23/03/07

inclusive growth

one of the upa govt's refrains has been 'inclusive growth'. one way of interpreting this mantra : there would be no disinvestment. which means all the upper caste jobs in the public sector would be saved.

and what about the lower castes? they have the nrega. when in doubt about what the manusmriti has to say on certain issues, the upa government consults the marxists and others.
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5 comments:

Cosmic Voices said...

Doesn't the stoppage of disinvestment also benefit the lower castes?

9:05 am
kuffir said...

cv,

just saw a news report last night - on laloo's railways. it says around 1-2 lakh railway employeees, mostly from the bottom classes, would retire in the comiming year. and most of them are reserved positions, posts like sweeper, cleaner etc., which dalits find easier to find.

the point is there'd be no attempt made to recruit fresh staff to fill this big gap - i don't know whether this is because 1)the govt has realized leaner organizations are better2) or govt recruitment has been insignificant since the early 80s because there are no resources to support the kind of grand staffing campaigns that used to happen earlier..

add to the above facts, the facts 1) that recruitment of dalits has always been half-hearted and there are huge 'backlogs' in every govt dept, organization in every state and at the centre and even this recruitment wouldn't happen in the future,
2) the obcs are underrepresented in every state govt and every govt organization in the states.. except for a few castes in tamil nadu, kerala and karnataka etc., in most other states their presence in govt is minor and there are huge 'backlogs' even in the so-called 'progressive' states..we know the position at the centre, in the north and in the centrally-run public sector.. the mandal commission came in too late...and it'd take not less than 50-100 years at the current pace of recruitment to fill even a major part of the 27% objective. in all probability it'd never be reached. you'd be interested to know that in whatever little recruitment that is happening at the central govt level even the low targets that are fixed are not achieved. and you know there are enough qualified obc candidates available to fill those jobs. this is because there is an entrenched 'mindset' that doesn't want this program to succeed - and it stops even the .20% or so increments that are sought to be made in the obc numbers in govt.. even in the high profile jobs like those announced by the upsc every year, you'd be surprised to know that the obc numbers never exceed the mandatory 27%- they could be lower but..never, ever higher.

given that background, i find it very deceitful that the so-called pro-poor left in the country uses the lower castes, and 'social inequalities' to oppose disinvestment and other meaningful reform measures.

11:39 am
Cosmic Voices said...

Kuffir,

I completely agree and expected this argument. But what I was thinking is that, whatever the little the OBCs and dalits have would be lost if disinvestment is made.

There is almost no equivalent of class 3 and 4 employees in pvt sector.

Regarding UPSC, I can tell you that in reality, it implements quota system, not reservations and that is despite a couple SC orders. Sharad Yadav, wrote a nice opinion in hindu sometime back.

I agree with him on most of the points except his demand to do away with caste-wise interviews.

The point is every dalit/OBC is treated as a "reserved" candidate irrespective of the fact whether he is really claiming a relaxed qualification criterion.

Let me point out a simple anomaly.

Dalits are exempted from paying the requisite examination fee, which is a paltry Rs 50 for Prelims and Rs 100 for mains. Since they avail this, they are treated as claiming relaxed "qualification", even if the candidate is not claiming age or marks relaxation.

No wonder, the percentage of OBCs, SCs and STs in the final selection obediently follow the proposed reservation quotas.

9:29 am
kuffir said...

cv,

we, i mean the country, seems to have reached an impasse on this issue. let's recognize some incontrovertible elements of this situation:

# recruitment in the public sector has dried up,

# the public sector, in principle, has been recognized as an unviable economic actor- most of them have survived because of govt support and many have died because of govt support,

# too much of the attention of the govt remains focussed on the public sector because of a) the opportunities they offer to the ruling classes for profiting from their activities b) the unionized upper castes are an eternally disgruntled lot,

# in view of the above facts it's plain that the public sector has become a self-serving parasite on the govt's attention...and a major obstacle in thinking up freash ways of expanding job opportunities,

# future expansion in jobs can only happen in the private sector,

# better governance can only happen, if the govt's attention is focussed more on core governance issues rather than on the public sector and a million other extraneous issues.

11:28 am
kuffir said...

to continue my response:

i constantly harp on the issue of core governance, which in my view covers such areas as education, health, police and justice sytem or broadly security issues, etc., because this is where greater and positive invlovement of the governmenmt and civil society can actually make any real difference in the lives of the poor and the underprivileged in the country.

let me illustrate with a small example - studies have revealed that a major portion (more than 40%) of the debt incurred by farmers in distress-prone regions in the country had gone to fund such non-agricultural expenses as education, health and other expenditures.

now if the public health and education services had been accessible and of a reasonable quality... it'd have made a major difference in the lives of those farmers. and if good public health and education systems can play such a positive role in the lives of farmers who actually have property, can you imagine the change they can generate in the lives of lower caste families who have nothing?

1:31 pm

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