Questions over jobs mela limited to Kapus

Vijayawada: The Kapu Welfare and Development Corporation’s move to hold Kapu mega job mela from October 19 to 21 in Vijayawada has led to some raised eyebrows. Socio-economic and political analysts are questioning the equation between companies and caste politics and whether it is acceptable. According to the corporation, companies like Deloitte, TCS, HCL, Fortune, Tech Mahindra and 95 others were looking to hire 3,000 employees qualified with MTech, MBA, MCA, BE, BPharma, BBA, BCA, BCom and 10+2 degrees.

They are expecting around 5,000 participants to attend interviews. Prof. M.C. Das said, “Caste-based job fair is not a good sign and would lead to a lot of complications and also protests.” He added there was a danger of every community conducting job fairs on similar lines, leading to disharmony among communities. “This is an embarrassing situation for the recruiters. They should be given freedom to operate and recruit by themselves. The corporation can conduct programmes and skill development vocational training and introduce vocational courses to support them academically and economically,” he said, adding that such job fairs exhibit political motives.

Kapu Welfare and Development Corporation chairman Ramanujaya said, “We approached companies and enquired about the skills requirement. We conducted skill development programmes at a cost of Rs 200 crore at various levels. Now, we are creating a platform for our people to get jobs in these companies which earlier they didn’t even know how to approach.”

He said, “Every community had its own corporation to develop themselves. The Brahmin Welfare and Development Corporation works tow-ards the development of its community by teaching Vedas, scriptures etc. and also creating opportunities for them.”

Lok Satta chief Jayaprakash Narayana said: “Such job mela may benefit political parties, but not the public, as it creates social unrest.” Socio-economic and political analyst Dr D.V. Ramana said: “Surveys must be conducted to study the social impact of such melas. It would definitely have a bad impact on both the companies and party. It doesn’t provide political mileage; rather it would be a loss.”