Dalits Media Watch
News Updates 30.05.11
Seven Dalit families flee from village - The Times Of India
CII to help SC, ST candidates get jobs - The Times Of India
Dalit Entrepreneurs celebrate the launch of Dicci's Mumbai chapter - Economic Times
The Times Of India
Seven Dalit families flee from village
TNN | May 29, 2011, 11.23pm IST
KANPUR: Seven Dalit families of Hasnapur village in Ramabai Nagar fled when they were attacked by the members of upper caste on Saturday.
Tension prevailed in the village. Police and PAC personnel were deployed.
The incident was result of eve-teasing with womenfolk of the Dalit families by the members of another community in Hasnapur village. When a group of Dalits, led by Narkul, met SP Ashutosh Kumar and apprised him of harassment of their women and girls by the upper caste men, the houses of Dalit families were stoned and damaged on Friday night.
"A team of police including SO Rura Saligram Verma visited Hasnapur. Many families have fled the village. Despite policemen assurances only a few have returned," said Ramai, a native of Thakuran Gadhewa village.
Verma said that the cops are providing assistance to the victims.
Munna, a resident of Hasnapur said: "They attacked us and stoned our houses before misbehaving with women and girls. Many sustained injuries in the attack. I have no other option and left the village. Some policemen came and assured of safety, I returned on Saturday. But many others have still not returned."
Kumar said that action would be initiated against those found involved in harassing women and girls of Dalit community. "We have deployed force there to maintain peace at all cost," he added.
The Times Of India
CII to help SC, ST candidates get jobs
TNN | May 30, 2011, 03.30am IST
LUCKNOW: Apart from the state government, the youths belonging to Scheduled Castes andScheduled Tribes can also look to the Confederation of Indian Industry for patronage and assistance. Announcing the 2011-12 targets for CII's northern region, which has UP and eight other states, CII president B Muthuraman on Saturday said the industry group would train 50,000 SC and ST youths and facilitate employment for an equal number in 2011-12.
"Earlier, all industry groups, including the CII, had protested against job reservations in the industry sector. This was because there were concerns about the quality of employees. To address this issue, the CII this year has decided to work closely with the Dalit Chamber of India. Being the country's most populous state, UP supplies a significant number of skilled and unskilled manpower nationwide. Our affirmative action in this area will involve raising the skill sets and levels of employability of SCs, STs and lowerincome groups,'' a CII official said. Earlier, Muthuraman also announced that CII will focus on increasing the process of sourcing goods and services from SC/ST entrepreneurs by about 10% to 20%.
Though the CII also announced creation of four new skill development hubs and formation of up to 30 new district-level skill gurukuls, for the moment, none of the five planned for the northern region will be stationed in UP. "In subsequent years though, UP will also be a key target area,'' the CII official added.
For the industry group, focus this year will also be on the growth of medium and micro, small and medium enterprises, which are regarded as an important component of the manufacturing sector. Muthuraman said the CII is gunning for creating a common market scenario through an early implementation of GST for the industry and services sector and through uniform implementation of Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act across states and hurdlefree movement of agricultural produce by abolishing the Essential Commodities Act. In UP, a core group of the state unit is already working towards modifying the APMC Act in tandem with the state government.
"Since the agenda for the coming year has only just been announced, the state unit of CII will also shortly begin work in the area of setting up a CII-state government task force to work on improving investment climate,'' a Lucknow-based CII official said.
Apart from UP, affirmative action will also be carried out in other parts of CII's northern region. Elaborating on the plan to contribute to an equitable ecosystem, Malvinder Singh, deputy chairman, CII northern region, said the CII will target employability and employment interventions for 12,500 youths under the group's affirmative action plan. At the district level, the targeted interventions have been proposed in Nawanshahar district of Punjab, a district with 40.5% of SC population. Two new skill centres have also been proposed – one each at Bhiwadi in Rajasthan and Rewari in Haryana. On the MSME front, an MSME help desk will also be set up, specifically catering to the northern region, to offer guidance at a strategic level on marketrelated and operational issues and also offer advice on various finance schemes available to entrepreneurs.
