2.  A study conducted to understand the social
attitudes of Indian employers and hiring
managers in the formal sector.
 Follows similar attempts made in the US by
Kirshenmann and Neckerman (1991), Devah
Pager (2003).

3.  Kirshenmann and Neckerman (1991) : role
played by employers in the production of
unequal outcomes by race and gender.
 Employers believed that black men were
unreliable, unruly, poorly educated an low
skilled.

4.  Devah Pager (2003) : Prejudice in the minds
of the employers remains a problem in the
distribution of jobs. Low skill and educational
deficits contribute to low employment rates
among the Blacks. But even those who are
qualified face suspicion!

5. A qualitative study
Undertaken among 25 human resource
managers based in New Delhi
Sample size small, but firms are
big, responsible for a significant number of
hiring decisions in any given year

6.  Of the 25 firms about 22 of them employ
19,00,000 ‘core workers’ (on direct
payroll), and data on contract and temporary
employees for 63,000 workers.
 Purpose was to explore employer’s
perception of the labour force, challenges
involved in hiring policy.

7.  Asked questions on their opinions on the
reservation policy, whether this policy
instrument should be extended to the private
sector ?

8.  All interviewees reiterated the fact that
‘workers should be recruited strictly
according to merit.’
 Traditional practices of recruitment …
decided on the basis of personal ties, village
ties and caste identity, in other words, on
inherited privilege of some sort.
 Modern practices came in with the growth of
professions in the West and their elaborate
system of credentialism.

9.  Qualification now essential, competition built in
to the system.
 The promise of merit as a publicly declared
value, and the sole legitimate basis for
employment… an attempt towards becoming
modern
 Creation of the Civil Services in the colonial
period… a step to distribute jobs fairly, do away
with corruption

10.  Though this became a practice in the public
sector, Indian employers in the private sector
joined in this practice quite late.
 But today they believe that as India becomes
an economic powerhouse in the modern
world, an adherence to practices that
promote meritocracy in hiring and
recruitment is essential. To do so otherwise
would be detrimental for the larger national
good.

11.  A major media company, headquarters in
Delhi, bureaus in 16 states
 80 year old firm, a workforce of 3000 core
employees, another 800 employees hired
through outsourced contracts
 Recruit new employees at the national
level, and locally for their auxilliary bureaus
 Publicly listed company, majority of their
shares owned by the Indian family

12.  Claims to having a diversified
workforce, ‘irrespective of divisions of
caste, creed and colour…’
 Prefer and hire people ‘who are more
exposed to the world’… exposure after all
stimulates the power of imagination
 Relies on projecting a cosmopolitan image as
part of its market appeal… prefers people
who are worldly, sophisticated and well
educated.

13.  In principle, individuals with this kind of
cultural capital could come from any
background, but in practice institutions that
produce cosmopolitanism are rarely
accessible to members of SC/STs.
 Public institutions that privilege the written
exam as a marker of merit, often forget that
it does not favour the minorities and the
lower castes.

14.  A 20 yr old company, a small family owned
firm with 150 people, sells processed
agricultural products.
 As a fairly new company it claims to value and
espouse modern management practices
 The HR Director alleges that there is no
relationship between quality of work and
background characteristics like caste.

15.  There is an acknowledgement that if not in this
company, caste and community does matter in the
private companies. A person who is a thriving
businessman is often helped in his business by his
own caste/community members or by his friends
who belong to the same caste.
 Caste is found in ‘smaller organisations’, in ‘rural
areas’. Casteism or in-group preference has not
disappeared completely. However an evolutionary
trend is in progress.

16.  As globalisation creates competitive
pressures, conservative, backward practices
are bound to give way. Firms most exposed
to international competition have abandoned
discriminatory tradition.
 However, the language of merit masks many
forms of institutional discrimination that
prevent all members from competing on a
level playing field.

17.  Every hiring manager interviewed in this
project was of the view that ‘family
background’ was critical in evaluating a
potential employee.
 This would contradict the idea of ‘merit’ as
understood classically in terms of rising
above one’s station at birth and one’s family
of origin.

18.  When an Indian hiring manager is seeking
information on the candidate’s background, it
includes everything apart from the
candidate’s educational or work experience.
 For eg. … family background entails looking
at …’good background’, ‘educated
parents’, ‘brother and sister
working’, ‘preference for those from urban
areas’ etc. (HR Mgr, MNC)

19.  ‘Family background or the setting in which
the candidate is raised makes a difference
between success and failure in a job
applicant.’ (HRM, of a firm which sells
multiple products) This is especially so for
managerial positions.
 For lower level workers, the company wants
to know if the standards of the company
match with that of the applicant.

