Karnataka Considered Job Reservation

The Karnataka government’s bill to reserve 75% in non-management jobs and 50% management jobs for “local candidates” was quickly put in hold. Raghu S Jaitley explained well why such an idea is “plain stupid and regressive”.

 

Reservation, he says, makes sense if a group has been and continues to be discriminated for a long time. It cannot be anybody’s case that the “youth of Karnataka have been discriminated against for generations”!

 

Does Karnataka have enough candidates with the appropriate skills or talent if such a bill came into force? Obviously not (no state does). Companies will choose to exit the state rather than “settle” for less.

 

Such a bill disincentivizes the youth of Karnataka to do well in studies in the long run. After all, they’d be guaranteed jobs. And once they got into jobs, would they bother to upskill themselves? Obviously not. Progressively, the quality of the labour force in Karnataka would drop, and more companies would exit.

 

Exceptions would have to be made by the government. Thus opening another channel for corruption and bribe seeking by government officials.

 

If many states followed suit, well, Kannadigas wouldn’t be able to go work elsewhere. We’d be moving in the direction of Balkanization. And global corporations would start to tune out of India, when that happens.

 

Enforcing and penalizing violations to such a law would consume additional resources of the government. Instead of being put to providing badly needed services across the state.

 

The obvious solution?

“Creating an enabling environment with good infrastructure, easier laws and a quality labour market to help entrepreneurs create more jobs…”

But that is hard work. And it takes time to show results, even if done well. No wonder governments don’t try too hard on those fronts.