According to an article in the Financial Times, foreign employers in India “fear an affirmative action employment plan contained in the new government’s economic agenda” that contains “job quotas” for “people from lower-caste or tribal classes.”
Mahesh Vyas, chief executive of the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a leading think-tank, said: “In the past, affirmative action has had a positive impact on backward classes.
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[The Indian state of] Maharashtra’s legislature is debating a law that could mandate companies to employ up to half their staff from “backward” castes.
Aside from the legal and ethical questions surrounding racial quotas, there is a serious and legitimate question of whether the benefits provided by affirmative action (whether hard quotas or softer racial preferences) justify the stigma that follows in its wake.
According to a report in the Economic Times, India’s finance minister has been forced to take active measures “to dispel a growing horror” that his government would require companies to hire “more people from backward classes.”
“People are not conscious about religion now. Reservation can again bring to the fore class issues which can vitiate the working atmosphere in the private sector,” said the CEO of a Bangalore-based company on the condition of anonymity.
Another top corporate executive said that a large number of people from the backward communities are succeeding in the private sector due to sheer hard work. “By introducing reservations, you are actually bringing in inefficiency,” he added.
Indian companies, it would appear, have not yet discovered the wonders of “diversity.”
