Infosys and Microsoft - II

By Gail Omvedt

``IT IS not the responsibility of a single company to tackle the problems of a nation!'' This could be a seemingly appropriate response to the issues I have raised. However, many things in fact can be done. The possibilities - and the contrasting attitude of major public and private sector institutions in India and the U.S. to the issue of ``diversity/affirmative action/reservation'' - have been brought forward in a brilliant series of articles by the Dalit journalist, Mr. Chandra Bhan Prasad.

Mr. Prasad made a visit to the U.S. last year, and surveyed what major institutions in that country were doing about what is called in India ``reservation''. He brings forward some rather devastating comparisons. For instance, while in India there is reservation in the public sector, there have always been certain excluded areas - specifically, science and defence.

In regard to defence, especially, who dares raise the issue of how many Dalit (or OBC) Generals there are, whether the country is doing anything to train them, whether there is a significant difference in caste compositions between the ranks of men who die in places like Kargil and the officers who mastermind their campaigns? A person who raised such an issue would doubtlessly be called ``anti-national''. Similarly, I have never seen such demands even being publicly raised about having special programmes to see that Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Castes get entry into high level science establishments.

Mr. Prasad, however, has pointed out that NASA - the North American Space Agency - has a special department set up to scout for talent. NASA may not have quotas, but it (and military training schools such as West Point) have been doing all they can to find and develop talent from among the previously excluded minorities in the United States.

As a result, where once African Americans were excluded from the army, where they were not even allowed to fight in the Civil War that was supposedly fought to free them from slavery, today they have produced Generals such as Colin Powell, now the U.S. Secretary of State, third in rank from the Presidency, and a position of power as well as prestige.

Indeed, programmes of ``reservation'' or ``affirmative action'' (as it has been known in the U.S.) could perhaps be more correctly described as a form of ``talent hunt'' - pushing companies and institutions to go beyond their usual narrow recruitment base to hunt for talent that has so far not had a chance to be realised.

NASA, of course, is in the ``public sector''. What about the private, corporate sector in the U.S.? Mr. Prasad has looked at the field of education by comparing Harvard University with Delhi University. Harvard is of course a private university, named after an 18th century parson who was concerned enough for education that he donated his library to the founding of a college.

At Harvard, the percentage of ``Blacks/ethnics'' (i.e. all minorities) among all non-medical teaching staff increased from 12.20 per cent (of a total of 2016) in 1994 to 13.70 per cent (of 2062) in 1999; and from 28.3 per cent (of 566) to 33.9 per cent (of 651) among researchers. As this shows, their percentage is still behind their total proportion of the population (about 38 per cent now), but it is coming up; it is coming up quite strongly among ``researchers'' who are the scientists and faculty of tomorrow.

At the Harvard medical school ``Blacks/ethnics'' among teachers increased from 9.54 per cent in 1994 to 13.67 per cent in 1999, and from 30.31 per cent to 37.5 per cent among trainees. As Mr. Prasad points out, this is not equality (Blacks/ethnics constitute about 38 per cent of the population), but the situation is improving, and among the ``researchers'' and ``trainees'' - the scientists, professors and doctors of tomorrow - it is approaching equal representation. And most important, Harvard University, including its teachers and students, takes the effort of remedying social injustice very seriously.

Mr. Prasad compares this to the situation at Delhi University, where Dalits are 100 of 6,500 teachers, 1.53 per cent of the total! He notes the way the teachers took to the streets to oppose a directive to reserve all new vacancies for Dalits, with extravagant statements such as ``many will commit suicide now'' and ``there is no value for merit in India, we had all better migrate to foreign countries''.

Clearly, Harvard is way ahead of Delhi University in terms of intellectual contributions, yet the days when white Americans campaigned and rioted to oppose equality and integration in education are long past.

Along with the fields of education and science, Mr. Prasad has looked at the issue of competence and merit in the field of information technology - specifically, he investigated what Mr. Bill Gates is doing at Microsoft to increase the representation of Blacks and other minorities and to support their general advance in society.

Mr. Gates, I might add, has about the same position in American society as Mr. Narayana Murthy of Infosys has in India - he is a white Caucasian American, in other words, a ``Honky''. This in itself does not bother Mr. Prasad at all; in the best Indian tradition, he is concerned with action, not birth. And in regard to action, he tells us that under the leadership of Mr. Gates, Microsoft has openly admitted that ``groups of people who are viewed negatively'' (Blacks, other ethnics and women in the U.S. context) suffer from discrimination, and that ensuring their representation will enrich the performance and products of Microsoft and benefit the communities that Microsoft is involved in. This is why Microsoft is concerned with ``diversity''.

In other words, Microsoft gives a theoretical justification for ``affirmative action'' or something resembling reservation in the private sector. In order to carry out its responsibilities, Microsoft offers scholarships to Blacks and other ethnics, it organises professional training programmes, it makes special efforts to recruit them, it purchases materials from businesses owned by Blacks and other ethnic groups, and it involves itself in community programmes. Mr. Prasad then asks, rhetorically, what corporate houses in India do in this respect. Specifically we can ask, what is Infosys doing?

Dalit intellectuals like Mr. Prasad are not asking corporate houses like Infosys to set aside a fixed quota for Scheduled Caste-Scheduled Tribe or OBC employees. What they are asking is simply that executives like Mr. Narayana Murthy and others who have pioneered the IT sector should give some thought to the society, that they should take some action: admit that there is a problem regarding caste in India, use the imagination which has helped to build the company to contribute to the solution of this problem within their company and the society, generate ideas as to how this problem can be solved, and sincerely take steps to implement these.

I don't think that this is too much to ask.

(Concluded)

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