Communication

Narayana Murthy, the CEO of Infosys Technologies, has no doubt become an icon of India’s advancement in information technology. His humble middle class background and his continued stay in a middle class locality in Bangalore have received justifiable media attention for the last two years. But, what really surprised me was his criticism of the reservation system. In his interview in the January issue of Seminar he says, ‘It was not easy for people like us from a certain section of society that was considered already advantaged to get a job in Karnataka because of the reservation system and so I postponed the career decision for two years by doing my masters.’

This is a typical argument that a section of society has used against reservation. The fact that he could do his masters despite reservation at the postgraduate level shows that reservation does not come in the way of talented people. Reservation has not harmed the interests of some sections of society, as the percentage of government jobs in the employment market is negligible.

The hard reality in India today is that despite policies of social justice, caste and class are almost the same. The representation of higher castes goes on increasing from the level of a lower division clerk to the top level of a senior secretary in the central secretariat. Though reservation has benefited a few, even a semblance of social justice remains unattained.

At a time when the government is cutting its staff and transferring many of its responsibilities to the private sector, it is important to provide jobs to all sections of society in the private sector. If private industry ignores the backward communities, industrial advancement will lead to greater disparities in the society.

It is in this context that I view Narayana Murthy’s statement with great concern. Providing equal opportunities may have remained an ideal but, as a civilised society, it should be our responsibility to work toward that goal. Those who oppose reservation are surprisingly supporting the selling of postgraduate seats in universities, under what is euphemistically called a ‘self-finance scheme’. Those who do not get seats under normal quota can simply buy them. I wonder what values these universities could teach their students.

Industrialists in India have always attacked the supposedly socialist policy of social justice claiming that the government wanted to distribute wealth even before creating it. The basic premise of this argument is that only industries create wealth. This is a tall claim. It should be stressed that the wealth that exists in the form of human and material resources has to be harnessed to the benefit of everyone. Opportunities should be created in such a way that everyone is allowed to put the best of his abilities to create wealth. It is a pity if people have to pin their hopes on compassion shown to them by industry. A pet phrase of the these industrialists is ‘survival of the fittest’. It is a law of the jungle. Such a policy in a country of great inequalities will only lead to a revival of the barbarism of the medieval period hidden in the agenda of free market theorists.

Another thing that struck me in the interview was the emphasis on teamwork in an organisation. Some years back I was a referee in a high school football match. When one of the teams lost the match I told them it was suicidal to include a polio-afflicted boy in the team. The boys said, ‘We are not really unhappy because we have lost the match. We wanted Suresh (the polio-afflicted boy) to play with us. It has given him the self-confidence he needed. We don’t need anything more.’ I was speechless. I had never seen such a team. I want to see such kind of teams everywhere, teams that not only aim at profits, but also at human values.

 

D.S. Poornananda, Mangalore