Private Sector Reservation is a thing whose time has come

India has come a long way since the Socialist era, with the introduction of LPG reforms in 1990’s. India is today the world’s fastest growing economy, but this economic boom has also resulted in increasing economic inequality in India. India is one of the youngest countries with a large chunk of population in early youth, but unless this youthful energy is properly channelized, our Demographic Dividend would end up turning into a Demographic Disaster. With this, there seems to be no doubt that Private Sector Reservation is a thing whose time has come. The following arguments justify the need for the same.

1) Shrinking Government jobs : According to the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions data, direct recruitment in government jobs declined by 89% between 2013 and 2015. Most of the government jobs today in Group C and D are are being outsourced to Private Contractors, while the Group A and B jobs are already small in numbers and even they are shrinking. Apart from this due to automation, digitization and promotion of e-governance, the need for clerical personnel has reduced. Most of the sick PSU's have been shut down and disinvestment is being made slowly reducing the government's share and paving the way for Privatization, there has been consolidations of PSU Banks recently, which has also reduced the need for recruiting fresh personnel. All this has drastically reduced the job opportunities available to reserved category people, among whom unemployment is already high. Hence in this climate, the government alone cannot shoulder the burden to bring about Inclusive Growth and reduce income inequalities and therefore the Private Sector needs to step in.

2) Flourishing Private Sector : Implementing Private Sector Reservation in 1990's did not make sense as India had just undergone LPG reforms and India hardly had any Major Private Corporations. In the following decades, there was a spurt in the number of Private Companies, but overall Private Sector was fragile and still not mature enough and due to Global Economic crisis of 2008, it would not have been appropriate to enforce Reservation in the climate of recession. As of today, India's Economy is booming, the Private Sector is flourishing and more and more Start Ups are coming up and are graduating into big companies. GDP growth and FDI inflow into India is overall very healthy and due to initiatives like Make in India and improvement in Ease of Doing Business, the Private Sector in India has become mature enough to be able to accommodate the challenges of Reservation.

3) Availability of Workforce : In the past two decades, there has been a spurt in the number of education institutions in India. Reservation in Educational Institutions for OBC was implemented in 2006 and coupled with the growth of number of Private Education institutions and with that growing education levels among the backward class population, a strong workforce of skilled OBC/SC/ST people has been created, catering to the needs of all types of Industries. Campaigns like Skill India and along with that the large number of Vocational Training institutions have added to the skillset of the people. Hence, the Private Companies, would not find it difficult to find the right candidates in each category for their work, which was the problem a few decades back, when education levels among the backward class people was abysmally low.