A malicious campaign has been started by a few regional leaders across the country that local jobs are being taken away by outsiders. A more absurd demand is that jobs in software companies and international airports should be reserved for locals. I had written in a previous blog of mine that not everybody needs to become a software engineer to earn a living and that the software industry itself throws up so many ancillary jobs and that it only requires an industrious mind to grab the opportunities.

It is to highlight this point, I am writing this blog with a real life example. Nearby Ulsoor Lake in Bangalore, there is a huge commercial complex housing many BPO companies and other offices. It is popularly known as “The Philips” campus, though the said company has shifted out of the place a year ago. This campus does have its own eateries but they are beyond the reach of a lot of people who work in this place. The nearest affordable restaurants are a cool 1 to 1.5 kms away. A few months ago, a couple started selling breakfast in a small shop opposite this campus. To begin with the customers were security guards and drivers. Now the same eatery has shifted to a bigger shop, a few tables have been put and the shop caters to a wider range of customers. I don’t know who the owners are but one thing is certain that they are making sure and steady progress. If they continue at this rate, in matter of a few years they will have a full fledged eatery and surely have an income which is matching a software engineer or a BPO employee.

    Now let’s get back to the issues highlighted at the beginning. What wrong is there if these eatery owners are not locals? Who prevents a local from putting up a similar eatery? Are these eatery owners not making money without having a software job? Is there not big time money to be made out of the opportunities thrown up by the booming BPO/ software sector?

The eatery owners had the ingenuity to realize that a lot of employees working in the complex cannot afford the food that is supplied inside the campus and there were no affordable eateries nearby. The moral of the story is “Don’t demand a living, find one”. Leadership is not organizing people to agitate but leading them to a better way of life. Let us rise above petty vote bank regional politics; there is a big world out there and enough opportunities for everybody to succeed.