Caste: Why It's Still An Issue For India Inc.

Some 80 years after the Poona Pact gave reservations to India’s most backward communities, are Dalits rising to the top in corporate India?

- Ashish Gupta

“MY BIRTH IS MY FATAL ACCIDENT.”

This line from the January 2016 suicide note of Rohith Vemula, University of Hyderabad student became a rallying cry for Dalits and supporters across the country.

At the same time, there were some who brought up the Rajeev Goswami case as a counter. Some 25 years before Vemula hanged himself, Goswami, a student at Delhi’s Deshbandhu College, set fire to himself protesting against the government’s move through the Mandal Commission to impose caste-based reservations in educational institutions. It’s not just Dalits who suffer, was the message being sent out by non-Dalits opposing reservations.

That caste is a huge (and polarising) issue is a truism today. “To be a Dalit is to wear an invisible stigma that dogs one’s daily interactions,” wrote politician and former diplomat Shashi Tharoor soon after Vemula’s suicide. And despite 80-odd years of caste-based reservations, Dalits today are still largely invisible in corporate India. Dalits make up close to 25% of the population, but control roughly 5% of assets.

An informal study done in this office shows that of the top 100 companies in the Fortune India 500, there are maybe (emphasis on the maybe) four non-“upper” caste people running the show. Remember that the Fortune India 500 is not restricted to private companies, so our admittedly far-from-scientific study shows that even government and public sector companies are not headed by Dalits.