Affirmative actions by industry may not be enough: Meira Kumar

New Delhi, Feb 16 (UNI) The Industry reluctant on giving reservation to Scheduled Castes has been sounded a warning by Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Meira Kumar who said her demand still stood and legislation might be the ultimate means to do that.

''Such a demand was perfectly justified as very few jobs were left with the government because of liberalisation,'' Ms Kumar told UNI.

While praising Infosys for providing skill enhancement training to SCs, she said, ''These kinds of affirmative actions may not always succeed because of the discriminatory mindset towards these classes.'' The Minister, however, said she hoped that groups like the Infosys would absorb the candidates they were training beacuse they have spent money on them, but that may not happen in every case.

''The industry cannot shun its responsibility towards the society where it was flourishing. The government is withdrawing from most of the domains, leaving the field to the private sector. In such a situation, the industry cannot say that uplift of deprived classes does not concern it,'' she said.

So long as the caste-discriminative mind-set worked, there was no 100 per cent surety that even qualified people of these classes would be able to find a job in proportion to their opulation, she added.

It was this very mindset that came in the way of sincere implementation of quota for Scheduled Castes and Backward Classes in government services, she said ''There is a large backlog of reserved posts not filled, and that has resulted due to the insincerity of intentions. If you advertise posts in as small a number as two, how can you reserve 22 per cent out of that,'' Ms Kumar said.

''There are hundred ways of circumventing a law, if you don't want to implement it,'' she added.

The issues were, however, being personally monitored by Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh.

When asked why after so many years, measures for the uplift of these classes were still lacking implemenation, Ms Kumar said she would not say that nothing has been done. The situation for SC and other Backward Classes had improved a lot after Independence mainly because of the policies followed by successive Congress governments.

Ms Kumar said still there was a lot to be done.

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