Job applications with Dalit or Muslim names are less likely to have a positive outcome than those with upper-caste Hindu names, research by University Grants Commission (UGC) chairman Sukhadeo Thorat and Prof Paul Attewell of the City of New York University has found.They say this “social favouritism” is not necessarily a reflection of antipathy but “a consequence of in-group out-group dynamics” — that is, a result of employers tending to prefer those with similar social backgrounds as themselves. “This research has thrown up benchmark evidence for the first time that the markets also end up discriminating amongst people of varied social backgrounds and this needs to be supplemented with affirmative action or quotas or whatever else,” said Thorat.Thorat and Attewell’s paper has been published in the latest issue of The Economic & Political Weekly. For 66 weeks from October 2005 a team led by them sent out job applications that matched in all respects but the name of the candidate. The applications were sent in response to ads from IT, securities, pharma, mass media, banking and other firms that appeared in national English dailies.The jobs for which applications were sent were not specialised ones, but the sort for which “a university graduate may be eligible” in the first few years after graduation.The Muslim, Dalit, or high-caste names chosen were ones that preliminary sample surveys found were believed to be typically belonging to those groups.Said Thorat, “Before commencing the research, we did have a hypothesis that factors other than merely qualifications of an individual come into play when it came to selecting candidates for jobs — aspects like ethnicity, caste, religion, colour, gender and whether you come from rural or urban backgrounds.” The research comes in the context of a debate on the efficacy of quotas as a way of levelling the field.On behalf of the private sector, industrialist and former president of the CII J.J. Irani has submitted a report to the government that had disapproved of the proposal of reservations or quotas in the private sector, but agreed with the need for affirmative action by them. The report had said that empowering historically deprived groups with education would make them employable and able to compete on equal terms.
