Staring at One's Wife, L&T Permitting?

 

It is a year since Mr. Narayan Murthy of Infosys advised the young men and women of India to put in seventy hours per week so that India could become a great nation. Now the L&T Chief, Mr. Subrahmanyan has gone one up and has demanded 90-hour weeks  from Indians. This must be music to all Industrialists, Business Houses, and the IT Industry. It surely sounds like a genuine call for nation building. When prisoners, with sentences of hard labour, put in just a few hours of labour and spend most of their bondage in cells, barracks, or outdoor games, it sure must be a commitment of the highest order that would make workers in factories, call centres, IT industry, offices, and secretariats to voluntarily put in twelve or fifteen hours a day - six days a week, or fourteen or eighteen hours a day – five days a week.

A ninety-hour week would mean fifteen hours Monday to Saturday. i.e. 8 In the morning to 11 in the night at work, two hours of commute and a full 7 hours to recuperate, look after the family, go shopping, take the child to the doctor. Meanwhile the husband and wife can stare at each other for five minutes everyday for they will be sleeping all Sunday.

So, Natarajan and Lalitha, wake up at five in the morning. They hurriedly heat-up the stale food that the Bangla Desi maid had cooked three days ago and stuffed in the refrigerator. While the microwave whirrs, they wet themselves in their respective bathrooms and rush for dressing up. The Gym and Yoga hour has been sacrificed at the altar of nation-building. Gulping the leftovers and some multivitamins they rush down the lift. O, they wonder, has the lift slowed down? It takes ages to descend. Seven AM is the deadline they must meet to leave home for the hour-long commute, in different directions, in the Gurgaon traffic.

Indeed, China does prescribe a 9-9-6 work schedule in some parts of the country and in some industries, which means working from morning nine to evening nine – six days a week, or seventy-two hours a week. Can anyone tell me when the Captains of our Industry last visited Chinese labour camps wherefrom they picked up this idea? Surely, they may have also learnt that China is facing a demographic collapse in the next decade or two. Young men and women are not marrying, and married ones are not producing any children. I would find it rather unacceptable to bring up a child on home-delivered food provided a couple can afford even that. Dumplings, burgers, French fries, sushi and rice noodles – Ah! Won’t the toddler love it?

Back to Natarajan and Lalitha. The two-year-old was left sleeping. He had colic pain and vomiting in the night. They didn’t have the time to phone a doctor, let alone visit one what with a six-day, twelve-hour-a-day week. In any case, which doctor would receive a call at six in the morning? So, the poor child is left to the mercy of the Bangla Desi maid, or the mother-in-law, who may occasionally visit them from Pudukkottai. It is during such visits of the mother-in-law that Natarajan and Lalitha sometimes go watch a movie and hold hands. And, they are certainly not going for a second child, national demography be damned.

The day is over at eight in the evening, a full twelve hours after they had punched in. Now, they must rush back home – Natarajan had to pick up some medicines for his blood pressure, which he would like to believe is a temporary affliction. Lalitha had to pick up some disposable diapers, among other things, but the shop was closed by the time she reached. She tried to call Natarajan to pick up a pack from the medicine shop, but Natarajan couldn’t take the call on his motorcycle. Maybe tomorrow, or else good old Amazon will come to the rescue.

Natarajan’s company did a poll to find out if the employees would prefer a fourteen-hour-a-day week so that they could have a two-day weekend. That would mean a shift of morning eight to ten in the night and returning home at eleven. They are still debating.

The days of the Industrial Revolution, I am told, had such back-breaking working hours. Thousand died of exhaustion, accidents, tuberculosis, sheer exhaustion and burnouts every year across Europe. I have also learnt that post-war Europe and Japan had had workers putting in such long hours to rebuild their nations. But that was for a limited time. Natarajan and Lalitha are not citizen of a country at war; they are being urged and morally compelled to face such a work schedule with no end in sight. That millions upon millions of compatriots are doing the same is no solace to the grieving heart of Lalitha, who can look after her child only on Sundays – bathe her, groom her, cook for her, which is every mother’s dream and delight. But no, Mr. Murthy is no mother and his children have grown up. He has also done his share of nation building. It is up to Natarajan and Lalitha now.

Well, Natarajan and Lalitha are software engineers, or techno-coolies, writing lines upon lines of codes. Let’s look at factory workers now. The Indian Factory Laws and the International Labour Organisation limit factory working hours to forty eight per week and a maximum of eight hours a day. There can’t be an unbroken spell of more than five hours. A minimum of a thirty-minute break is mandated after five hours. Any extra hour must be paid at double the wage rates. But no, M/S Narayan Murthy and Subrahmanyan would have none of it. They wants to maximise the output of his swanky, air-conditioned, software development centre, with high-end servers, gigabit backbone, and Project Offices and Work Sites and multinational clientele by making their employees sit longer. No, they won’t pay them extra. Employees are but a cog in the wheel. They must volunteer to serve them extra hours for free since isn’t he building the nation, while they draw 51 crore salaries (a 43% hike in less than a year) and buy 50 crore flats.

There is something called productivity, Dear Industrialists! And, there are ways to make your people more productive in the same eight-hour, five-day week. Automation, Smart Working, Fail-proofing make for more output and a Happy workforce. But, to commission a study to achieve this, and to bring in more equipment and provide useful training would cost money and resources. Why spend, when a call to nation-building does it for free?

