US order on workforce diversity will hit Indians

Within hours of taking office as the 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump ended reservation of jobs in the US government. It took only a moment for him to take this huge step with the flourish of his calligraphic signature.

Without further ado, many US private companies hastened to follow suit. Thus ended a journey for America’s diverse society that began with John F Kennedy and was extended by almost every subsequent US president.

Job reservations and priority in admissions to educational institutions have been a raging issue in India for a long time. Concerns that such reservations may be terminated or reduced for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other backward classes even influenced the outcome of the Lok Sabha elections last year. Yet, this history-making decision in the world’s oldest democracy has not produced even a whimper in India.

Americans are very good at giving names for programmes which make them sound far nobler than what they are. So, during the Camelot-era grandeur of Kennedy's presidency, an effort to end discrimination against weaker sections of society in employment came to be officially known as “affirmative action.” Kennedy’s initiative, which Trump effectively reversed on January 20, was announced by him six weeks after being sworn in as President in 1961. Like Trump, Kennedy also did it through an executive order. Affirmative action was rechristened as “diversity and inclusion” by President Barack Obama formally in 2011.

Trump has now accused his immediate predecessor Joe Biden of ‘DEI madness.’ In the Biden years, DEI became the short form for diversity, equity and inclusion. Very recently, the letter ‘A’ was added to DEI to include accessibility.

Ronald Reagan was the only President since Kennedy to take a stand against affirmative action. He issued an executive order against fixing quotas in jobs and recruitment goals. But he could not reverse affirmative actions in toto because of opposition in both Houses of Congress and among trade unions. However, Reagan favoured clearly defined plans to create business enterprises owned and run by minorities.

Incidentally, Reagan was the first US President to appoint an Indian-American to a federal agency in a position which required presidential nomination. In 1987, he appointed Joy Cherian as a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. This commission was established under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to enforce laws against discrimination in places of work.

Opposition to DEI — which is roughly the equivalent of reservations in India — has been steadily building up in the US. It has been much stronger than any movement against mere affirmative action, which was small in scope and scale. Republicans, in particular, have argued that affirmative action programmes have become a form of reverse discrimination in an equal society.

Opinion has been growing on the ground that DEI is against meritocracy, which the US society is supposed to uphold. These are familiar arguments in India, too, among those opposed to reservations.

Two years ago, the US Supreme Court ruled in an overwhelming 6-2 judgment that favouring a race — reservations — in college admissions goes against equal protection clauses in the US Constitution. While all this is at the federal level, several states had enacted laws against reservations in their jurisdictions.

In India, resentment against reservations in institutions of higher learning is rampant, but largely silent. The anti-Mandal Commission agitation by students in 1990 was a rare occasion when such resentment found its way to the streets. According to authoritative estimates, 200 students across India attempted self-immolation against the implementation of the commission's report on reservations.

While job reservations in India do not apply to the private sector, businesses in the US, especially large companies, have embraced DEI. Most of them have done it to be politically correct. The alacrity with which several conglomerates swiftly followed up on Trump's first-day executive order showed that their support for affirmative actions was insincere. Trump has urged America’s private sector also to “end illegal DEI discrimination and preferences.”

Giant retailers, like Walmart and Target, are among the companies which have rolled back their DEI programmes. Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and other new-generation firms have also done so. Accenture said it had implemented DEI globally in the past, but will begin "sunsetting" them.

Trump's action will, therefore, have global implications, especially for Indians who are hired by all these companies on a large scale. Women and people of colour in the US will bear the brunt of Trump's new executive order. Salary discrimination against women has been rampant in the US.

Obama's first Bill to be signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to overcome obstacles which a Goodyear tyre plant employee faced at every stage of her fight for equal pay. Lily Ledbetter’s fight against her powerful employer became a cause célèbre in the 2008 presidential election because Obama's Republican opponent John McCain had voted against a Bill which was meant to support her fight against bigotry.

Like most of Trump's decisions after his election, he is swimming against the tide worldwide on affirmative actions. An International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination requires all countries which have signed and ratified the convention to take actions to implement its objectives. It also requires countries to cease such actions once equality has been achieved. It is no one's case that such equality has been achieved in the US. Supporters of reservations in India can take heart that equality in society and among social groups is still a distant goal. Since Trump ordered his country's exit from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in his first term and has begun a review of its re-entry by the Biden administration, the White House will not be bound by the provisions of the convention. On February 4, Trump said the US would not seek re-election to the UNHRC.

There are palpable worries in the US State Department about where all this would lead to. On February 7, Trump initiated actions against South Africa on the volatile issue of land ownership by white people. It is a legacy of the apartheid regime. Trump’s adviser Elon Musk was born during apartheid in South Africa and still holds its citizenship, one of the three passports that he has. Need one say anything more?