Bengaluru: Chief minister DK Shivakumar’s recent remarks that Kannadigas were being deliberately sidelined in private firms, especially the IT sector, drew a swift and near-unanimous response from industry: there is no systemic discrimination. What it did not bring to the table is data, and that gap is the heart of the debate.CA K Ravi, president, Bangalore Chamber of Industry & Commerce (BCIC), said the sector runs on meritocracy, transparency and equal opportunity. “We do not believe there is any systemic or institutional bias against local talent,” he said, insisting isolated grievances should be investigated factually rather than painted as widespread practice.SecurEyes Techno Services and HR consultancy Recipeat echoed the line, yet their responses showed how thin the evidence is on both sides. Uma Pendyala, operations head, said what surfaced so far was “an individual’s experience”, and no one knew if more such experiences existed. She said her firm recruits based on skills, not language, and about 90% of campuses it visits are in Karnataka.Ram Vaibhav, Recipeat CEO, was more candid. He said the firm had no verified figure for Kannadigas in its workforce and urged companies to track workforce diversity and local representation — an implicit admission that few currently do.That, though, is the weakness in industry’s defence. Assurances of merit-based hiring cannot settle a question of representation. Without published numbers on how many locals are hired, at what levels and in which roles, neither the CM’s concern nor industry’s denial can be tested.What industry wants instead is a collaborative framework, not punitive measures or excessive regulation. Ravi proposed a joint industry-govt liaison cell to transparently examine hiring complaints, giving aggrieved candidates a formal route that does not exist today.He called for campus recruitment beyond tier-1 centres, from colleges in Mysuru, Hubballi-Dharwad, Mangaluru and Belagavi, and for finishing schools and training in artificial intelligence, cloud computing and cybersecurity. If local graduates are losing out, a skills gap is a likelier culprit than language bias, and one that can be closed, he said. Pendyala pointed to SecurEyes’ own cybersecurity academy, which trains and places freshers, as a model.Industry voices also stressed that hiring Kannadigas and hiring professionals from other states are not mutually exclusive. Ravi noted that Bengaluru’s rise as a tech hub was built on local talent working alongside professionals from across India and the world, a reminder of what is at stake if the debate turns adversarial.For the govt, the sensible next step is to ask for data before regulation. For industry, accepting that request is the surest way to turn a denial into a defence. Until then, assurances on local hiring do not establish the extent of representation or rule out individual instances of discrimination.
