The Bangalore community could well feel that it is now under siege. The City's sensibilities have been invaded by unfamiliar, sometimes unwelcome strains of attitude and affectations. There are new people that now claim to represent Bangalore, but the Bangalore community is justified in feeling unrepresented.
I fail to understand the logic of these arguments.
First of all, who is a citizen and who is an "outsider?" Everyone that lives in this city, no matter how far the generations that have lived here go back, came from somewhere. The earlier generations shaped the character of this city as they saw fit and now the current generation is shaping the city as it sees fit. A city is a living, changing, amorphous creature that cannot be frozen in time and that image taken to be its true representation. "Whose city is it, anyway?" Well, it is the city of every single person living here, whether they landed here yesterday at the airport, bus station or train station and are setting up homes as we speak, or whose families have been living here for generations.
If the "oppressed indigenous people" (meaning what, exactly? How long does one have to live here to become indigenous?) don't have jobs or have lesser jobs, who is to blame for that? Or more pertinently, given the drift of the Dattani essay and the Bangalore Bias manifesto, how are "outsiders" to blame for that?
Are employers asking to employ "non-indigenous" people? Are they going out of their way to look for "outsiders" to fill their positions? From the "office boy" to the CEO? That contention holds no water. Businesses look to cut their operating costs and the cheapest hire for them would be a qualified person already in the city. It makes no business sense to have to advertise in the media in outside cities, set up out of town interviews, have potential recruits travel, or have the company's Human Resource person travel to conduct interviews, pay for an eventual hire to move to Bangalore from Haryana or wherever, and then pay some more for them to settle down in this city.
So perhaps these employers are getting out-of-state hires because they cannot find a qualified employee pool here. How can "outsiders" take jobs away from locals if the locals are qualified and willing to do the jobs that are required of them?
There are at least one or two articles a month in the daily newspapers here and abroad about the shortage of labor supply, not only in the IT industry, but in the construction industry as well (both at the day laborer level and at the engineer level). Why are the locals not rushing up to sign up for these jobs? The argument that follows from this is that all this employment boom and success is limited to the IT industry. So what about the rest of the "indigenous" people who have no skills in this area?
Article comments
1 - Matthew Milam
IT Industry booming? I think not. Chicago for instance consistently pushes the PC tech jobs to the suburbs. Why? They can't get anyone out there willing to drive to east hell to get there. People from the city will do it because the jobs are few are far between, but they won't do it for 17 an hour and have to cough up alot for gas.
2 - sujatha
Matthew, the NY Times article talked about the IT industry booming in Bangalore, and it is. The growth is so fast and so large here, that every IT company has jobs to be filled in the hundreds, if not thousands.
3 - abcd
Hi,
Good judgement, i see its the biggest problem bangalore is facing, ppl who do not like anything south indian are coming in search of food but once they have it, why not my family and they too dont like anything south indian, setting up a small community, forget it .. they keep cribing all the time. Same thing in US also, they move in here and crib cos ppl dont eat dal here..
but Bangalore is more hit by the tamil migration starting from SEs to gate keepers.. but Tamils eventully learn & adapt and co-exist without much destruction of ppls pride and ways of life.
4 - Umesh
Hi,
I personally believe that when different people meet there will be a clash of cultures.But this clash was expected to result in new trends in a place like bangalore.
It is the people of the place which make a clash of cultures and opportunity as opposed to a disaster. In 1453 the conquest of constantinople heralded the Reanissance becuase of which we had great advancements in fields of art, science etc.
The biggest example is 'Mona lisa' the greatest work of art in the world. But then,The same clash results in incidents like September 11.
Finally, it is bangalore which will decide where it wants to go.
I used to sincerely believe that bangalore was that sort of place. I'm not so sure anymore. Maybe it is the politics.
5 - sujatha
Umesh and ABCD, thank you very much for your comments.
ABCD, I agree that the "outsiders" have as much responsibility to integrate themselves into the life of a city as do the "indigenous" people to not keep harping on how the "outsiders" are destroying their way of life. That is part of the deal when we travel away from our homes and try to make a living elsewhere.
Umesh, from my vantage point, the riots in Bangalore was the work of a few miscreants looking to create trouble. I don't think they had any agenda in mind other than to smash glass windows (as is the popular notion, these were not just the glass windows of IT companies - many of those windows belonged to "indigenous" companies as well) and create trouble no matter what the circumstances, no matter what the occassion, no matter what the consequences. I wouldn't go so far as to characterize this as a clash of civilizations or cultures although people like Dattani would like to have you belive that.
6 - Kaustav Das
Interesting reading.
I have lived 15 years in Bangalore and pretty much consider Bangalore my home.
And yet barely 3 hrs ago I was assaulted by a group of 20-30 people because I dared to lower the window of my car and admonish a biker because he had come on the wrong side of the road and scratched my car.
This was on the Sharjapur Road - Electronic City connecter road.
My mistake (according to the crowd) was that I was an outsider and that I drove a big car. "We are locals, this is our road you are driving on our road, we will do what we want"
And this is not my predicament alone. Yes, I happen to be the South Head of an MNC and I recruit several well paid people every year.
Should it surprise anyone if my retaliation (in sheer helplessness) is to actually get biased and quietly stop giving Kannadigas jobs.
I think I will do that with glee. And many of you will call it racism. But isn't that exactly how it all begins.