so Christians had no problem, Eid was a holiday so Muslims could not complain. Not your typical ``agraharam`` school.

I was the second one in my (extended) family to go to the US. I was preceded by my brother who left 10 days earlier who had also studied at the same school. So there was no one in the US easing my way there. Both of us borrowed money from friends (no bank loans in those days) for our tickets.

[But please think abt the kid whose parents are illiterate, have just enough money to survive and never knew any engineer/doctor/IAS officer in his/her family/neighbors.. Isn`t it good that the benefits of higher education be made available to that kid??.. ]

Would that be a Chettiar who is ripping off people at usurious rates of interest or a Pallan working in the paddy fields? Has one single Paraiah or Pallan living in a hut and working from 6 am to 6 pm benefitted from the quotas? And did Love Queen, the daughter of Murasoli ``Drumbeat`` Maran really need a medical education?

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[``That has nothing to do with affirmative action. Tamil Nadu has 260+ engineering colleges and Karnataka has 100+. (No errors in those numbers.) With a large number of code coolies coming out of these colleges, FDI investment will definitely come to these two states and not go to Orissa or Mizoram. Or Kashmir. (Urstruly, go pop an artery). ..``

-- well well.. what can I say.. do you think ppl invest in a place where quality manpower is not available.. esp. for fields like IT/Biotech.. and do you seriously think ppl who get hired by the companies are just the ``intelligent`` forward castes..??]

Do NOT talk to me about ``quality`` manpower. I hire these code coolies so I should know exactly what their quality is. The vast majority gets a jobbecause the companies hope to train them

[Harimau sir, good to know that you`re interested in finding out my name, dad`s name etc..
I`m really the ``masanamuthu`` you caricature in your writings..and I dont respect/disrespect a person for what caste/religion he/she is born into, but rather on what he/she stands for.. ]

I never asked you for your caste, if you remember. On the other hand, I have no respect for the idiots who actually believe that Tamil is in danger and that Doctor Artist Leader the Fund of Compassion is the one who is going to rescue Tamil from oblivion by making it a Classical language.

If Kalyanasundaram can change his name to Maran and name his daughter Love Queen, anything is possible in Tamil Nadu. In asking for your name, I was hoping to add to my list of Tamil Manis, Tamil Kings, etc. No offence intended.

So my original thesis that `Muslims in India stand no chance` was correct. And as far as I can understand you people, this status quo is perfectly fine with you and no one should be bothered to change it, which brings me back again to my original thesis.

dost mittar #115 The program I am mention in my post obviously has nothing to do with labor unions. On the contrary, the program has to do with employers voluntarily agreeing to allow child workers some time off for education. The only organization that is really involved is the ILO, and it simply tries to convince employers that it is in their enlightened self interest. As an international agency, it has no authority to administer anything beyond that. And obviously, far from being confrontational, the program is obviously geared to promote goodwill on both sides. I dont know why you think the program promotes confrontation.

As for caste-based organizations that you say you prefer, I thought the basic point of your article was for government to establish quotas for low caste/muslim hiring in India. I thought that was bad enough (for reasons mentioned earlier), but to toss in caste-based organizations into the program would make it worse. As I said earlier, far better to help the poorer people become self-employed at the grass root level through microcredit and technical assistance schemes so they can become self-employed (and thus build up an entrepreneurial class), rather than have them depend on quotas that do nothing for the vast majority of the population, and deny the ``beneficiaries`` the satisfaction of knowing that they did not need any crutch to help them.

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re:#70 by Urstruly
Hey Mullahji,
The fact of the matter is that most muslims (i obviously exclude some educated upwardly mobile ones) in India do not have the skills to join the mainstream and do not want to acquire such skills. It is not as if they can`t do it but they don`t care. Abdul Kalam, India`s muslim president, is a fine eg to show what one can do if one is determined. In the highly readable book ``Chariots of Fire`` he says that he was helped by a brahmin teacher and a christian teacher later in his life. People who have the will find a way but most muslims in India live in a self-made shell and they are just afraid to come out of that shell.
Besides, the role of the government is shrinking fast as private sector`s role in employment generation has become crucial. Muslims can no more keep bemoaning that the govt is not doing anything. Sikhs, Parsees and many other minorities do not depend on the crumbs thrown by the govt. Most people in India are self-employed anyway.
Why do muslims in India not have the skills do learn software for instance (not really a big dealsince most, as Harimau would say, are code coolies)? Why Pak (a muslim country) has not been able to generate employment for poor thr` software development? Perhaps the reasons are the same.
Mullahji, pause and think.
Sridhar

tahmed32:
I am not in favour of the ILO tripartite model. In India, unions are generally corrupt; moreover there are generally multiple unions in the same company affliated with rival political parties and more interested in fighting each other than representing the workers. I would like to see a non-confrontational approach, that is why I had suggested employer and backward castes organizations.

ballukhan#108:
One does not have to be a socialist to be socially progressive. Surjeet, Yechuri and stalinists need not have a monopoly of representing the underclasses. With time and effort, I believe that a plan can be devised which advances social goals without risking nascent economic growth.

satyamvada#110:
``I am not at all surprised that you would write this article. Unfortunately you did not
answer if you have tried to read the authors that I had mentioned in the previous posting.``
Unfortunately, there is an ever-expanding list of books that I haven`t read but should. Hayeck`s is definitely among them.

``Also, you claim that this is not a govt ministry - but - all Govt expansion happens with
such feel good legislation. We have seen the unions in India - they are merely
arms of the political parties. What kind of enforcement methods will be there ? otherwise
who will care. A business exists only because its shareholders think that the returns
they are getting on their investment in the business is better than another one.``

This is a notional piece. To develop a plan with all the operational details which minimises the unintended side effects -which can unfortunately be minimised but not eliminated- will require a lot more research and resources than is the scope of this article. I should add that, if I were to advise the govt., I would only implement the project on a pilot basis among a group of employers participating on a voluntary basis and extending it to the rest after a proper assessment of the results.

``One other thing - as usual you have come up with an arbitrary limit of 1000 employees
for th size of the company. Do you know how many private sector businesses in India
have more than 1000 employees ? - I would be very surprised if there are more than
2000 or 2500. So that is a maximum of 2.5 million people.
Do you know what the labor force of India is ? 650 million !!!``

Yes, it is an arbitrary figure and not caste in stone. Most of the 650 million workers in India are self-employed or in unorganised sector, so extending any such program to them is irrelevant or unfeasible. But even if only a fraction of the overall labour force is covered, it would bring about an attitudinal change which would affect even the uncovered sectors.

``Competition, free movement of goods within states, lowering taxes and tariffs are
what will make the poor wealthy.``
....and I am not suggesting anything against them.

``Btw, you are an economist - right ?``
....that was a long time ago. But I am not going to tell the university in case you start a petition to revoke my degree:-).

#113 by jang

This is not the first time somebody gave Urstruly a ``straight answer``. But he refuses to listen.

Whining has become a pastime for a lot muslims, pakis included. Regrettably some indian muslims are also getting into that mode - like farzana. Nobody can help them unless they stop whining and start working hard.

here is a straight answer.

for backward-uslims are muslim first, their griveances are taken care of in the form of separate personal laws and haj subsidies, funds for madrassas etc.

for those who are backward first, and muslim second, DM has written an article and folks are responding. in short, we have a lot of poor, get in line.