From My Diary - Sons Of The Soil

It was surprising to note that thousands of aspirants for the railway jobs came to Kalyan, Thane, Dadar & VT from Bihar to appear for the written examinations in Mumbai. This is certainly a stage managed show by Lalu & his goons. How come majority of Biharis are only applying for jobs in the Railways ? I read a piece written by some one called Suresh on India Times or Rediff Mail that around 90,000 Biharis applied for the jobs last year and around 60, 000 got the jobs. Surprisingly none of the 50,000 from Mumbai got the jobs last year. He also mentioned that there was no notification about these examinations in Karnataka and Chennai last year. So, if it is true then Certainly the finger of doubt points towards Lalu and his goons in the Railways. Then it is but natural for the sons of the soil from Mumabi to raise their voice. Their cause appears to be genuine, However, the means adopted to achieve their goals is not at all correct in democracy. I do not subscribe to such means and such goondagardi. No one is authorised to take the law in his / her hands. The concerned aggrieved people should have approached the HR ministry or the Courts and should have brought a stay, if they felt that that a scam was breeding.

Nobody can deny anyone from his rights to chosse his place of work and settlement. Problem arises when no one from the soil is found suitable in examination, or before or during the personal inrviews. That is why there is a growing discontent amongst the sons of the soil in the country. Some have brought it to the surface, like in Mumabi, Chennai. Some take care of such issues in highly subtle manner. But that the regionalism is growing is not the fact that can or should be ignored. The Central Goverment & HR ministry should not turn away from this burning issue. There is a disconnect somewhere in the fabric of the nation that the politicians have not only failed to address, but have now perhaps started to exploit for their selfish gains. Yesterday Mrs Raut , Municipality Commissioner, Mumbai mentioned that the Maharashtra Government has also passed a notification which clearly gives preferences to the sons of the soil. I think many in the public sector undertakings like Railways, are either not aware about such notifications or intentionally they play foul and circumvent such rules. In fact it is such people who should be taken to task by the bosses, or by the courts. I feel a common principle should be adopted for many such issues. I have a few suggestions to make as under: The total number of vacancies should be allocated to all the states in proportion of the the population, like we have the number of MPs from each state . Notifications for all such jobs should appear in all local papers of each city / state and also in all leading national news papers, like it happens for jobs in armed forces. Alternatively, there should be a portal website created by each of the state government, and all such job opportunities should be posted there. A selection committee should be there to scrutinize all the applications in all public sector undertakings, Like the Selection Board Committee for cricket has representation from members of all regions. In fact the Public Service Commission should be entrusted with all such recruitments, at state and the central level. I am not so sure if they do so. In unskilled category , 60 - 70 % should be picked up from the domiciles of the state, of course on merit. In case of any short fall the vacancies could be declared open for people from other states. This or some thing similar happens in school and college admissions. Then why not apply it across the board even in jobs also. In skilled category the percentage could be 40 - 50 %, with similar rules as above. In Staff & Executive / Officer Cadre it could be pegged at 50 %. They should be given jobs in the state of their domicile There could be a fine tuning of this and many such suggestions coming from all corners. May be a high level commission could be appointed to look in to all such anomalies and give a report to the Government. The Government then should create a policy which would be then applicable uniformly through out the country. The HR ministry should take it up seriously and come out with some concrete solution rather than harping only on reservations for minorities. Certainly I do not subscribe to Reservations. What I propose is a Quota based system to address to all such issues.