IT & BPO staff are less than 10% of Bangalore population

IT & BPO staff are less than 10% of Bangalore population
They Are Soft Targets As Politicians Equate City With One Industry
Asha Rai and Mini Joseph Tejaswi | TNN

Bangalore: H D Kumaraswamy, president of the state JD(S), on Tuesday dismissed the hardship caused to lakhs of people in North Bangalore by his party’s rally as “sophisticated people and those working in IT/BT” making unnecessary noise.
It has become fashionable to blame the city’s Rs 60,000-crore IT industry for all the ills plaguing Bangalore. From its poor roads, to gridlocked traffic, to rise in crime to high property prices, everything has only one cause — IT industry — according to some.
While Bangalore is indeed identified with its vibrant IT industry by the outside world, to equate the whole city with just one sector and dismiss genuine citizen grievances as the peeve of a pampered majority is partisan politics at its worst. How right is Kumaraswamy in dismissing anybody who raises their voice against the terrible hardships politicians routinely inflict on hapless citizens as “spoilt IT/BT”?
Here are a few points that should clear the air
l North Bangalore — where the rally was held at the Palace Grounds on Monday — is not where the IT/BT industry is situated. Their offices are actually at the other end of town: in south Bangalore. Hubs being Electronics City, Whitefield and Bannerghatta Road.
l IT/BT is not a four-letter word, however much a section of the political class might vilify them.
l The IT and BPO industries employ just 6 lakh people in Bangalore. IT employs 3.5 lakh and BPO/call centre industry another 2.5 lakh. This means they form less than 10% of Bangalore’s total population of 70 lakh. Assuming that each employee has a family of four — which isn’t the case as almost 50% of the industry is made up of singles in their early 20s — then their population in the city would be 24 lakh, that is 34% of the total.
The five jobs every single IT job creates in Bangalore generally goes to a villager who has migrated to the IT City in search of better prospects from within Karnataka. The drivers, the istriwalas, the caterers, the baristas at cafes, the shop assistants at retailers, the domestics, are all rural folk for whom the politicians haven’t delivered jobs or development in their own backyards forcing them to migrate.
Give permanent solution, says HC
“We don’t want to do any postmortem and also at the same time we do not want any short measures. This is a recurring feature. We need a permanent solution. You should have a plan; say for the next 10 years,’’ the high court sternly told the state government on Wednesday.
It asked the government to file a statement by November 26 on the broad outlines and long-term measures on how they propose to tackle the situation of rallies and resultant traffic chaos.