20.  Trainability is an important factor… this too
depends upon the subjective perception of
the interviewer about the traits of the
candidate
 Family background matters because the
respondents felt that ‘merit is formed within
the crucible of the family’.

21.  For the hiring mgr who cannot know the
applicant very well, the success of the job
applicant’s family stand as proof that the
individual is reliable, motivated and worthy.
 Number of family members, their level of
education, education of parents
especially, questions about locality, schooling
etc are important because these characteristics
ar the source of ‘soft skills’ that are an asset to
the firm.

22.  Screening applicants based on family
background creates employment barriers for
the dalits, OBCs and others lower down in the
hierarchy as they do not have desirable
educational or occupational biographies.
 Even for those living in the cities, the children
go to state run, non English medium schools

23.  Even those from the rich families are also not
preferred because it is believed that they would
turn out to be ‘pampered’, ‘lazy’, ‘using
connections’ to get in, they would have ‘an inner
pride which makes them arrogant’ and therefore
unsuitable.
 Thus the central importance of the meritocratic
model is the ‘family background’ which works in
favour of the middle classes. It has no space for
those at the very top or the bottom.

24.  HR Managers have firm ideas about qualities
that different regions inculcate in their
inhabitants
 The HR Managers feel anxious about
- Social consequences of throwing together
combinations of antagonistic local groups of
workers.
- Solidarity within the workforce based on
caste, tribe, village membership which may
come together against the management .

25.  Relations that the Company forges with the
workers and the community around it allows
it to stereotype its workers (eg Kilim
Chemical Company)
 In a self consciously modern private
airline, the emphasis is on stylish
appearance, fluency in English and cultural
sophistication Physical appearance is integral
for the right kind of employee. (eg National
Airlines)

26.  Recruitment in rural areas show a caste bias;
workers disappear for a month during
agricultural season, leads the HR Mgr to hold
strong views (eg Security Services)
 Caste an important factor in organising the
local labour force; Unions are structured by
caste. The firm tries to temper the power of
caste/ethnic base organising by developing
paternalistic relationship and by recruiting
ethnically diverse groups. (eg India Motors)

27.  Hiring also shows preference for specific
groups, regional ethnicities and
religions(Preference for Malayali Christian
nurses, exclusion of SCs/Muslims who do not
fit because of a mind set )

28.  No one in the entire category of research
subjects was favourably disposed towards
reservation as policy of hiring.
 Reservation policy inserts ascriptive criteria
into the hiring process and short circuits the
competitive processes essential to the
market.
 Defeat the purpose of national
growth, international investment etc

29.  Some thought that discrimination is not a
problem in the development of India’s labour
market.
 The idea is that if a person is capable enough
he/she does not need reservations
 Yet managers are aware that inequality is
persistent, that low caste individuals have
less opportunity than others in the labour
market.

30.  Employers feel that education and not
affirmative action will uplift the lower caste
population.
 Integrated schooling which bring both the
high and the low castes together over a long
period of time… may break down caste
barriers


31.  Pitfalls of reservation are many :
- Destroys initiative as well as productivity
- Trade unions will make trouble which will
ultimately cost the company.
- Damage competitiveness, as it can be seen in
the government firms. It has the potential to
spread a watered down ethic.
- Undermine the self confidence of the low caste
or minority students who come to believe that
they are not really good enough

32.  Reservation has become the privilege of one
class of dalits- those in the urban areas.

33.  Though meritocracy has spread around the
globe along with competitive
capitalism, ascriptive characteristics (now in
the garb of family background) continue to
matter.
 Commitment to modern labour management
practices turn a blind eye to the uneven
playing field that produces merit in the first
place.

34.  Commitment to merit is voiced along with
convictions of how merit is distributed
according to caste, community, regional
considerations. Hence stereotypes replace
individual’s qualities.
 Merit is after all produced through the
intervention of a large number of factors.

35.  The distribution of credentials particularly in
the form of education is hardly a function of
individual talent alone. It reflects differential
investment in schools, healthcare, nutrition
etc. Institutional discrimination of this kind
condemns the low caste to a life of poverty.
As long as the playing field is tilted, there
would be no meaning of meritocracy
conceived of as a fair game!