Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is Bharat’s largest ITeS company, evaluated in any parameter. It generated a revenue in excess of INR 2.5 Lakh Crores (~USD 30 billion) and employed over 6 Lakh employees paying salaries of Rs 1.45 Lakh Crores in FY 2025, with a market value of over Rs 9 Lac Crores as of the date of writing – making it among the top 5 listed companies in Bharat. Therefore, the importance of TCS to the Bharatiya economy and its job creation cannot be emphasised enough.
TCS is also arguably the largest and most influential entity within the Tata group, reputed for its commitment to ethical practices and the national cause. The current Chairman of the Tata group himself comes from within the ranks of TCS. Given the stellar ethical reputation of the Tata group, both as an employer and as a market participant, the Nashik “Islamist grooming” scandal has come as a shock to one and all. Several female Hindu employees of TCS at Nashik have been victims of systematic targetting and grooming by radical Islamists, which has included sexual exploitation and abuse, denigration of Hindu religious beliefs to outright coercion to convert. The Maharashtra police are now investigating this shocking scandal.
Not Just A Systemic Failure
Many experts have called the scandal a failure of the internal systems and processes, including inter alia the POSH (Prevention of Sexual Harassment) policy. The concerned HR Manager Nida Khan had reportedly not taken any action on multiple victims’ complaints and has since absconded after the scandal was revealed by the covert action of the Maharashtra police authorities. What explains such a failure of process on the part of such a reputed business group?
To merely paint it as a POSH policy failure and brushing aside the obvious religious motivations of the culprits would be a grave injustice to the victims. It is necessary to go to the root of the problem, which leads one to the following key questions:
- This entire radical Islamist grooming operation had been going on for more than 4 years pointing to a very clinical, methodical, and well-oiled machinery. This could not have been possible without a clear recruitment strategy to place the right pieces on the board.
- Was the fear of being branded Islamophobic preventing higher officials from acting on time? Was it enforced “secular” political correctness which encouraged those responsible to protect the victims look the other way?
If the root of the problem is to be addressed, it would not be justifiable to blame merely the “internal process failure” in TCS, as the company itself is as much a victim of radicalism in this whole conundrum. It is as much a time to protect an entity which is an important employment-generating engine for the Bharatiya economy from sinister radical Islamist designs, as it is to investigate and deliver justice to the Hindu victims.
Hence, it is necessary to understand and address the intellectual paradigm perpetuating and shielding radical ideologies within the organisations.
DEI Policies: A Ploy To Misuse
Are D-E-I policies being misused to place radical elements to carry out sinister agendas? D-E-I (or DEI) stands for “Diversity,” “Equity” and “Inclusion” – being a sub-set of the principles governing E-S-G standing for “Environmental,” “Social” and “Governance.”
DEI is a corporate policy framework which aims to make corporate organisations “diverse” in representation by necessarily including persons from groups and identities identified as suffering from systemic discrimination and oppression. An individual is inherently assumed to be a victim of systemic discrimination simply because of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, regardless of their individual merits and achievements. This is an extension of the “Woke” Cultural Marxist ideology that is in perpetual search for classes of “oppressors” and “oppressed” in the modern corporate workplace – creating potential divisions and dissensions in corporate organisations. DEI ideology merely repackages Marxism from a struggle between economic classes to that between various identity groups within an organisation. For example, an organisation can prove itself to be diverse and equitable only by giving representation in the organisation based on identities such as of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.
“DEI hiring policy” would typically refer to recruitment based on group identities of specific groups identified as being “oppressed” or “marginalised”.
- Organisations are mandated to adopt DEI policies based on “international best practices” or “sustainability standards” ie transplanting foreign social science theories and ideologies to go around identifying newer groups of marginalised identities to make them woke.
- Corporate organisations will then be “audited” for their diversity and equity to be rated / ranked according to “sustainability accounting/ reporting standards.”
- The results of such audits are reported based on “international standards” such as GRI (Global Reporting Initiative, a non-profit based in Netherlands founded inter alia by the Big-4 audit firms). This reporting forms part of the “Integrated Annual Reports” of large companies in Bharat along with Financial results of the enterprise and its audit report.
The DEI framework being implemented with much fanfare at least over the past 5 years in Bharat, has given rise to a new set of bureaucracy and “consulting industry,” such as DEI implementation professionals, DEI audit professionals, DEI hiring agencies and DEI training to sensitise the workforce to be politically correct.
TCS being a top listed entity and an organisation which depends on Export of services for almost 90 per cent of its revenue which has to follow “international standards” was one of the earliest adopters of DEI. The company proudly mentions the various recognitions inter alia it has got for its DEI initiatives. The company even had a CXO-level position called “Chief Leadership and Diversity Officer”.
US Experience & Impact On Bharat
The experience of the United States, once the torchbearer of DEI policies, offers lessons for Bharat. The convergence of Marxists, global big tech and high finance to push DEI into workplaces was an unavoidable part of President Donald Trump’s election campaign in 2024. Prominent Trump supporters such as billionaire Elon Musk and presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy had been criticising DEI policies for the past four years as a form of illegal discrimination in workplaces. DEI was framed as a war on American meritocracy and the American dream, playing a fundamental role in the “culture wars.”. The election of Donald Trump has led to a sudden U-Turn in US Govt policies on DEI. From Bharat’s perspective, a US Administration that is firmly anti-DEI may lead to two alternative outcomes:
- Bharat, which had followed the US’ model in many ways – from Sustainability Standards (BRSR) and GRI – with the calculation of trying to attract foreign investments, may have an opportunity to rethink its policies and reassess DEI’s impact on its own society and culture; or
- Bharat may continue its implementation (for example, Sustainability reporting has been extended from top 500 companies to upto 1000 companies in FY 2026-27 by the Indian Government) without any change of course. The DEI professionals and experts whose business has reduced in the Trump era would have found a lucrative market in Bharat.
Investigation Of DEI in workplaces
The role that DEI policies played in blindsiding the management at TCS to the possible targeted actions by radical Islamist groups merits a thorough investigation.
- Diversity hiring could create a vulnerability in the recruitment process for large corporate entities into allowing whole groups of organised radical elements into their ranks.
- Such radicalised diversity hires, who had entered with an agenda of grooming and coercive conversion of Hindus, could act together in a concerted manner to subvert the organisation’s internal processes to achieve their goals.
- Corporate HR and POSH policies are designed to detect and punish individual offenders and is inadequate as a defence against an organised siege of this nature.
- It may also be necessary to integrate radical religious motivations in investigations under POSH policies, given the probable overlap between both which is evident from this case.
The role that “DEI training” plays in creating apprehensions and fear in the minds of HR officials in investigating complaints against offenders belonging to certain religious groups (for fear of being labelled bigots or Islamophobes) needs to be thoroughly investigated.
