Locals-for-Jobs: An Unresolved IssueLocals-for-Jobs: An Unresolved Issue The contentious issue of locals-for-jobs has once again flared up in Bengaluru-Karnataka, prompting the government to introduce a bill reserving half of management posts and 75% of non-management posts for “locals.” However, the bill was met with fierce backlash from the private sector, which warned of withdrawing from the state and scaring away companies. This issue has been simmering in India for decades, with similar bills being introduced in Mumbai-Maharashtra, Assam, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, and other states. The Karnataka bill defines “locals” as those born in the state or domiciled for 15 years and proficient in Kannada. The concept of “sons of the soil” has been used to justify these policies, but it has been criticized for being problematic and unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected it, calling it “dangerous” and harmful to the unity of the nation. Academic research has also shown that such policies are neither beneficial to the economy nor to society. They pit natives against outsiders, creating tensions and violence. They also limit job opportunities for migrants, who often have the same skills and backgrounds as non-migrants. Critics argue that instead of reserving jobs for locals, the government should focus on creating more jobs and improving the rural economy to reduce the need for migration. They also suggest that companies can be encouraged to give back to the cities they operate in without resorting to forced local hiring. The author concludes that “reserving jobs for locals is like carving out a pie so that locals get a mandatory slice; the better way is to enlarge the pie itself.”
Every now and then, the volatile issue of locals-for-jobs flares up in cities and states across India, usually with the government of the day introducing or tabling a bill to reserve jobs for “locals,” triggering a predictable backlash, usually from the private sector. This week, it was Bengaluru-Karnataka’s turn. Decades after the debate broke out and took several ugly turns, be it in Mumbai-Maharashtra or Assam, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, the issue remains unresolved.
The Karnataka Cabinet has approved a bill stipulating that half of all management posts and 75 per cent of non-management posts should be filled by ‘locals’ who, it defined, were born in the state or have been domiciled for 15 years — which has been the criteria for reservation in other states too — and can speak, read and write Kannada. The bill, which was introduced on Monday, has since been withdrawn and Karnataka ministers have been scrambling to assuage the hurt sentiments of IT specialists and business organisations who objected to the bill, warning that they may pull out of the state — neighbouring states were quick to invite them — and the move will “frighten away companies”.
This script has played out many times and decades before, with mixed results. Back when the city was still called Bombay and the neoliberal forces had not yet been unleashed by globalization, the Shiv Sena, then only a two-year-old party, wrote this story. Eager to establish itself as something more than a bunch of sleazy musclemen, led by relatively placid leaders like Sudhir Joshi and Pramod Navalkar, the party set up the Sthaniya Lokadhikar Samiti to bring indigenous Maharashtrians into the city’s white-collar jobs, to challenge the perception that the community was capable only of being factory workers and laborers.
It was, as I explained in a February 1995 story for a national news magazine, the Sena’s workbench face with the single-minded aim of protecting and promoting employment for Maharashtrians. In 1987, the SLS stormed into the plush environs of five-star hotels in south Mumbai, demanding that jobs be given to locals; a decade later, its foot soldiers stormed the offices of Air India in the iconic building, hoping to convince the bosses there, with their rough and tough methods, to hire locals or else — the threat was always unspoken, but it was understood.
The sons of the soil concept, a problematic construct in itself but one that has been given legitimacy, even by the Supreme Court that uses it, was strongly associated with the Sena’s founder and leader, the late Bal Thackeray. The Shiv Sena, Thackeray and Bombay/Mumbai came in for much criticism and condemnation for this — and rightly so. The limitations of the sons of the soil approach to jobs should have been clear then, and they certainly are now. Yet states have resorted to the concept — Gujarat did so in the 1990s, Jharkhand brought in a bill last year, Haryana passed one in 2020, Andhra Pradesh in 2019. Some have made it about private sector jobs, like the Karnataka bill.
It has no constitutional basis, as high courts and the Supreme Court have reiterated time and again while hearing petitions against it. In 2008, when the issue reared its head again in Mumbai, the Supreme Court unequivocally called it dangerous, stating: “This is one country and we will not accept the sons of the soil theory. We will not allow Balkanisation of this country.” In an earlier case, the Supreme Court had said that such claims “…undermine the unity and integrity of the nation by promoting and strengthening narrow parochial loyalties based on language and residence within a state.”
While the policies of the sons of the soil or jobs for the locals are constitutionally untenable, they are hardly beneficial to the economy or society of the state or city, as academic researchers have shown. Socially, such legislations pit the natives against the ‘outsider’, creating tensions that have often turned violent. At the height of one such agitation in Mumbai by the Sena’s variant, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, two young men were dead, one of them in a local BEST bus that he tried to hijack. Bengaluru, now in the eye of the storm, has seen anti-migrant violence and vandalism. The collective social anxiety among the natives is usually a question: what will happen to ‘our’ culture when so many migrants make ‘our’ city their home?
This is about jobs and economic progress. Even at the economic level, this approach pits migrants — pejoratively called outsiders — against non-migrants, despite having more or less the same skills and socio-economic background. People fight each other, language groups fight each other — for the same jobs. The legislations have invariably proposed a ceiling on the monthly salary, usually around Rs 25,000 to 30,000 per month. Most of the bills introduced in states, including Karnataka, have such a floor.
This means that migrants occupying positions of luxury, high management, office jobs and government jobs are beyond the reach of such laws or motivated agitations. The targets are usually poor migrants who come from rural destinations that are in the grip of economic or agricultural crises or, more recently, extreme weather events that have turned their lives upside down. During such crises, in a political-economic framework that prioritizes development in cities — an urban bias, as development economists call it — people will naturally migrate to cities for work.
The local jobs theory states that large companies and organizations that locate in a city enjoy tax breaks and incentives from the state government concerned and therefore should provide jobs to locals. And that migrants should learn the local language to integrate into society. The language issue is cultural and multidimensional, but the city as a melting pot of languages and cultures is ultimately what sets it apart from provincial areas. There are older indigenous areas and newer cosmopolitan areas. There are ways to make companies give back to the city they are located in — and have benefited from — such as investing in the physical and social infrastructure rather than forcing them to follow the local jobs line or be penalized.
Reserving jobs for locals is like carving out a pie so that locals get a mandatory slice; the better way is to enlarge the pie itself. Make the city economy so robust that there are more jobs — for everyone. And rebuild rural economies so that fewer people want to migrate for work. The problem is real; the legal solution is inadequate.
Smruti Koppikar, a senior journalist and urban chronicler, writes extensively on cities, development, gender and the media. She is the founding editor of the award-winning online magazine ‘Question of Cities’
Published: Friday, July 19, 2024, 06:00 AM IST
