Reacting sharply to the Karnataka government’s decision to frame rules mandating multinational companies (MNCs) to display details of Kannadigas staffers on notice boards, former Infosys CFO TV Mohandas Pai has called it a ‘retrograde’ move which could have a ‘huge impact on Brand Bengaluru’.
In an exclusive conversation with News18, Pai, who is currently Chairman of Aarin Capital, requested Karnataka’s Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar–who is also Bengaluru in-charge– to ‘relook’ at the step and intervene as people’s “trust in the government is becoming very low”.
“This is a retrograde decision, and this should not happen. Bengaluru is a global city and people from all over the world come here primarily because we have an open transparent culture where everyone is welcomed to work. Information Technology (IT) companies, multinational companies (MNCs) and industries don’t discriminate against anybody,” he said.
Pai asserted that industries always want to hire more local people, “but the fact is there are not enough local people to fill the requirements as they are not well trained or have the required skills.”
“All governments said they would spend on skills but what have they done? Due to that today we hire people based on the adjective criteria,” he said.
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He said that he does not know what the one-point agenda of the government behind the move is, but asserted that it will not help in increasing the employment of locals.
“Will this move get more MNCs here? No. It will scare MNCs to come in because there will be extortion from a few elements. The government needs to understand. Look at the neighbouring states– Tamil Nadu has announced that any global capability centre (GCC) or MNC coming there with a salary paid to a certain level will get a subsidy of 30 per cent in the first year, 20 per cent in the second year, and 10 per cent in the third year for jobs. So, the techies will go there eventually. It is a loss for us,” he said.
Tamil Nadu government in its Budget has said it will incentivise the creation of high-paying jobs in new GCCs by providing a payroll subsidy.
Pai highlighted that around 23 lakh people are working in IT companies in Bengaluru and asked if the Congress-led government in the state want to lose them.
Citing the National Association of Software and Service Companies’ (NASSCOM’s) latest survey data, he said that for the first time in 30 years, Hyderabad recruited more people in the IT sector than Bengaluru.
“This will have a huge impact on Brand Bengaluru as we did see how the government allowed the vandalism to go on earlier when a few unruly elements took the law into their own hands to vandalize the signboards which didn’t have enough Kannada language on it. Everybody respects the local language and local culture. This is further going to encourage these elements and thus the government shouldn’t entertain such things happening again,” he said.
Last year in December, the state witnessed several protests and incidents of vandalism in Bengaluru where pro-Kannada outfits went on a rampage damaging signboards that did not follow the 60-40 Kannada rule.
Urging Deputy CM Shivakumar to relook at the move, Pai said, “he (Shivakumar) is responsible for the image of Bengaluru. He earlier promised that in 100 days, his government would give infrastructure, but we have not seen that. Trust in the government is becoming very low thus he should intervene in this matter and look at it seriously.”
When asked about what the government can do to protect the interest of Kannadigas, the industrialist said that if the government really wants to protect the locals’ interest, then they should give them more skills and training.
“North Karnataka doesn’t have good engineering colleges. The government should instead pick them up and tie up with triple IT, tie up with top Engineering colleges and run six-month programs, among other things to skill them for jobs. Then the government can call the companies for hiring. See, how it works. We have done this before. The government should invest more in higher education. If all this is done, then there will not be a shortage of jobs,” he added.
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