Economic Times
Dalit Entrepreneurs celebrate the launch of Dicci's Mumbai chapter
MUMBAI: Dalit capitalism, on the fringes of socioeconomic debate for a while, finally ordained its high priests, bared the material possessions and aplomb of new Dalit wealth, and basked in a serenade by officials of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) at a 'coming out' party of sorts in Mumbai on Saturday.
Some of the 1,000-odd signatories to this new take on capitalism - members of the fledgling Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industries (Dicci) - met at The Rooftop Rendezvous of Hotel Taj Mahal in south Mumbai, the evening hiring charges of which exceed Rs 5 lakh.
The launch of Dicci's Mumbai chapter, in a way, heralds the willingness of this small set to stand up and be counted among wealth creators of a new and reforming India. The deliberate choice of venue, the BMWs and limousines in the parking lot, and display of the usual trappings of wealth was to signal their 'arrival', as it were, in India's financial capital, the city of opportunities, and home to some of the most distinguished industrial groups of the country.
"We are now in the league of jobgivers," says Milind Kamble, chairman, Dicci. The congregation even found a poster boy in Rajesh Saraiya, CEO of the UK-based SteelMont, which has a turnover of about $400 million. Saraiya, a penurious youth from rural Uttar Pradesh, began his career in Ukraine as a Russian language interpreter to billionaire steel tycoon Laxmi Niwas Mittal. He eventually got into steel trading and is now one of the biggest buyers of steel from SAIL, the Indian public sector giant. Would he get into steel manufacturing, emulating his first employer?
"I have just started my India operations," he says. "It's early days; but nothing can be ruled out." CAPITAL, NOT CASTE The confidence and resolve of the bunch of Dalit entrepreneurs at the meet was infectious as they, dressed in dapper business suits and with glasses of single malt whisky, recalled their early days. The caste prejudices they confronted as struggling Dalits were, however, cast aside and not broached. "Look ahead, the future belongs to us," says Ashok Khade, managing director of the Rs 550-crore DAS Offshore Engineering. Khade employs 4,500 people, of which 152 are BTech engineers.
However, Khade's business card still bears the wounds of prejudices, past and, perhaps, the present. It simply says 'K Ashok', concealing his surname, a caste giveaway. Also present was Kalpana Saroj, chairperson of Kamani Tubes, who Chandra Bhan Prasad , Dalit activist and a mentor of Dicci, on the occasion, dubbed as the 'Oprah Winfrey of Dalits'. Saroj recently took over Kamani and is nursing the sick company back to health.
"We will turn the corner soon to healthy profits," she says. While the Dalit entrepreneurs bonded and celebrated the creation of a collective of their own, they agreed on the fact that their journey had been a long struggle and that one of the most serious impediments had been access to capital, which many face even today. Arun Khobragade, former senior vice-president of ABN Amro Bank and now promoter of a successful frozen foods company, is toying with the idea of raising a venture capital fund. Raising capital is indeed a challenge for all entrepreneurs, Dalits included.
Therefore, Dicci members were all ears when Lakshman Gugulothu, MD and CEO of BSE's new SME Exchange, slated to launch operations soon, dwelt on the intricacies of public offerings and market making. Small and medium enterprises with a post-issue paid-up capital of up to Rs 25 crore are eligible to list on the new exchange. Issues around access to capital and the need to grow throw up numerous questions in the Dalit context.
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
Can this new lot, especially the newer, younger lot, progress and also foster a new generation of Dalit entrepreneurs without proactive support from the government and the rest of Indian industry? They drew comfort in the presence of Jamshed Irani, director of Tata Sons and a keen proponent of affirmative action in the private sector.
