There are 58,000 dalit/tribal professionals working with public sector enterprises (PSEs) and public sector banks. According to a report by the National Commission for Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (1989), there are 21,215 dalits/tribals in managerial/professional positions so senior that they are categorised as Group A, equivalent to the IAS/IPS. Most of these officers are either engineers or IT professionals; many are employed in organisations like BHEL, SAIL, NTPC, ONGC, IOC, MTNL, VSNL, HPCL and GAIL. Has any study been conducted by these organisations to show that dalit professionals under-perform?when he says 'public sector enterprises and public sector banks', one can see he means the central public sector enterprises and the nationalized banks. in 1990, these two kinds of organizations provided employment to around 26 lakh people. 58,000 out of 26,00,000?
don't nurse any wrong notions that both the overal strength and the dalit representation in these enterprises might have gone up since 1989. the banks which employed around a million people in 1990 have shed a lot of weight - their employees number around 8.5 lakhs now. employment in central public sector enterprises too has come down to around 16 lakhs or so. and the total number of employees in all kinds of public sector enterprises (central and states-owned enterprises, banks, departmental undertakings) has also come down from around 61 lakhs in 1990 to around 58 lakhs now. professor sukhadeo thorat had once remarked that dalit employment in public sector enterprises wouldn't be more than 5%. i don't think it is as high as 5%.
despite the findings of his much quoted (by articulate members of those castes/classes who benefitted the most from socialist india) recent study, i think the organized private sector in india is quite probably more broadminded than socialist india's public sector enterprises. i am confident the number of dalits in the organized private sector is much more than 5%.
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There are some numbers about the representation of dalits in the central bureaucracy:
http://casi.ssc.upenn.edu/india/iit_Jaffrelot.html
The artcle argues for reservations in the private sector.
One request. Pl. do not take all my comments too seriously. I have been trying to read up on these topics and I post comments (sometimes) when I feel that they may be related to your topics.
swarup garu,
thanks for the link.
like you, i've been an avid googler too..:) especially on issues relating to caste, since the last two years or so.. my googling has been somewhat more specific though. i'm aware of most of the figures relating to dalit representation in the centre, the states and in the psus. and of unfilled positions, overrepresentation etc. and also have some idea of the numbers in the organized private sector. and of representation of every other broad social category we generally use..(the 'otherindia' dashboard has one of my drafts which was a very long post on the social profile of the indian bureaucracy, and the indian middle class as represented by employment in the organized public and private sector..in the country- unfortunately, i don't think i can retrieve the post now..but i'll be rewriting it again on this blog. i am not sure when i'll be able to finish it). i've also studied nsso and other institutions' reports on , from various years, on these issues. and as many papers/studies as i could find.
most of my posts are based on information i've gathered over some period of time. so, whenever some post of mine seems to raise some questions that might seem 'questionable', please understand that i've asked those questions too. and checked, and rechecked the answers available.
i wait a long time before i write a post on anything. drafts wait for months on my dashboard- because i know the general indian reader on the net, coming as he does from a certain class/social background would find some of the issues i work on unbelievable. so would many prominent journalists, academics, activists, bureaucrats, politicians etc who appear on television and write popular columns. many like me, people from my background, sometimes find it very surprising that these eminent personalities who play such an important role in influencing and making policy... would be so naive as to be unaware of the abysmal participation of marginalized communities in the 'national' life. would be so ignorant of their representation in not just the bureaucracy, industry, judiciary, and media but in many other areas too. and in ownership of property, urban and rural 'assets'etc. and that there are very few prospects of a majority of these communities ever participating in the 'national life' in the near future, unless a total reorientation of policy occurs.
this ignorance becomes very visible during reservation rows that spring up intermittently, every few years. the rare 'succesful' citizen from one-two of these communities [these communities don't constitute more than 2% of the total communities in each category (20 out of nearly 500 sc communities in the country, 20-30 of over 2000 obc communities)]is repeatedly brought into focus to make the points that. : 1) we've had enough of reservations 2)reservations are being misused.
i don't really care whether reservations are delayed, diluted or totally done away with. what i do care about are the following ideas that are thrown up whenever a reservation row happens (and these are usually the only occasions when most of india's educated middle/ruling classes generally bother to discuss about caste): 1) a question of rights to some, is an issue of charity to others 2) that social exclusion is measured entirely through the prism of economics (of income inequality and other nonsense)3)that the solutions offered to 'unique' socio-economic-political problems are entirely based on 'universal' economic principles.
roughly, what i'm trying to point out is that there are two sides on this issue: one holds all the microphones and the other side has to shout to be heard.
the state, as represented by the government, hides most of the information it has available, the media distorts most of the information that's available, the intelligentsia misinterprets the information and converts most of it into misinformation and the educated middle classes pick and choose the information they want. that's one side.
the other side has to deal with the actions of all these agencies. neither the terms of the debate nor the instruments are theirs- there is very little that they can do except shout.
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