“Am I to be blamed for the recession?” This must be the question raging in the minds of many unemployed educated youth here in India. This is the situation in the employment market. There are no jobs to be had and if there are, they come with a heavy price to pay for accepting them. The IT industry particularly has taken a beating from which it is really taking long to recover. In the meanwhile what happens to the work force that’s being churned out like an assembly line from the various institutions here and abroad ? The poor girls and boys coming out of these factories are needlessly caught up in a mess that was created in faraway America.
A youngster having spent most of the best part of the last 6 years studying and burning the midnight oil (metaphorically speaking) and then doing some research to boot that too spending a fortune in the process finds that there is dung rather than a pot of gold at the end of the proverbial rainbow. I know of a few people who are really struggling to find a job let alone a well heeled one. They of course have become extinct. Well paying jobs I mean.
But the crux of this essay is not just the youngsters themselves but the situation they face today. These times are spawning some typically exploitative behaviors in employers. Two years back a post graduate in the technology domain armed with some research experience would have easily landed a plum cushy job and started life very, very comfortably. There was in fact a time when it was felt that youngsters were getting easy pay too quickly and that it was bringing in the culture of consumerism and obvious consumption too quickly in India. But today’s graduates are finding that they have to settle for terms and conditions of employment which reek of the highest form of exploitation. In their desperation to get a break, they are willing to accept any terms.
These youngsters often have to join small establishments which believe in taking maximum advantage of the prevailing situation and deprive the new joinees of any pay or some wholly unjustifed pay until they prove themselves worthy against some arbitrary benchmark which is just an excuse to extract maximum work with minimum or no pay. Even if the employers know that the selected candidate is a person of potential, they have no compunctions about exploiting the new kid on the block. After all make hay while the sun shines! So these hapless victims end up working 14-15 hour days just to prove themselves over and over again.
I do wonder then if it makes a dent in the confidence of our investments for the future. Do they get frustrated and disillusioned? Do they carry on with the optimism that after all everything is transitory and that this phase will also come to pass? It is after all anybody’s guess about when the situation will make a turnaround. Does a sense of despair seep in when they see they have missed the bus and that they happened to be the people in the wrong place at the wrong time? Would they resent the people who inhabit the workplaces where they would be employed, because more often than not they would find that these people possess far more modest competencies than they do?
It is true that in the recent past the newly joining work force was being catapulted too quickly to a lifestyle of excesses but is it fair that they now have to accept a diametrically opposite situation? Why do we have to deal in excesses always? There is always a lack of moderation in all our actions. Neither the former scenario nor the present one seems to answer the holistic growth needs of the younger generation. Where then is the answer?
Shalini Puthiyedam is an engineer, NGO volunteer, teacher, French linguist, amateur singer, home maker and a world citizen who has aspirations for a just and equal world. You may wanna follow her @shalinipv
Dear Shalini,
“The poor girls and boys coming out of these factories are needlessly caught up in a mess that was created in faraway America.”
The above quote from your article, reminds me of an anecdote I had presented for my colleagues in SunTec (Trivandrum) in August 2000 as a part of my “extra-curricular” lecture on psychology, viz. Ego Defence Mechanisms. There is a de-javu here, as I was referring to one of the most common Ego Defence Mechanisms, ie., Displacement. Displacement is a mechanism to protect our ego, by placing it to others. Being a software organization, my example started from America. The example goes like this :-
The background – a software application developed by a company in South of India (implemented in US/Europe) shows up in a live scenario.
1. The Head of the Institution in US/Europe reports (venting his frustration in shouts) to the Account Manager in US/Europe itself.
2. The Account Manager in US/Europe (shouts + his own version) to the Project Manager of this application, located in US/Europe itself.
3. The Project Manager in US/Europe calls and shouts (adding his own portion also) to the Country Manager in Asia Pacific (lets say, Singapore).
4. The Country Manager in Asia Pacific shouts (of course, with his additional wordings) to the Regional Manager (India region, perhaps located in Chennai) of the software company.
5. The Regional Manager immediately rings up the General Manager (located in Kerala) of the software company and shouts (with bonus version)
6. The General Manager calls for a meeting in public and shouts back at the Project Manager of the Development Team, with his version added.
