Reservation in Private Sector?

“What non sense” - The response will be immediate, intense, vocal and in thumping majority if you belong to India’s burgeoning pvt sector in any capacity.

After all it is the private sector who has been the torch bearer of India’s amazing rise to the global round table. Whilst the state blundered and the political republic just about survived it’s the genius of private sector that pulled load.

And by all accounts India’s private sector is more meritorious than any of its other sectors. The recruitment process of India INC is by and large fair, just, merit oriented etc etc. The incidences of caste based discrimination are unheard of here. We must give it to them – well done.

Being a part of the sector I can vouch that the recruitment process does not take into account things like caste, creed, religion and other such non merit criterions.

The defense rests – throw the reservation proposal out of the window Dr Singh!

But then why are the cockroaches creeping out?

A friend of mine recently suggested a very unnerving experiment.

Take a random sample of employees working in any pvt sector company and count %ge of HOMs – HOM stands for Hindu, Open, Male. More cockroaches!

HOMs contribute to less than 16% in population – whilst in workplace that %ge will be anywhere upwards of 60%... flying cockroaches.

There will be further isolation that will emerge if we rake urban and rural splits. HOMUR? That means virtually 80% of population finds no representation in the private sector.

Some may argue that this proves the superiority of the Aryan race – since these candidates get selected on pure merit. Others will be stumped – how is it possible? – After all we don’t look at birth based criterions at all?

What happened?

I think the answer lies in our deep routed biases – our recruitment process may at best be “non-aligned” to birth based criterions – but it is inadequate to ascertain real merit.

In reality, the image of “Ideal candidate” in the recruiter’s mind is flawed. It is full of biases which render privileged position to HOMURs. Let me explain.

Other things remaining same choose between following candidates- Dark or Fair, Tall or short, Pure accent or desi Hinglish, perfumed or smelly, gelled hair or coconut oil.
Some recruiters will be able to maintain sanity for first few – but its difficult to resist biases as a group. The choice becomes more and more obvious when presented with option such as a candidate that is Fair, Tall, Pure accented, Perfumed, Gelled Hair versus a candidate that is Short, Dark, Hinglish, Smelley, Coconut hair – other things being the same.

Whom do you choose – the HOMUR or non HOMUR (you just missed Dr Abdul Kalam there – who cares!!!)

There’s vicious cycle effect at play here. The likelihood for a non HOMUR to be tall, fair, pure accented and well dressed are far lesser comparatively. His upbringing as well as his family is the reasons. And it gets worse and more confusing– even education grades are not comparable! Education is not really an “open for all” race – make no mistakes. The family habits to study, the DNA, the discipline, wealth, confidence makes a lot of difference. So even the marks and the grades of candidates become non- comparable. Female candidates get thrown out of career race due to tyranny of marriage, pregnancy and household responsibilities.

So what’s the solution – Honestly I don’t know.

We are a unique nation. My guess is at no point in the history of mankind were so many downtrodden people tied by such longstanding oppressive customs, offered opportunities to break the glass ceiling at once. So there are no benchmarks and examples to follow.

I am just saying that the private sector recruiters need to be more aware of HOMs and non HOMs. We need to acknowledge that the biases exist. This will make us more open to plural definitions of “ideal candidates” and hopefully more and more non HOMs will get through.

Finally it’s the longest standing truth of economics that will prevail – you rather have little lesser wealth distribute equally than have more wealth distributed very unevenly. Eventually the ‘have nots’ will revolt if the exclusion is severe. Let’s not get to that point.

PS: the writer is belongs to the “open” category!

Who is the real terrorist?

In every year except 2001, only a few hundred people in the entire world have been killed by international terrorism outside of war zones. Add to that the fact that ordinary homicide vastly exceeds murders caused by terrorists – John Mueller – Terrorism Expert.

Surely natural Tragedies, medical disasters, accidental deaths cause lot more deaths than the above two combined– then why is terrorism tom tomed so much in media?

I read somewhere that that in Kashmir Indian army outnumbers terrorists 1000: 1 and still terrorism is our biggest threat – why? Could it be that the Kashmir terrorist is the asian avatar of Rambo or Terminator who can take on 1000s of trained army men at once?

Think – think. The truth can’t be as dumb as it seems.

How could a problem that is not even amongst top 10 causes of death seem bigger than everything else before it? How could such handful of terrorists hold the Indian republic at ransom? There have to be some more invisible hands helping the terrorists in their fight – isn’t it?

The facts are screaming the truth – says Mr 007!

Following groups are analogous to me.

The writer, the publisher and the reader.

The Porn star, the Porn Industry and the internet surfer.

The Terrorist, the media and the …. Yes YOU – the TV audience.

Here’s the Eureka moment! It feeds on you – you fool… its been doing so all along.

In media they say – it (the story) leads if it bleeds. Media loves the high octane human drama involving

blood, pain and the saga of human suffering. They are not in it for the high of dramatic reporting – but for the lure of advertising bucks. Shame shame.

But then it gets murkier – there’s someone who is buying this stuff – glued to the TV screen in comforts of the living room– knowing fully well that the likelihood of this happening to him is close to zero… - face it –You are the porn buyer, YOU are the child molester, YOU ARE THE TERRORIST.

The real face behind this ghastly game is YOU.

Think - who is ultimately paying for the non-stop media reporting of terrorist acts via the advertisers? And what could the terrorist achieve without the media coverage – which YOU are indirectly financing? If YOU switch off the TV and stop overreacting to the terrorist threats (remember its not even in top 10 causes of death) the game stops. Yes your heard it right – THE BLOODY GAME STOPS FOR GOOD! Simple huh!

Now we know why terrorists are appearing to be winning in Kashmir – how the struggle continues for 20 years. Who the invisible hands belong to – us. We are feeding it via media, advertisers and by being terrorized. We stop and they stop.

It’s time we understand that terrorists are using media (and therefore us) as weapons. A random round of gunshot, in some random town which kills less than 0.00001% (less than 100?) of population is not enough to shake the confidence of one billion people unless we contribute to it. And we are.

We must stop unintentionally aiding the terrorist – NOW.

I propose a few things

• Complete private channel blackout of terrorism coverage. State media – like DD – is generally responsible, slow and dull enough to take hype out of the equation. And such coverage will also protect our right to information
• If the above amounts to subversion of media then the private media should be allowed on one condition - no advertiser slots during the terrorist attack coverage. This will force media to avoid giving undue importance to such attacks – and more importantly will avoid reruns of stale images. (Terrorists watching this coverage must be relishing such star status – Additionally such coverage serves as the best recruitment advertisements for terrorist organization. Lets stop that as well.)
• As responsible citizens let’s switch off the TV sets and SHOW repelling behavior towards media which over covers it. They will automatically smell the coffee.
• I advocate strong web / internet filtering of terrorist messages.
• Most importantly public awareness campaign on tv and mass media making citizens aware about how terrorists are using media and mass terror through it to their advantage in this 21^st century war.