Backlash against job quotas for locals in India's IT hub

The southern Indian state of Karnataka has paused a bill that mandated quotas for locals in private sector jobs after pushback from tech companies.

The state cabinet approved the bill on Monday, triggering protests from top industrialists and opposition leaders.

The bill requires firms to reserve 70% of non-management and 50% of management jobs for locals.

On Wednesday, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said the bill would be reviewed in the next cabinet meeting before any decision was made.

The announcement came a day after he posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the bill would reserve “100%” of jobs for Kannadigas (natives who speak Karnataka’s local language Kannada).

The post was widely shared on X and sparked criticism from business leaders.

Siddaramaiah deleted his post after the state’s Labor Minister Santosh S Lad clarified that jobs could be “outsourced” if skill sets were not available locally.

“But the government is trying to bring in a law to give preference to locally available skills,” he said.

In India, for a bill passed by a state to become a law, it has to be approved by the state’s assembly and receive the governor’s assent.

The new quota bill is still some way away from these steps — and might even go back to the drawing board — but it has already triggered widespread outrage.

Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore) city, which is the state’s capital, is home to several top global information technology (IT) firms like Google and Infosys, as well as start-ups.

It also has many top IT and engineering colleges, making it the preferred destination for people looking to study or work in the tech sector.

Job seekers from all over India migrate to the city for work, making it one of the most cosmopolitan ones in India. But this has drawn outrage from some sections of the local population, who say that migrants are taking away their jobs.

However, industrialists fear that the new bill will dent the secular image of the city and rob it of talent.

India’s top technology association, the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), expressed its disappointment over the bill.

It said in a statement that the new bill would hamper the growth of the tech industry, force companies to relocate and stifle the growth of start-ups. It also sought an urgent meeting with the state’s authorities to discuss its concerns.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, who heads one of India’s top pharmaceutical companies – Biocon – which has its office in Bengaluru, also criticised the bill.

“As a tech hub we need skilled talent and whilst the aim is to provide jobs for locals, we must not affect our leading position in technology by this move,” she posted on X and called for “caveats that exempt highly skilled recruitment from this policy”.

This isn’t the first time that laws seeking to benefit locals while targeting outsiders have faced criticism in the state.

After years of protests calling for preference to be given to Kannada language in business establishments, the government in February passed a law mandating that 60% of text on all signboards in the state should be in the local language.

But after criticism from various sections, including businesses in Bengaluru where many people are fluent in English and don’t speak the local language, the Karnataka High Court ordered the government not to take coercive action against establishments that didn’t implement the rule.