However, another Tata luminary, B Muthuraman, was absent. Muthuraman, the vice-chairman of Tata Steel and the newly-elected president of the Confederation of Indian Industry, had promised to launch the Mumbai chapter. Muthuraman has been voicing his support for affirmative action and a key initiative: supplier diversity. Supplier diversity is a concept with roots in the American affirmative action framework, where large companies seek out, support - in terms of management and technology inputs - and buy goods and services from underprivileged and minority suppliers. In the US, supplier diversity has helped scores of black and minority suppliers enter critical supply chains of large multinationals.
The Billion Dollar Roundtable - a club of over 15 companies, including Ford, Honda, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Proctor & Gamble and Walmart - spend at least $1 billion annually with minority and women-owned suppliers. Member companies of another platform, the National Minority Suppliers Development Council, sourced supplies worth $101 billion from minority businesses in 2009. Will Indian industrialists and industry promote a similar support structure for Dalit and other minority entrepreneurs?
There are no positive signs whatsoever, though the Tatas, especially Tata Motors , has made some small beginnings towards this. The Indian government is beginning to get into the act by tweaking a quota for scheduled caste and scheduled tribe (SC/ST) suppliers in governmental tender purchases. Over a decade ago, the Digvijay Singh government in Madhya Pradesh had launched a SC supplier support initiative.
The Mayawati government in Uttar Pradesh made noises on this issue by mandating preferential purchases to publicprivate partnerships, but nothing really materialised. EXCLUSIVE OR INCLUSIVE? Although we have a handful of Dalit entrepreneurs, who are celebrating the discovery of their own, Dalit entrepreneurship will need society's support to gain critical mass. Will it be forthcoming? No, says Anand Teltumbde , civil rights activist, who quit as CEO of Petronet India recently. Teltumbde, grandson of Babasaheb Ambedkar, is aghast at the manner in which a small band of Dalit capitalists are being cited and portrayed as a marker of progress for the entire Dalit community.
"It's nothing short of a cruel joke," he says, coming as it is in the face of continued atrocities on Dalits across the country and the precarious state of much of the Dalit rural populace. He even questions the strategy of Dalit entrepreneurs to assemble as Dicci. "They would have progressed better if they joined a mainstream chambers of commerce instead of appending a caste idiom to the outfit. It will raise the antennas of people against them and restrict business opportunities; it defies business logic," he explains. "It's ghettoising entrepreneurship." Teltumbde doesn't expect the new Dalit elite to do much for the community, as has always been with Dalit elite over the past decades. However, the new bunch of entrepreneurs refute this contention.
Malkiat Chand of the Rs 70-crore Janagal Exports of Ludhiana recalls how he had, time and again, attempted to create new Dalit vendors for his company, with varying degrees of success. The Makwanas of a Rs 300-crore industrial group in Gujarat claim that Dalits make up over half their labour force. "We don't believe in the existing political and social structures to emancipate Dalits.
What we, as entrepreneurs, can do is to create and foster an ecosystem of Dalit vendors, as a road to progress," says Arun Khobragade of RAS Frozen Foods. While Teltumbde dubs the newfound profile being given to Dalit enterprise as the handiwork of neo-liberal forces to co-opt the new breed of Dalits, even at the launch ceremony there were subtle rumblings on the very form of capitalism that Dalits ought to pursue.
Would their brand of capitalism be based on the neo-liberal variety of greed and profit-maximisation, or would it veer towards something with an ethical and moral underpinning? Asmall section of the attendees, especially Kuldeep Ramteke, an IIT alumnus, talked about the 'Buddhist economy' and the concept of 'gross national happiness', against the fascination for GDP growth. A sizeable section of Dalits in Maharashtra, the Mahars, to which Babasaheb Ambedkar once belonged, are Buddhists. The new Dalit elite do have a lot to chew upon.
--
.Arun Khote
On behalf of
Dalits Media Watch Team
(An initiative of "Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC")
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Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre- PMARC has been initiated with the support from group of senior journalists, social activists, academics and intellectuals from Dalit and civil society to advocate and facilitate Dalits issues in the mainstream media. To create proper & adequate space with the Dalit perspective in the mainstream media national/ International on Dalit issues is primary objective of the PMARC.
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