7. The Project Manager calls the Team Leader and exaggerates the whole situation.
8. The Team Leader picks the developer who coded this software and $&^*#(#)#)@####$#2*&0(*Q)Q !!!!
9. Poor developer has nobody to blame at. Hears everything, go home, quarrels with wife.
10. The wife in an angry mood, beats up his son/daughter for not doing homework (totally unrelated, though).
11. The son/daughter nobody to pass on or displace the anger, kicks the dog and the dog dies!
So, a problem started in US/Europe has ended up in the death of a pet dog, miles and miles away!!
Similarly, a recession started in “big” world countries, is affecting the milkman and the newspaper boy here, because we stopped drinking milk and subscribing to newspapers!!
When will Recession go and we all have a Re-session?
Lets hope for the best!
Best Regards,
Renjith Sarada
http://www.renjithps.blogspot.com
Thank you Renjith.
Poor dog! Like all parallels, caught in someone else’s crossfire. Let’s all hope that the situation turns around as quickly as possible.
Thank you Renjith.
Poor dog! Like all parallels, caught in someone else’s crossfire. That was a wonderful anecdote. Let’s all hope that the situation turns around as quickly as possible.
Well its recession when your neighbour loses his job and depression when you lose yours.
Having said that, I feel this is only the wheel turning the full cycle. There have been recessions earlier, there have been scams earlier, there have been economic disasters earlier. In this world where its always the survival of the fittest, the resilient among the species succeeds in outliving this crisis. The exploitation that is spoken of too, is as old as the history of mankind. Earlier we had slavery of a different kind, now its just that the medium has changed to the world wide web. Kings of yesteryears too where known not only for their exploits but also their exploitations. How else do you think all these magnificent palaces were built. On a recent tour of Rajasthan, the story being told was that the Umaid Bhavan palace was built during the times of depression and what the Raja offered the workers where just one square meal and a quarter anna for a day’s work. The Guide was telling that the palace was built practically free for the Raja. We would have studied history and the advent of Industrialisation and the reason for labour unions to evolve. The exploitation of the poor by the rich or the weak by the strong has been the saga of mankind. The disenchantment that the current crops of talented youngsters feel is bound to be temporary, for any organisation worth its salt, always discovers and nurtures talent. True, there would be many imbeciles up on top as Bosses (judging by the number of Boss jokes doing the rounds, I guess the feeling is shared by many – wait a minute, my boss is an exception to this ); however, rarely is it that the talented person goes unrewarded. The world has always responded to anything and everything in extremes. It is these extremes that bring forth the best in a person. It’s a process of inner growth and toughening that this none too often sorry world demands that everyone goes through. Then again imagine a measured response, each and every time- damn boring isn’t it? You can’t seek an answer for this, coz it’s simply not there anywhere waiting to be discovered. It’s for you to go ahead and live your life the way you want – for its only you who can decide how you are going to feel about it.:-D
I think this is one of the best explanations I’ve stumbled upon so far on capitalism. Survival of the fittest/meanest is it’s saga. It’s definitely not the best way to scientifically manage the society. But the world will live this way until its end.
Thanks for your comment!
Thank you Ajayan for your comments.
If the saga of exploitation is the way in which human kind has survived till now, is it the right way? And do we just leave it like that? Exploited will become exploiters in turn…that is if they ever get to being there.
Well Shalini, don’t complaint that it is longer than your blog. You asked for it.:-) The question is whether the saga of exploitation of mankind is the right way of managing the society. To understand the answer you would need to know the history of how the exploitation took place and why the workers rallied together and what the Governments did for them.
