Move may spur other states

By reserving jobs in the private sector for natives, Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh has provided arsenal to many states where there is a demand for reservation for locals, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Nov 19, 2008, 01:12:46 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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By reserving jobs in the private sector for natives, Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh has provided arsenal to many states where there is a demand for reservation for locals, like in Karnataka and Bihar. Deshmukh on Monday asked district collectors to implement the government order to ensure 80 per cent jobs in industrial units for locals.

Only two other states, Uttarakhand and Andhra Pradesh, have similar provisions. The former reserves 70 per cent jobs for locals, the latter 80 per cent in Telengana. But implementation has been a problem. In fact, the Uttarakhand government doesn't even have a record of the number of locals provided jobs since the order was issued four years ago.

Deshmukh's move follows the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena's championing of the cause of Marathis with its anti-north Indian campaign.

A central government official, who didn't want to be named, said if this happened, Maharashtra would be the first state to strictly enforce reservation of jobs for locals in the private sector.

In most other states, reservation for locals is only in government jobs. It ranges from 75 per cent in Jharkhand to 100 per cent in Himachal Pradesh and J&K.

That is not the case in industry, where migrants are employed. "Most states ask industry to give preference to locals but haven't imposed any reservation," said a consultant with the Planning Commission.

The Orissa government, in its Relief and Rehabilitation policy 2006, stipulated that industries would give jobs to at least one member of a family whose land had been acquired to set up industry. Thereafter, preference would be given to locals and if there weren't enough applicants, outsiders would be considered.

In Punjab, hiring people for industrial jobs is the prerogative of industry. "Finding local industrial labour is difficult. Therefore, one would find the majority of workers are from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Himachal," said a Punjab government official.

A Labour Ministry official said labour laws don't prescribe criteria for recruitment even though governments stipulate some norms for displaced people. "The percentage of people covered under R&R policy aren't more than 30 per cent of the total work force covered under the policy," he said.

However, political parties have made reservation for locals in private jobs an election issue. In Karnataka, the Janata Dal-Secular promised 30 per cent IT jobs for Kannadigas. It never happened.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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