It was a wake-up call for India Inc, recalls Jamshed J Irani, director, Tata Sons, when in early 2006, the then minister for social justice and empowerment and the Congress party’s Dalit face, Meira Kumar, started meeting top CEOs to seek their support for a legislation on employment reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the private sector. Irani who leads the affirmative action plan in the Tata Group that employs some 3.75 lakh people?tacitly admits that the corporate sector had not quite consciously worked to mainstream the idea till five years ago.

To create more jobs for SCs and STs, Meira Kumar said there was no third way besides voluntary action by India Inc. or a legislation mandating reservation. The idea of a statute gained political traction in the first term of the United Progressive Alliance government, particularly with the Left demanding that the industry play a leading role in empowering the less privileged?the SCs and STs?who account for almost a quarter of the country’s population.

Almost five years later, the CII, India’s largest industry chamber, undertook the first-ever caste census of its member firms–numbering 8,250 and employing 35 lakh?across the country. This, arguably, is also representative of India Inc. The survey, at first glance, shows the private sector in poor light, especially in states like Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka, if one looks at its results from a narrow prism of the share of SCs and STs in the workforce compared with their strength in the total population. In these two regions, SCs and STs are just about 16% of the workforce. In the northern and eastern regions, they are 22% and 24%, respectively, reflecting the average national

With the threat of a legislation looking real, the corporate sector’s response, according to Irani, was two-fold, and he explained this in detail to the Prime Minister. ?It (quotas) is not really going to help them. Corporate India could challenge it, but would like to avoid this situation. So, let us cooperate. The CII and others will cooperate with the government on affirmative action and this will bring more benefit to SCs and STs.? The government saw merit in the argument, and in the last five years, India Inc has made progress, but just enough to keep the government off from passing a law.

According to the CII’s caste census, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and West Bengal, some of the most industrialised states, show a sharp mismatch between SCs and STs as a percentage of the total workforce in the private sector and SCs and STs as a percentage of the state?s population. In Maharashtra, SCs and STs make up 19.1% of the total state population, but their share in private sector employment is only 5%. In Gujarat and Karnataka, SCs and STs constitute just 9% of the staff strength, but account for 22% and 23%, respectively, of the state population. Ironically enough, these are the states that rank high in the pecking order, both in terms of the number of factories and employment. The only exception is Tamil Nadu, which ranks number one in industrialisation and employment and where SCs andSTs account for almost 18% of the industrial workforce and 20% of the state?s population.

The states in east India, where jobs are far and few, have the highest percentage of SCs andSTs. So, in Bihar, which has little to show in terms of industrialisation, SCs and STs constitute a fourth of the total workforce, much higher than their 16.6% share in the state’s population. Similarly, the private sector in Chhattisgarh has almost half its workforce from the SCs and STs community, comparable to their strength in population (See map).

Services today account for almost 60 per cent of the country’s economy. In Maharashtra, according to the same CII survey, banks, financial institutions and information technology or software services companies contribute almost 18 % to the total employment. And within services, SCs and STs account for a quarter of the total workforce. ?Most private sector is caste and religion agnostic,? says K Ramkumar, executive director, ICICI Bank, who is responsible for human resources in the country’s largest private sector bank. ?In Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, a lot more people are eligible to apply for jobs because they are graduates,? he says.

Down south, barring Karnataka, private sector in the other three states?Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala?can pull their collars up. Infosys board member Mohandas Pai, who is responsible for human resources in the most-celebrated software company, says, ?If you look at fresh hiring at Infosys, much of it is from the disadvantaged section. Both the parents of 17 % of our fresh hires in Mysore are non-graduates. Almost 40% of these hires had only one graduate parent.? A silent revolution seems to be happening from the bottom. ?And this is happening in high-paying jobs, going right up to the top,? says Pai.

Indeed, according to the CII survey, in all four southern states combined, the share of SC/STs among trainees in the IT and IT-enabled services sector is 10 per cent of the total trainee strength. If you look at the total employee stock across all levels of management, then it is only 5%. IT and ITeS account for 26% of the total employment in southern India and CII members alone employ about 1.5 lakh in the region.