Photo: V. Ganesan

TOUGH JOB AHEAD: J. J. Irani (left), Chairman, CII Task Force on Affirmative Action, R. Seshasayee (centre), President, CII, and Managing Director, Ashok Leyland, and Sunil Bharti Mittal, Vice-President, CII, at a press conference in Chennai on Friday.

CHENNAI: Two major bodies representing a large section of Indian industry unveiled on Saturday a joint action plan, the first such initiative, for upliftment of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes through a combination of measures in the areas of employment, entrepreneurial development, employability and education.

The "concrete steps'' as the plan of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) is described comes in response to a call of the Prime Minister some time ago for affirmative action from industry on the issue.

Making a formal announcement of the plan to presspersons here, leaders of the two industry bodies said the member-companies would voluntarily provide greater representation for SC/ST in employment. They, however, opposed reservation of jobs in the private sector, something for which the Centre contemplated introduction of legislation.

CII President R. Seshasayee denied that the action plan was to preempt the government from introducing such a piece of legislation. "This [action plan] is industry's affirmative action," he declared while pointing out that industry believes that a legislation on the issue would be counter-productive.

At workplace — organised private sector industry employs around two per cent of the estimated eight million of India's workforce — industry would provide for greater representation to SC/ST in its new recruitment at all levels. It expects the efforts to "become visible within the next year,'' according to the action plan. Companies would strengthen their human resource systems for enhancing access and opportunity to applicants from SC/ST with "equal qualifications and competence for employment.''

CII and Assocham, whose President Anil K. Agarwal also addressed the meeting, would develop advocacy and information programmes for companies on employment policies for greater participation of SC/ST. The companies would be encouraged to provide for more executive positions through appointments/promotions for SC/ST.

The second component of the action plan lists out measures to be taken by the companies to support entrepreneurship development among SC/ST for "more inclusive growth.'' Larger companies, according to Tata Sons Director J. J. Irani, will mentor and create at least one such entrepreneur a year and also advice their component suppliers to promote SC/ST. To begin with 100 entrepreneurs will be created in the first year and that would be scaled-up subsequently. The action plan said: "Quality and cost being equal, companies to give preference [while placing orders] to enterprises with promoters, partners and proprietors, and/or workers in majority from SC and ST."

On the employability front and towards expanding the pool of employable personnel from among SC/ST, industry would help establish coaching programmes in universities to lower dropout rates among candidates belonging to the two categories. In the first year, ten universities would be identified for programmes covering 10,000 students with the objective of taking it to 50 cities and 50,000 students by 2009.

Industry would partner with government to modernise the apprenticeship training scheme and induct more apprentices belonging to the two categories and establish a large number of student scholarships for SC/ST.

Noting that there was no alternative to high quality universal education to achieve the objective of building an inclusive and integrated society, the action plan said industry would partner non-governmental organisation to improve the primary education in government and municipal schools. This initiative would be launched in 104 districts with a pronounced population of SC/ST communities.

According to Mr. Seshasayee, the initiatives would be voluntary in nature and CII and Assocham would immediately formulate a code of conduct that would be progressively adopted by the members from October. An ombudsman-like body to monitor and seek information from the companies would also be created.

The action was recently presented to the Prime Minister and the Union Minister for Social Welfare.

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