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Job Reservation in Private Sector for locals

12th February, 2022

Context:

  • Haryana high court has stayed the reservation provision for local youth in industry.

Other States providing the reservation:

  • Earlier, MP government had provided for the reservation of 70% of jobs in 2018.
  • Andhra Pradesh had provided for the 75% of the private jobs in all categories which is sub-judicial in nature.
  • Karnataka government had also provided for the 70% reservation in the private sector in 2020.

Constitutional mechanism for reservation:

 

Article

Provision

16 (1)

Equal opportunity for all the citizens in situations related to employment and appointment.

16 (2)

No discrimination is allowed on the basis of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth, descent and domicile

16(3)

Parliament can provide for residency requirement for jobs.

 

Positives:

  • It will create job opportunities for local talents.
  • It will develop industry linkages with the Skill India mission thus enabling more skilled manpower.
  • It will create a healthy competition between states for industrialization and lead to an inclusive growth.
  • Providing jobs in lieu of the land is the most basic a company can do.
  • It will ensure that wages of unorganized sectors don’t go down because of the migration of labor from other states.

Negatives:

  • It will increase the cost of compliance for a company. Bigger corporates may shy away from investment in such state.
  • One Nation, One market was the theme of GST. Such reservations distort the theme by creating artificial barriers.
  • It may be unconstitutional in nature. Constitution provides for equality in employment and state can provide reservation for SC, ST, women and social & educationally backward caste. Local residential conditions are prescribed by Parliament only.
  • It is populist in nature and will create unhealthy competition among Such competition will only create artificial barriers for migration eventually curtailing the cultural mixing.
  • Definition of locals have not been specified.
  • In the era of Ease of doing business, such legislations are unnecessary intervention by the government in economy.

Way Forward:

  • Supreme Court needs to clearly provide the guidelines for the reservation of locals in the private sector while considering viewpoints of all the stakeholders.
  • Rather than providing for the reservation, government can provide for the skill upgradation and voluntary allowance for the unemployed.
  • Government must focus on the better education and better health thus leading to development of human capital.