By IANS
Lucknow : Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati has decided to go all out to enforce job quotas in the private sector.
She announced the quota as part of her government’s new economic policy on December 24 last year. Now, a full-page advertisement has appeared in all prominent dailies here Wednesday, entitled “New Positive Reservation Initiatives”, as a reminder that she meant business.
The chief minister’s office was now in the process of issuing a circular to all government departments to ensure implementation of the quota policy that would be monitored at the highest level.
The new reservation formula says: “All private investors seeking to avail various concessions offered by the state for setting up new entrepreneurial units would be required to allocate 10 percent jobs to Scheduled Castes, 10 percent to other backward classes including members of backward religious minorities and another 10 percent to the economically weak among upper castes.”
Uttar Pradesh is India’s first state with such a reservation policy in the private sector.
Industry representatives are worried about the new policy that they see as “encroachment” on their business independence. While none is willing to go on record, entrepreneurs confess in private that they see the new policy as yet another tool in the hands of officials to resort to “arm-twisting”.
A leading entrepreneur based in the state’s major industrial hub Kanpur told IANS on condition of anonymity: “This new reservation policy has imposed many limitations on us.
“After all, we have our existing manpower and if we were to carry out a government contract, we would be forced to replace our existing manpower which would in effect mean rendering many workers jobless.”
Another Kanpur-based industrialist said: “Surely one will have to compromise on the quality of manpower in the new water-tight compartments being created by Mayawati.”
The local office of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) refused to make any comment on the plea: “We do not have a local head, who alone is authorized to speak to the media”,
PHD Chamber of Commerce local head Anil Shukla pleaded: “I must take clearance from my headquarters at Delhi before giving any reaction”.
“Private players wanting to partner state-owned units would have to follow the reservation policy as enshrined under the Constitution by Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar,” Mayawati had declared Dec 24 last year.
She also proposed to introduce job quotas in all services outsourced by the state government. All outsourcing agents would have to adhere to the government’s reservation policy.
The chief minister’s political advisers say she wants to send a message. “To me, this appears like a balancing act to dispel the suspicion that she was giving greater importance to Brahmins whom she brought into her essentially Dalit party as a part of her unique social engineering exercise,” remarked a close political aide on condition of anonymity.
“Those saying Mayawati was ignoring Dalits whom she treated as her pocket-borough would now be proved wrong,” he said, adding: “the new reservation policy was re-assertion of her message that her traditional political base continues to remain on top of her priorities.”