Industry against job reservation: Karnik

Increasing the number of seats in higher education institutions as a bargain for hiking OBC quota in higher education institutions would adversly affect the quality of education, Kiran Karnik, president of Nasscom, said.

The industry is not in favour of job reservation in the private sector and quotas for OBCs in higher educational institutes, Karnik said after inaugurating Thinksoft's new facility here yesterday.

Increasing the number of seats in the institutions would not serve any purpose as the class size would be "too huge".It would not be conducive for inter-personal contacts between faculty and students ...as the faculty would not be able to pay proper attention to the students, Karnik said.

"While economic inequality and social discrimination are important issues that need to be addressed, policies like reservation and quotas have not worked in the past...better education system and implementation of laws against dicrimination are the only soolution to the problem, Karnik said.

Talking about growth prospects of the Indian IT industry, Karnik said: "the role of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the IT sector would be crucial in reaching the target of $ 60 billion in software exports by 2010.

The target cannot be reached with just the top 10 IT companies. It can be achieved only when small and medium enterprises sector became giants of tomorrow, Karnik said.