No need for Karnataka to give land for cheap to IT firms: Priyank Kharge

Karnataka does not need to give away land for cheap to attract IT and technology industry firms as the State “incentivised IT as a sunrise industry 30 years back,” while others are “incentivising it now,” the State’s Minister for Electronics, Information Technology & Biotechnology and Rural Development & Panchayat Raj Priyank Kharge told The Hindu in an interview.

Mr. Kharge was speaking at the sidelines of an event in the capital to promote the Bengaluru Tech Summit, due to be held in November.

“If my counterpart in another State is giving large tracts of land for free, that doesn’t mean that I need to do that too,” Mr. Kharge said, arguing that due to Karnataka and particularly Bengaluru’s strong presence in the IT sector, such sops were not needed. 

Interstate competition

“Competition with other countries and States [in IT and electronics] has always been there,” Mr. Kharge said. “We compete with Tamil Nadu on manufacturing, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on ITES, and Maharashtra for FDI. We’re also extremely competitive with countries like Indonesia and Vietnam, where there is potential for smaller hubs of manufacturing and technology firms. This constant competition is what keeps us ahead of the curve for reskilling, pushing for better policies, and better infrastructure.”

On the 1,777 acres of land in Devanahalli that was earmarked for an aerospace park, Mr. Kharge said that the land had never been concretely notified for any particular industry or company. “That land was fertile and there were negotiations, and look, this is a democracy, right,” Mr. Kharge said. “You come up and say, there was a mistake in the notification, and we don’t want to give [the land] now as it’s fertile. It’s a socio-economic demographic that we have to cater to, so so be it.” 

“This is not like what happened in West Bengal two decades back, where land was returned after its notification to a particular entity. That sent a wrong signal to investors.”

IT layoffs

On job losses at some IT firms recently, Mr. Kharge alluded to AI as a cause. “Whenever a new technology comes in, there is going to be a lot of disruption,” Mr. Kharge said. “It’s always been a constant thing. Jobs are taken, new jobs are created… And I think we have been extremely agile with that. That is the reason we are coming up with the Nipuna Karnataka programme, for heavy reskilling and upskilling. No other State is spending what we are, ₹300-400 crores on such an effort.”

On the role of non-Kannadigas in the State’s talent pool, Mr. Kharge said: “My responsibility as minister is to work for a policy that pushes the ecosystem in my State, it’s my responsibility to ensure that more of our people are given opportunities. Having said that, because of the great ecosystem that we have, the conducive environment for investments and job creation, we do get a lot of influx of migrants. There’s nothing we can do about it — the only way to ensure that we stay ahead of the curve is by reskilling and upskilling people.”

“So the migration influx issue is one of the things we’ve requested the Sixteenth Finance Commission to consider: give us money, we build better infrastructure, we create more jobs for people across not only Karnataka, but for people across India.”