Any season is good enough for encashing on anything, which will enable politicians to win, or stay in power. Having run out of causes, any trivial issue is being exploited, by petty or out of work politicians, whom no one would not notice otherwise.
They raise such a shindy about such issues, as if it was an issue of life and death for them.
Even the media has run out of the issues, so even frivolous and insignificant matters are being blown out of proportion by a section of it. For example, even Calling Bombay by its own old name and not Mumbai, in a film, which is only a fiction, became an issue and the producer had to apologise for it. There is no end to blowing up anything beyond proportion. Both the Central and State Governments are wary of doing anything, and mostly are silent spectators, lest their own vote bank be affected adversely.
Forget about petty matters about the row on the names, the regionalism has seeped so much in the vein of our polity, that if it is a Minister for Roads, or Railways, all roads, and trains must lead to, or begin in his State.
As a Director General of a Para Military force, when an MP made demands, that all recruitments to the Indo Tibetan Force, which is mostly deployed in hilly area, only from his Hill States, nobody from the Ministry contradicted him as early as nearly two decades back.
The stark truth is that no politician wants to bell the cat of regionalism, casteism, on the basis of which most of them survive.
A sentiment has taken grown up in the largest metro of India, that is Bombay or Mumbai, as you might call it, that outsiders, or people belonging to different communities, are grabbing lucrative local jobs there, right under their noses. There is no fixed definition of the son of the soil. Is it to be by birth or language or by domicile?
There are lakhs of people from other States who have been living in other States whether Delhi or Punjab or Maharashtra or UP, or Andhra, or Bihar or Jharkhand, for generations. Similarly, several Marathi-speaking people have been living in other parts of India.
The Constitution of India guarantees that you can live in any part of India and carry on with your profession or business. Many individuals or small-time nobodies have been cocking a snook, both at the Constitution and the Supreme Court, who has taken askance at the son of the soil theory, promoting regionalism and casteism. In a stern message to the political class that divisive politics would not be tolerated, the Supreme Court warned that “We will not allow or permit balkanisation of this country… This is one country and we will not accept son of soil theory.”
Indeed, one political party, in Maharashtra, has demanded a ban on the influx of outsiders to Mumbai. Migration of people from one State to another is a phenomenon that occurs all over the world. People migrate to the countries, or place, where they find better opportunities and economic gains. Similarly people go from Jharkhand, Bihar to Punjab, from Rajasthan to Gujarat, from TN to Kerala or Andhra or Karnataka move in search of livelihood.
Coming to think of it, the real problem is, of the job opportunities and the size of the cake which is available. The answer to this problem, lies in increasing the size of the job cakes and ending corruption, in providing jobs.
The National Rural Employment Guaran¬tee Scheme, the present Government’s flagship anti-poverty plan, has come to be wracked by cor¬ruption which has sabotaged sim¬ilar measures in the past.
A government investigation into the working of the scheme with an annual budget of Rs 40,000 crore has revealed si¬phoning off of a whopping 40 per cent of the allocation and woe-fully inadequate implemen¬tation of the scheme in dis¬tricts where it is needed most.The job market in India is that of the buyer’s market and not sellers. In other words, it means, that it is the employer’s wish, which reins supreme and not of the job seeker.
17 per cent of India’s graduates are jobless and the number of Unemployed has grown from more than three times in 10 years – from 13.8 million in 1991 to 44.5 million in 2001, according to Census figures. Sometimes back, Delhi Police advertised for filling up 2,000 posts of constables. It received a total of 2,11, 521 applications. Out of which 2,534 were Post-Graduates and 32,408 Graduate and 1,17,963 had passed their senior secondary school examination. They were all enrolled in the employment exchanges.
Many of the graduate and above applicants were from renowned institutions like the Faculty of Law, Ramjas Col¬lege, Hindu College of Delhi Uni¬versity, different schools of Jawa-harlal University, Jamia and other professional institutes. Some of these candidates who had applied were also pursuing research and other academic activ¬ities. Incidentally, the basic educational requirement for joining as a Constable is senior secondary. Obviously, those above senior secondary had higher qualifications.
In the National Capital alone, there are more than 10,80,000 educated persons seek¬ing employment. This is the number enrolled at the various employ¬ment exchanges of Delhi Govern¬ment.
In this scenario, you cannot blame people for moving to greener pastures. Even otherwise in real life, jobs are doled out by the politicians, wherever they can, either for love or money or sometimes for both. With the age of retirement going to 60 and even increasing it, the job opportunities are going to shrink. There is no dearth of money in the country, needed for the development, if the Government shows will to ensure that it is used for the developmental schemes and not pocketed. No amount of increase in allocation of resources is going to redeem the situation, if it is to be siphoned off to the pockets of selfish individuals.
All the problems, including naxalism, terrorism, farmer’s suicide, regionalism, casteism and the son of the soil propagation, of the country will disappear, if we can increase the employment opportunities and make sure that every paisas is used for the schemes sanctioned. Corruption and hypocracy, need not be the part of the democracy, as they are today in our country. However, as the citizens of this great country, we must remember that the accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference.
(The writer is former Director, CBI, India, and can be contacted at jogindersinghfdips@hotmail.com jogindersinghfdips@rediffmail.com)
