That's the title of the article. The author seems to think that reservations in private industry is a good thing. The argument seems to be that since the government has failed in its aims of providing social justice, it's now up to private companies to take up the "challenge". It's an "idea whose time has come", apparently.
What Mr. Sethi seems unable to understand is the reason behind the opposition to reservations. Does he honestly think that anyone is going to sit and welcome the potential loss of opportunity? Would he be overjoyed if he was fired from whatever job he holds (if he does have full-time employment, of course) so that it can be given over to someone else who has not had the same opportunites as he did? Would the politicians supporting it willingly give over their chairs to someone else who has led an "underprivileged life"? Would the rich give away their wealth because possibly, maybe, theoretically, some ancestor of theirs, had oppressed someone else to obtain his wealth?
Education and employment are the two things that can make a person's life better without him being outrightly dishonest or criminal (the third factor being luck, of course). As far as I am concerned, I cannot condone any effort to take even these opportunities away from me or my family.
Apart from the emotional factors above, there is also the question of suitability, which the author seem to have no clue about. If he runs a business, would he willingly go out and hire random people from the street so that they can have equal opportunities? Would the air force recruit physically disabled and mentally unsound personnel to man their jets, just because historically such people have been discriminated against? I accept that discrimination against the so-called backward classes has been much more subtle and has a different context; but I also maintain that blindly giving over jobs and seats in schools/colleges is a very bad move. As far as companies go, I have yet to see any overt discrimination on the basis of caste or religion. We are hard pressed to find qualified candidates suitable for the job at hand in any case, and I hardly think any employer would be foolish enough to pass over a good prospective employee because of caste. Even with the existing reservation at the college level, I have not seen anyone checking out the caste of a candidate; qualifications, skillset, past experience, suitability for the job at hand are the overriding factors, how he got into his college is not relevant. Yet.
Like another author on rediff; in school, I had no clue about the castes and religions of my fellow classmates - unless the name made it very obvious about the religion part. I only read in textbooks about the varna system and that there were 4 castes in society. I read briefly about the reservation policy and the opposition to it. It did not matter much to me then, but I do remember feeling even then that it was not a very fair way of doing things. I learnt a bit more about castes when I was in college, probably because I met more vocal people there, from both sides of the fence. My choice of friends there was based on purely intellectual abilities, personality, "wavelength"; and to this day I have no idea about the castes of most of the people I met in college. It was during this time, that it slowly dawned on me that there was perhaps more to the caste system than the 4 varnas I kept reading about. I heard about subcastes, and the concept of surnames as castes, and I still find it confusing at best.
I have been working for several years since I graduated, and never have I had occasion to wonder about the caste of any fellow worker. I have never been concerned about the caste of people whom I met in my daily life
I don't know if my life has been totally removed from reality, whether it's completely opposite of what most people go through. I do know that if we do bring in reservations in private companies, the first question an interview candidate will be asked is "WTF is your caste?"
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