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Railway GM, his Saloon and Jacuzzi (Feudalism Lives)

Indian Railways, immediately after independence, had only six Zones and about forty Divisions. Each General Manager and DRM had much more vast areas to look after and officers and staff to supervise than at present. Today there are seventeen Zones and sixty-eight Divisions; number of staff has come down from seventeen lakhs to thirteen lakhs. Communication has become easier with previously unknown mediums available, such as mobile phones, chats, facsimile, email, intercoms, video calls and video-meets. Yet the bosses of Railways, typically a GM or a DRM, still think that they must maintain the colonial aura of enigma and unapproachability. His “secretariat” adds to the mystery of Bada Sahib, who will meet someone only when he so desires and for that he would summon the latter as required. I have faced some of this first hand and when it fell upon me, I have also tried to break free of this self-imposed grandeur. But this is the story of the time when I was the minion.

I, once, got posted as the head of a large railway workshop in a major Zone of Indian Railways. This was a Senior Administrative Grade position in the rank of a Joint Secretary to the Central Government. A few days into my job I thought I should see the General Manager of the Zone, whose office was in the same city, just a few kilometres from my office. This is how it went, when I called the Secretary to the General Manager.

I asked, “Will the GM be free sometime today or tomorrow for me to pay a visit to him?” The Secretary asked me why I wanted to meet the GM. I was rather surprised at this question. So, I told him that it was only expected and proper of me to introduce me to the GM since I was a senior officer, head of the largest workshop of the Zone, and also a newcomer.

The secretary, rather tersely, told me that I could meet the GM only when the GM so desired, not any other way. And, that if I wanted to meet the GM, I should ask my PHOD to take me along and introduce me to the Mighty Lord. So, I replied that I was happy the way I was and that he could keep the GM all to himself. There I was, a JS level officer in an important position, who couldn’t even pay a courtesy visit to the head of the Railway Zone, to a person, who would be writing my annual appraisal without having ever seen my face.

But, as every dog has his day, my day came rather quick. The GM’s saloon was sent to my workshop for some fit up. I went for an inspection of the vehicle and was shocked to find the luxury that was built-in there. Now, saloons were not uncommon for senior officers but what struck me in the Bada Sahib’s saloon was a full-fledged Jacuzzi-like water shower and 360 degree spray arrangement in the bathroom, something a certain Chief Minister would have loved to install in his Sheesh Mahal. I asked my people how such high-pressure jets worked in a railway carriage. I was shown a high-power water pump installed in the false ceiling of the bathroom that pushed water into a hot-water geyser, which then fed the luxurious water sprays.

Now, bathroom geysers are designed for a certain “head” or water pressure. I asked my officers if they had checked whether the geyser was fit to sustain such high pressures as it was subjected to. They were not sure and had never bothered to verify that factor. My time of redemption had come. I told them to immediately disconnect the pump and let the water from the rooftop tank of the carriage flow directly into the taps and spray-jets. The powerful, luxuriant, rich, and bubbly bath of the GM was turned into a feeble stream with water trickling like from a municipal tap.

During his next cross-country travel in the saloon, the GM Sahib stepped into the bathroom expecting the same old relaxing, foaming, and calming experience only to be left totally flabbergasted. He came back to the head quarters and summoned my PHOD and chided him squarely, “There is no pressure in my saloon’s bathroom. I had to get hot water in a bucket from the kitchen and take bath with a plastic mug. What the hell! Who is responsible for all this?”

Well, I was responsible. But the Mighty Lord was prevented by his own vanity to even reprimand me. I was too lowly a person for him to set his sights on much less speak to. My boss, the PHOD, poor gentleman, had to bear all the anger of the colonial sahib. So, now the PHOD summoned me, something that was permitted under protocol, “What have you done to the GM’s saloon?” I explained to him the technical reasons why the water pump was disconnected. My boss ordered me to reconnect the pump immediately. I made him wiser of the possible consequences, “Sir, the geyser can explode under such pressure with the GM in the bathroom and the GM may even die. Do you really want me to reconnect the pump?” The PHOD got truly scared and said, “Do nothing for now until we find a safe solution.”

The GM Sahib spent the entire winter using hot water in a bucket from kitchen and a mug for his ablutions on wheels. Every time he would come back from his journey to the cold Delhi, he would summon my boss and shout at him. I was, as you have understood by now, insulated from the ire from the top by the labyrinth of bureaucracy and had a ringside view and satisfying chuckle every time.

Finally, the boss came to know of the whole story of my trying to meet the GM and getting spurned and my mischief in disconnecting the water pump. He, being a mechanical engineer, also figured out that a very simple solution existed from day one – connect the high-pressure pump after the geyser. That way the geyser would not be subjected to high pressure, a myth that I had built, as the pump would pull water through the geyser, not push into it. So, he bypassed me and told one of my junior subordinate officers to reconnect the pump.

I came to know of it and strongly protested, upon which my boss smiled and said, “You have had your revenge the whole winter. Forgive the GM now.” So, the two of us had a hearty laugh over tea and I pardoned the GM.

The same GM did call me to his hallowed office later. But that is a story for another day.

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