India Inc positive on affirmative action

When functionaries of the country's leading industry associations - CII, FICCI and Assocham - meet top government officials at the Prime Minister's Office on Saturday morning to give their progress report on affirmative action, it will come to light that India Inc has taken the first steps in this direction.

A large number of companies have volunteered to add a section on affirmative action in their annual reports, while some have started a headcount of scheduled caste and schedule tribe employees. Money is finally being spent on development of entrepreneurial as well as technical skills. A few have even decided to recruit SC/ST employees in favour of others, provided they meet the job requirements.

A co-ordination committee on affirmative action including reservation in the private sector was formed in October last year, under the chairmanship of T K A Nair, the principal secretary to the Prime Minister. It held its first meeting in November. The associations have now been asked to explain their progress since then.

The CII, which will be represented by Sunil Mittal, president, S S Mehta, director general, and Sunil Kant Munjal, will explain how it is on track to meet its affirmative action targets for 2007: against a target of training 100 entrepreneurs, it has already trained 290; the 50 scholarships it was supposed to give for premier institutions have all been handed out; and it has coached 2,000-odd students in soft skills, one-fifth of the target of 10,000. While agreeing that the targets were modest, Mehta said these would be scaled up sharply in the years to come. There are some other numbers the trio could tell the officials. About 400 CII members agreed to carry affirmative action details in their annual reports. "Almost 60 per cent of our large members have signed up. By the end of the year, all of them will have done so," said Mehta.

Ninety-six members have also given details of their SC/ST employees. "Their presence varies between five per cent and 82 per cent. There is no trend except that the ratio is higher in areas with a higher SC/ST population," he added. FICCI, on its part, has found out that its members are not comfortable with a caste-based headcount in their companies. "They feel it could be divisive and create tensions that their processes are not ready to handle," said FICCI Secretary General Amit Mitra.

The FICCI team will be led by KK Modi and will include two other functionaries including Mitra. The association will talk about the three standing committees it has set up, one each under Modi, Onkar Singh Kanwar and Saroj Poddar, to adopt 300 Industrial Training Institutes in the next 2-3 years (Mitra said its members have already taken charge of 42) and ensure that all SC/ST seats are filled, nurture the 4.5 million SC/ST entrepreneurs in the country and develop 27 districts that have a SCT population of at least 40 per cent. Assocham President Venugopal Dhoot, who will be accompanied by former ITC Chairman Kishan Lal Chugh and Secretary General DS Rawat, is expected to announce a fund for inclusive growth with a corpus of Rs 5 crore. The association has launched three courses to train female graduates for business schools. "The idea is to train 200-300 girls every year," said Dhoot.

This, they all hope, will be enough to keep the government from legislating on job reservations in the private sector for the weaker sections of the society.

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About 400 CII members agreed to carry affirmative action details in their annual reports

FICCI found that its members are not comfortable with a caste-based headcount

Assocham has launched three courses to train female graduates for business schools