Why are private sector reservations and reservations for temporary employment the need of the hour?
Every day I open twitter, there is one nasty comment against reservation by some influential quarters. Few want to link reservation with Aadhaar, few want to replace it by economic criteria, few want to restrict it to one generation; and many want to end reservations.
Also, many argue that Reservation policies have achieved limited success and that the economically better off among the SC, ST and OBC benefit from these schemes, not the poorest among them.
The real question one needs to ask is why, in spite of providing reservations, the poverty rate, especially among the SC and ST, has not improved substantially.
The narrow coverage is because of two reasons:
(a) exclusion of private sector jobs
(b) exclusion of temporary government jobs
Let us consider the non -farm regular salaried employee data from NSS Employment Survey of 2011–12.
Total salaried employees = 856 lakh
Total private sector = 600 lakh (70%)
Total Government sector = 256 lakh (30%)
Total Permanent Government employees = 154 lakh (18%)
Total Temporary Government employees = 102 lakh (12%)So clearly, only 18% of the total non-farm regular salaried employees are impacted by reservations.
Now, the above data is only at an aggregate level.
Let us look at the non farm regular SC employees, which gives full data.
Total number of SC employees: 139.7 crores
Reservations are available only for permanent government employees.
In 2011–12 out of 139.7 lakh employees, just 25.86 lakh jobs were permanent, and probably some impact of reservation is there.
This is just 2.9% of the total jobs.
Now we can see that from 2004–05 to 2011–12, government permanent employment decreased from 26.55 lakhs to 25.86 lakhs.
This is an alarming condition since it was expected that, at least in government, the situation of SCs would improve. But this shows the absolute number of jobs impacted by reservations, even in government permanent jobs, is actually decreasing. Some estimates show that the situation has further worsened in the past few years because of the decreased intake of permanent government employees.
So the real problem in India is that reservation has been restricted to only a tiny portion of permanent government employment, and the statistics now clearly show that this is decreasing because of reduced vacancies, increased outsourcing, and also automation.
The number of non-permanent jobs in government increased from 34.8% in 2004–05 to 43.1% in 2011–12. Currently, it is estimated to be at 50 to 60%.
The reservation pie in absolute term for SC, ST, OBC has decreased with in the government.
The worrying part for the SC category is in the private sector.
If we look at the government, 56.9% of them are permanent employees.
But look at the private sector, where just 6.8% of the SC employed are permanent.
The percentage of non-permanent employees in the SC category is very high, at 93.2%.
The private sector pays peanuts, much below minimum wages, and exploitative labor practices are quite common.
So, it is with this intention that the government should take the first step to widen the reservation policy and propose reservations in the private sector and temporary jobs in government.
This is the only way we can reduce poverty rates for a large section of the disadvantaged in India.
