Lives, not machines: Human cost of overwork
While Infosys founder Narayana Murthy keeps advising the young generation—the bunch of software engineers and other techno-managers— to work for 70 hours a week, Larsen and Toubro chairperson SN Subrahmanyan has begun to plead for a 90-hour workweek, including Sundays, to promote competitiveness and efficiency.
Never mind that, as far as the findings of the International Labour Organisation are concerned, India ranks 13th among the world’s most overworked countries! Furthermore, 62 per cent of the Indian employees experience severe burnout—three times the global average. And this is one of the top occupational risk factors contributing significantly to disease and early death.
Have these corporate bosses forgotten so early the tragic tales of the death of Anna Sebastian Perayil—a 26-year-old Ernst and Young employee in Pune — because of work-related stress? No, it is not an aberration. As the ‘Healthy Work Survey’ conducted by the US-based Centre for Social Epidemiology reveals, there are more than 1,20,000 deaths caused by work stress every year in the world.
There are three reasons why we must resist this sort of insensitivity, or the act of reducing a human being into a mere ‘resource’ for enhancing the mythical ‘productivity’.
First, as the kind of work most of us are compelled to do for survival or economic mobility, far from being inherently fulfilling and creative, causes alienation, estrangement and existential anguish.
Converse with a software engineer sitting in front of the laptop in a tiny cubicle, fulfilling the ever-expanding ‘targets’ and, thereby, spending sleepless nights; engage with an employee in a crowded bank, counting cash from 9 am to 5 pm without a breathing space; or, for that matter, talk to a delivery boy running like a horse to supply — quickly and instantly — what the affluent classes from their gated societies order.
It is quite unlikely that they will say that they are happy with what they do. They do it because they have to survive, pay the house rent, give their medical insurance premium or send their kids to schools.
In fact, asking them to work more, or to teach them the lessons of ‘hard work’ is the worst form of psychic violence the insensitive corporate elites can inflict on them. The fact is that most of us are psychologically wounded and feel extreme form of alienation and boredom in our workplaces.
However, for these business tycoons, it seems, we are nothing but mere ‘resources’, to be extracted continually till we break down.
Second, when these corporate elites lecture on long working hours for India’s economic prosperity, they safely forget to mention that without distributive justice, the nation’s prosperity will mean essentially the prosperity of the select billionaires, or a tiny section of the upwardly mobile professional class, like techno-managers, doctors in private hospitals, and real estate entrepreneurs.
Thanks to an Oxfam report, we know that the top 10 per cent of Indian population holds 77 per cent of national wealth. Is it, therefore, surprising that India has 185 billionaires — the third largest in the world after the US and China? Keep your eyes open and see the manifestations of this gross inequality.
For instance, while Narayana Murthy’s net worth is not less than $520 crore, the estimated total package for a fresher at Infosys is Rs 3-to-5 lakh per annum. While the Ambanis can spend Rs 5,000 crore for their son’s lavish wedding, it is exceedingly difficult for a construction worker to earn more than Rs 700 per day, or a delivery boy Rs 13,000 per month.
Is it because they are lazy? Or, is it because the system that the corporate elites seek to hide is inherently violent and exploitative?
In this context, I must say that it is equally important for people like us — I mean middle class, university-educated professionals who are complaining against this kind of long working hours — to look at ourselves critically, accept our hypocrisy and admit that we, too, do not necessarily behave nicely, eg with the entire brigade of domestic helps. Quite often, we pressure them to work even on holidays or in festive seasons.
Or, think of the way in many gated societies, delivery boys or other service providers are not allowed to use the same lift that the ‘owners’ use. Is it that we, too, tend to internalise the same logic of oppression through which our bosses subjugate us?
And, finally, these corporate bosses ought to be reminded of a basic fact: that there is more to life than what they value as ‘productive’ work. It is sad that they fail to realise that some of us see the world beyond our office chambers and love to unfold our humane and creative potential primarily in what these neoliberal bosses would otherwise ridicule as ‘non-productive idleness’.
There are numerous such instances. For example, when we enjoy the warmth of the sun on a winter morning and recite the poems of Walt Whitman and William Blake in front of our children; or, when with our friends and family members, we watch the films of Charlie Chaplin and Satyajit Ray; or, for that matter, when we spend hours with our old parents, forgetting the technicalities of deadlines, promotions and salary packages and assure them that none can break this bond.
It is sad that business tycoons are so intoxicated with money and profit that they fail to realise that their employees are not robotic machines. Instead, they are human beings; they love, they cry, they sing, they dance…