Date:22/11/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/11/22/stories/2006112222090400.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

`Affirmative action is the way forward for true social justice'

Staff Reporter

Reservation should not be addressed in terms of political compulsions: Moily

BANGALORE: Affirmative action to ensure equity for the backward classes is an idea whose time has come. India ought to take a leaf out of the U.S.'s book and bring the vast majority of the population into the mainstream for participation in economic progress, the former Chief Minister M. Veerappa Moily said here on Tuesday.

Speaking on "Affirmative Action" at the St. Joseph's College, Mr Moily, who headed the Oversight Committee on Reservation in Higher Education Institutions, quoted India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who had said: "Fissiparous tendencies arise out of social backwardness."

In 1961, the then U.S. President John F. Kennedy's Executive Order initiated the history of affirmative action policy in the U.S. He created a Committee of Equal Employment Opportunity. And then in 1964 came the Civil Rights Act. In 1994, while receiving the Opportunity 2000 Award from the US Labour Department, the CEO of Proctor and Gamble Edwin. L. Artzt said: "Affirmative Action has been a positive force in our company."

Mr. Moily cited the survey of 120 corporate CEOs by the National Association of Manufacturers, which said: "Affirmative Action makes good business policy."

Reservation or affirmative action was one of the major components of any strategy to usher in social revolution, and Constitutional amendments was another means for providing protection to the disadvantaged classes, he said.

Referring to the ongoing debate on reservation for religious minority groups, Mr. Moily averred that there were enough provisions in the Constitution to provide social equality.

Ravi Verma Kumar, advocate, who headed the Backward Classes Commission of Karnataka, said judicial review was something that needed to be addressed urgently, as very often, policies and Constitutional amendments coming through the process of law-making in Parliament got over-ridden or invalidated by a judicial order, affecting millions of people.