The Narendra Modi Government has assured private investors that they will not need to comply with caste-based job reservations after the major transition of disinvestments of government stakes in state-run firms. The government has said that they will instead negotiate terms and conditions in shareholders’ agreements to satisfactorily protect employees.
Sources requesting anonymity have said that the new promoters of the company, however, will have to protect the rights of the existing employees such as the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and physically handicapped.
They said that the Center will negotiate the terms and conditions in the shareholders’ agreement (SHA) to ensure that once management control is transferred to a private entity, it adequately protects staff. Enforcing job quota is not desirable or legally possible, they added.
On quoting a policy document of the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (Dipam) one of the people remarked that “trade-off” is possible. This document says: “Government, in a welfare state, would like to look after the staff interest. There obviously has to be a trade-off, however, between the protection that the employees can be given and providing to the strategic partner a degree of freedom to run the firm. These competing interests would have to be carefully balanced in drafting the agreements.”
Manishii Pathak, labor law expert and founder of legal consultancy firm Anhad Law said under the Constitution, only the state has been directed to make provision for reservation. “While central or state government-run or controlled companies have been mandated to follow a reservation policy for scheduled castes/scheduled tribes/physically handicapped, no such policy applies to the private sector at present.”
Thus under the new laws of privatization, even the legal rights of job reservations will be taken away. While it is easy to say that India has developed vastly to allow for reservation privileges to be removed, the truth is India has hit the worst jobless crisis in 45 years, with her over 1.39 billion population, the second largest in the world
India’s population increased by 13 million (+1.0%) between January 2020 and January 2021. 48.0% of India’s population is female, while 52.0% of its population is male.
The Western structure has provisions for the jobless. America’s capitalistic structure destroyed the middle and lower strata of society to a crisis of joblessness, however, the only difference is the American government can take care of the jobless through social security and other such schemes.
If the government is keen on stripping away the few privileges that enable India’s populous masses to get jobs, then one can conclude that the government is working on an anti-people strategy that will only benefit the capitalists and corporates. In India, the jobless masses will die hungry, unfortunately.