The labour laws currently in force were enacted years ago. The need to prevent the exploitation of the
workers were felt with the advent of industrialization and most of the laws framed stipulating the minimum wages to be paid, the number of hours an employee ought to be made to work in a day etc; were framed after due deliberation and calculating the effective output that could be made by each employee on an average. A harmonious balance was struck between the time that an employee can work to the optimum for the benefit of his employer, and the time that he has for himself. The time that an employee had to himself was ample to attend to his personal and family needs, societal obligations as well as to participate in the activities that he chose to do for the betterment of the nation. Thus we can see that there were specific reasons for their enactment and most of these reasons are valid even today. The enactment of the labour laws were in consonance with the preamble of our constitution which envisaged that we intended to be a socialist republic. Still these laws, by and large benefit only the organized sector that constitutes about 6 to 7 % of the workers in this country. Most of the workers still remain in the unorganized sector. However there is hope for this sector too. Recently we have in Karnataka a law to help the unorganised sector of maid servants. Therefore the laws by and large ensured that the workforce of the country were healthy and were productive citizens
Post liberalization, that is after 1991, we find that the parliament is enacting laws which appear to be at variance with the stated socialistic objectives laid down. However the Judiciary has stepped in almost always to ensure that the capitalist policies being pursued do not go against the basic tenets of the constitution. That is how in 1995 while interpreting the ESI Act, the Supreme Court went on to say that the ight to life includes right to health. One basic flaw that subsists in our laws is that they
were primarily enacted keeping the industrial manufacturing sector in mind. But the situation has
changed after globalization. It is not the manufacturing sector, but the services sector that has
shown tremendous growth. This is where large corporations exploit the existing laws by innovative
“managerial techniques” that manage to undo or defeat the purpose of the labour law enactments, quite legally.
Two such techniques the readily come to mind are the productivity linked wages and the Employees’ Stock Option Plan.
Though the minimum wages have been laid down correlating to an assured output, the employers found a novel way to increase production from the existing employees without increasing the number of people employed. The employer stated that he will give the minimum wages say X, plus the wages Y where Y is related to the extra production that the employee has done. The employer packaged it as a novel means by which an employee could earn more and as a win – win situation for both. In reality the only winner would be the employer. The strategy would work for the benefit of the employer in two ways. One, he saves on the cost of employing new workers. Two, when the employees work
more to earn more, they have no time to strike!. Earlier it was the unions which negotiated with the
employers for increase in wages, now the employee would tell the union wallas, “Look boss, I don’t
need you to interfere on my behalf, I will work more and earn more.” Thus the employers managed to reduce one effective collective bargaining power of the Unions. At the first blush, the employee is earning no doubt. But a closer look would show that he is doing so at the cost of his collective bargaining power, a power whereby he could have managed to secure the increase in wages without any encroachment into his personal time.
The ESOP is an even devious method. Ostensibly it is to motivate the workers and a manner of sharing of wealth. Here the employer makes the employee a part stake holder and thereafter dangles the stick (yes the stick and not the carrot!) that if you don’t work well, the share price of the company will be affected which will further erode your personal wealth. So what ought to have been a management concern ( namely to increase profits) is passed on to the employees too so that they work their a** off to increase their miniscule profit and in the process enable the management to make huge profits! By these two techniques the management has found out ways to overcome the stipulated working hours. Of course they have fashionable terms for it. “flexi-time”. They
make it sound as if it is for the benefit of the employee. The working hours laid down in the labour
laws were considering the overall physical and mental well being of the employees. Now when the employer has exploited the human tendency for making money, by fancy packaging of their “techniques”, the employees give a go by to the usual permissible working conditions and work quite unmindful of the toll that it takes on them. We have beautiful ads where we see an employee working in a BPO night shift coming home in the morning, fresh enough to make a cup of coffee for his sleeping wife! How removed from reality would that be unless he was sleeping on duty?
So we have more number of divorces happening in the IT Sector and a lot of burnouts by the premature ageing of the employee by the time they become 45 or 50 in the sales and marketing sectors of the big corporations and the ITES and BPO Sectors. No doubt these people may be rich but at a great cost to their mental health and personal life which would tangently affect the lives and health of their immediate family members too.
