SAY NO TO JOB KILLER POLICIES!!! DOWN-SIZING RIGHT-SIZING OUTSOURCING ASSERT YOURSELVES INDIA NEEDS YOU Dear Graduates of Bangalore, The last several years have witnessed an onslaught on employment opportunities by the cutting of jobs in the name of administrative reforms. In the 2004 elections, 51% of the voting population were youth. The people, quite rightly, rejected the parties like BJP led NDA, Chandrababu led TDP, SM Krishna led Congress, Jayalalitha led AIADMK pursuing such policies. The only exception being the Left parties as they were against these policies. Reason: First there was 'downsizing' then 'rightsizing' and now 'outsourcing'. All these terms mean the same ie., the government does not want to create new jobs for the growing population while drastically cutting down on the existing jobs. This leads to involuntary job loss and creates temporary and contractual jobs which is unhealthy for the economy on the whole. Even with the changing governments there has been no change in policies. The reason being the LPG (Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation) policies vigorously pursued by the successive governments. Result: The educated unemployed were not given secure jobs but rather temporary and contractual jobs and due to this a vast section of under-employeds are emerging. While being squeezed as the sugarcane is squeezed there is no minimum wages, lack of job security, NOTHING. Since the last two decades, around 80,000 jobs have beenlying vacant in Karnataka. Due to this increased workload on the meagre staff, public works have been disrupted hampering the growth of the Nation. Mahiti sindhu teachers, gramaviduth pratinidhis, licensed surveyors, contract workers, employees, engineers, doctors, part-time lecturers and teachers-all working on a meagre honorarium and their numbers are ever mushrooming. As per government records, there are around 3.5 lakh vacant jobs in the various central govt. depts.. In the various depts. of all state govts. there are around 30 lakh vacant jobs and 6 lakh vacant jobs in the railways. A grand total of around 40 lakh jobs. Instead of filling these jobs, the Congress led UPA govt. came out with a circular dated 23rd Nov., 2003 with the same content as the 16th May, 2001 circular of the BJP led NDA govt. which directs all the state govts. to list all the vacant jobs so as to enable them to abolish them. The present JD(S)-BJP combine in Karnataka promised that 80,000 vacant jobs would be filled but did say anything about it in the first budget. Instead, the day after the budget, the Finance Dept. proposal to abolish 7000 vacant jobs was taken up. In this situation, it is for us to decide whether the under-employed and unemployed should get decent jobs or allow the policies of down-sizing, right-sizing and outsourcing, which encourage a "jobloss growth" to prevail. In this regard, the students, youth, employees, workers and other movements in the State and Nation are striving to build a movement to reverse these anti-people trends. We, the graduates of Bangalore now have an opportunity to assert ourselves and defeat the anti-people policies and ensure ourselves and future generations decent jobs. We appeal to all the graduate vaters of the Bangalore Graduate Constituency to utilize the forth-coming June 17th bueniel elections to choose a firm voice against these policies. In this regard, on behalf of Bangalore Alive we appeal to yourself to cast your first preferential vote to Mrs. K. S. Lakshmi, M.A., and make her victorious.
Vikram Vincent