'Discrimination on caste lines a genetic disorder'  Radha
Rajadhyaksha and Nina Martyris, TNN Oct 10, 2004, 02.37am IST
MUMBAI: Are reservations in the private sector, as Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh recently declared, "an idea whose time
has come"? Most corporate bigwigs disagree.  Rahul Bajaj,
chairman of Bajaj Auto which provides the highest private sector
employment in Maharashtra, had threatened to pull out his
manufacturing base from Maharashtra when chief minister
Sushilkumar Shinde floated the job reservation idea in June this
year.  In a trenchant article in this newspaper, Bajaj had
argued that reservations were antithetical to a meritocracy.
Bajaj's views are shared by most industrialists. "Job
reservation in the private sector will lead to incompetence and
increase costs at a time when Indian manufacturing companies are
competing internationally with high-quality products," says
Gautam Singhania, vice-chairman of Raymonds Ltd, which employs
close to 20,000 people.  "Any move to reserve jobs wil