We are being exploited whole sale. The media blitzkrieg unleashed by the new age corporations would have us believe that we arebecoming increasingly a rich country with more purchasing power to the people. True but what do wehave for purchasing? Costly Cars, new Washing Machines and air conditioners, Pizzas and burgers and the like. In short, the money that we earn is spent on the very same goods that these corporations who give us the money to spend is marketing in the first place. When the Britishers ruled us they would take the raw material like cotton from India to England manufacture clothes and sell it back to the rich kings and zamindars in India. None of the noveu rich can confidently say that the service sector boom currently being experienced would remain. There is every possibility of these shifting to cheaper labour markets elsewhere. Already there is evidence of such companies shifting their manufacturing base to China, Philippines etc. Even in the Stock markets, the new IPOs are cornered by FIIs and not by the retail investors given that the FIIs quote at the higher end of the price band where as the retail investor would try to acquire the shares at the lower end of the price band being quoted on offer. Thus even in the current boom the retail investor is not realistically gaining much. As long as the much needed investment in the infrastructure is lacking, to equate the growth that we see in the services or FMCG Sector to real economic growth would be a myopic view. Though these media would have us believe that the consumer is the king, in reality the consumer is never crowned. In the era of sophisticated technology, we as consumers spend substantial sums on gizmos and fancy gadgets whose efficency and durability we are unable to estimate for ourselves. Thus we would have situations where in the brand new laptop that we brought the battery might go phut in three weeks and when we contact the dealer he would have us read the fine print that the consumables are not covered under the warranty! How are we to know what are the consumables that go into the making of a laptop? Again when we have a mobile which is not functioning properly we will find that the service center would refuse to cover the instrument under warranty citing “liquid damage”. We would have taken adequate care and at best all the liquid that the instrument ever came to contact with would be our sweat. Still it qualifies for the label “liquid damage” and we are deprived of the benefit of warranty! I also know of a case where a young child was constantly hooked on to the PSP and developed some nervous tics which needed to be treated by a neurologist. The furious Mom and Pop though of sueing the Company. Believe it or not, the company brochure of the product had a disclaimer in fine print about this too!!. Trust me, we are treated as kings when we go to make the purchase but when we go to make a claim we are still treated as Knaves!
Now the corporations are pressing for changes in the labour law so that they can have free entry and exit from any business of their choice (without having to compensate the workers in case they are planning to close down one stream of business which they have to do now) and also for the hire and fire policy to be given legal backing. Even now they are increasingly opting for contracting out and also establishing factories in different states so that if production in one state is affected by a strike all that they have to do is to increase production in another state to compensate for it. Thus they have managed to effectively blunt one more weapon in the armoury of the Trade Union.
Now is it that all trade union activities are unruly? Definitely not. Whenever a trade union has overstepped its cause, the judiciary has been quick to come down heavily on the trade unions and the workers alike. A classic case would be the Allwyn employees strike in Andhra Pradesh. When the then NTR Government was dismissed the employees of the Allwyn Factory struck work demanding the reinstating of NTR as Chief Minister! The High Court ruled that the strike was unjustified and it was upheld by the Supreme Court if my memory serves me right. When an employee is employed by the employer, it is a contract where the Employer has a definite edge. Trade Unions were allowed to be registered so that the inequality of bargaining power is reduced to some extent and the legitimate demands of the employees are effectively put across to the Management by the Trade Union Representatives.
Even now in some IT Companies I believe the employees are made to sign a bond stating that they will work for the company for a stipulated period failing which they have to reimburse their cost of training. If the employee is sent abroad there would be a letter from some top honcho stating that the employee has been bestowed with this favour as the company recognizes the potential of the employee and that he is being allowed to upgrade his skills at considerable cost to the company which the company hopes that he would recognize and appreciate! Obviously to show his gratitude when the employee goes to meet this top honcho he is made to sign some papers stating that he
would reimburse the cost of training in the event of his leaving the company immediately after the training abroad and that the cost would be assessed by the company at the levels as it exists when he exits.
Again there may be clauses that he is not supposed to join a rival company etc. Seven out of Eight Bakaras would believe that the bond will have to be honoured and slog faithfully for the company. Believe me, no company, can ever enforce such a bond in any court of law. At best if the company owes the employee some money, it can withhold that. But the company can never hope to recoup the money from the employee by resorting to litigation. This is because the Judiciary considers this to be a form of slavery and will invariably rule only in favour of the employee as any such bond signed by the employee is taken to be a standard form of contract where the employee has signed on dotted lines. The judiciary does not attach any great sanctity to such contracts. Oh my God ! I have rambled enought.
Where there is exploitation, the people are bound to get together at some point or the other to revolt and that perhaps might be the hope. As I said before, you can never expect the Society to have a measured response for everything. This constant state of flux and evolution from it would be the only process.