CPM plans stir over quota for SCs in pvt sector

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has decided to launch a nationwide agitation demanding reservation for Scheduled Castes (SCs) in the private sector and to highlight the oppression and discrimination meted out to them.

The party will hold an all-India convention before December this year to discuss this issue and chalk out a strategy. This would be followed by a three-month long campaign across the country.

The decision to launch the campaign was taken at the first meeting of the committee on Scheduled Castes at the CPM headquarters here today. The committee had been constituted after the 18th Congress of the CPM in New Delhi last April, which had focussed on discrimination on the basis of casteand oppression against SCs across the country.

"The Scheduled Castes have been given reservation in government jobs. But, this has become quite meaningless when the government is privatising everything. In this era of liberalisation, how many government jobs are left? We, therefore, passed a resolution today demanding reservation for the SCs in the private sector," convenor of the CPM committee on SCs, K Varadarajan, told the Business Standard.

The party plans to raise the demand for reservation for SCs in the private sector in Parliament as well.

Varadarajan pointed out that it was on October 14 that Dr B R Ambedkar had converted to Buddhism protesting against discrimination of dalits. The CPM leader claimed that the condition of dalits in Tripura, West Bengal and Kerala had improved vastly and they no longer faced discrimination at the hands of upper castes.

This was mainly because of the social movements launched by the Left party in these states. But, dalits continued to face caste-based discrimination in other states even after over five decades of Independence.

The party would, therefore, bring out pamphlets highlighting the differences in the status of dalits in these three states and that in the rest of the country. These pamphlets would be distributed among the youth all over the country.

The move of the CPM is aimed at wooing dalits and consolidating the party's base at a time when the traditional votebank of the Congress appears to be split on the basis of political affiliation.