The indignity of labour

“Malayalis are very hardworking people”. There, I got it out of my system. I can almost hear the snickers from those reading that sentence. In fact, I can hear myself snickering because I don’t belong to that group. I belong to another group known as the hardly working malayali. We believe in the old adage, “hard work never killed anyone, but why take a chance?” and our group, I feel, is in the majority. I got major pointers to prove that theory the other day when reading The Hindu, which is a respected newspaper in S. India.

There is a myth going around that Kerala has chronic, high unemployment running into the millions. Unemployment would mean there are few job vacancies around, and if at all there are any vacancies they will get filled up in no time. After all, we’re a highly literate, skilled people. It shouldn’t be a problem finding the required talent from the unemployed multitudes. That, however, is not the case.

Take the case of the State Electricity Board. The Electricity Board, for those of you not in the know, is an organization set up mainly to energize the coffers of whichever party is in power at any given time. And, for some reasons there’s always a Canadian link. The Idukki dam was built with Canadian aid back in the 70s, I think, to solve the power needs of the parties. Since then, it appears that both ruling formations have been vying with each other to make the most “energy” out of it, with Canadian help. Will have to check this with my friend in Canada. Why are the Canadians helping us like this? I’m digressing.

Coming back to the original topic, the Electricity Board, according to The Hindu, is finding it difficult to get people to carry out repair works, which has affected their service delivery (ha, ha) to the public. The Hindu goes on to add that, in Trivandrum, shortage of field staff has forced the Electricity Board to hire “retired employees” on contract for rectifying complaints at night. An official said that these contract employees rarely hazard inspecting power lines on rainy nights owing to the high accident risk.

This was the proof I needed. If there was any unemployment, this situation will not arise at all. In fact, the jobs would have been snapped up in a jiffy and there would have been no need to rope in retired oldies like they do in Japan. Unless of course these so-called unemployed people in Kerala do not wish to work. The Japanese have coined a word for it: NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training). Or, in other words, people who don’t want to work. Quite possible. It could also be that they’re afraid to take on dangerous work, which even those un-retired contract workers don’t want to do. Don’t know why it is hazardous, though. There’s hardly any electricity flowing. There’s an outside chance of getting hit by lightning or falling off from the electric post. Still, if you have survived walking the streets of Trivandrum, these types of dangers shouldn’t faze you in any way. So, taking all these into consideration, I concluded that the unemployment scenario is a myth created by vested interests and those who’re hardly working in Kerala are people who’re not interested in working. Leave them alone. They don’t want to suffer the indignity of labour.

A few years ago, I was sitting inside an Indian Airlines flight in New Delhi, where I witnessed this indignity of labour. The flight was not flying, which is not surprising. It was sitting in the tarmac with a full load of passengers for four hours. Indian Airlines, always the eager host, served food to keep the passengers from going nuts listening to non-stop flute music and eating nuts. While the food was being served, an old lady sitting across the aisle from me dropped her spoon and fork. The airhostess gave a new set of spoon and fork to the lady but didn’t pick up the ones on the floor. Instead, she went and came back with a man in khaki shorts and shirt and pointed at the fallen pieces. He dutifully picked them up, cleaned the floor, thanked the memsahib and disappeared. What if the flight was in mid-air? Would she have waited for it to land? Picking up a spoon and fork from the floor surely seemed to be beneath the dignity of such high-flying women.

The President of India, a decent, intelligent man (and with the best hairdo after Kim Jong-Il), gave a big-time speech to the elected members of the Kerala Assembly, a few days back. The technocrat that he is (was), there was no wonder the speech was filled with words like core competencies and other such jargons. (Was the word “synergy” in there?) He might as well have addressed a bunch of electric posts. Wouldn’t have made an iota of difference as both groups have many things in common. For instance, both are inanimate objects* and both groups have more or less failed to deliver what they were originally supposed to deliver. That is, “Power to the People”.
* - Technically the members are not inanimate, though they act like that sometimes. For e.g., none of them had any questions for the President, when he asked if they have any. Probably they were thinking, “core competencies!, now what’s that? this guy must be nuts.”

PS:
1. The “hard work never killed anyone ….” saying is wrong as far as the “never killing” part is concerned. The Japanese disproved that. Hard work has been killing people in Japan for many years now. They even have coined a word (adept at coining words; the Japanese are!) for that: “Karoshi”. Karoshi means death due to overwork, and this has been a valid cause of death in Japan since the 80s, I think. Even the government reluctantly accepts it when the courts force them on it. The statistics for 2003 reveal that 157 people died of Karoshi in Japan. So, the advice given in the second part of that saying has really helped many people. And, it’s high time we changed the saying to “Hard work has killed people, so don’t take the risk”.
2. The “ha, ha” in the third paragraph is mine and is not there in The Hindu report.

comments@thekkuvadakku.com