There was a report in the Times of India, a few weeks ago, headlined: ‘X company asks 400 seniors to return to ‘work from office’ four days a week’. A few weeks earlier, there was another report saying that workers in a well-known company were extremely unhappy that they had been asked to come to the office for work at least two days a week! This is one of the legacies we inherited from the COVID-19 years. We don’t seem to be getting over it. In fact, the epidemic is spreading in every company where there is even the slightest possibility of ‘WFH’ (the new buzzword like Wef), standing for ‘work from home’.
Some time back, I spent one month in China and visited eight cities in that country. In every city, I found the Chinese doing something all the time—cleaning the streets, watering plants on the roadside and the middle divider, or carting the garbage away. There were no ‘loiterers’. None that one could see ‘hanging around’ doing nothing, as we see in Mumbai or many other places in India.
It is true that we did not see all the cities in China. But we did not see them in Beijing or Shanghai, in Guangzhou or Xian, as you would in Mumbai, Delhi or Kolkata (erstwhile Calcutta). Is it that they are forced to work under their style of government? (Then why did this not happen in Calcutta so many years under the CPI government?) Is it that there is a fear of punishment if you do not work? Is it that there is no opportunity to beg, to steal, or to borrow that compels people to do the work they are assigned to do and to do it well?
The contrast hit me last Sunday when workers of the municipal contractors in Mumbai were clearing the open drains on our road in the suburbs. My wife and I were returning home and we just stopped to open our gate, when one female worker stopped her work and rushed to my wife, mumbling something. My wife asked her what the matter was, and that she could not understand her. I presumed that she could have wanted some drinking water. ‘No’, she said. She wanted my wife to give her a saree. A good one, to wear for important occasions. Why should she be given a saree by a passerby? Was she working as our domestic staff, that she could perhaps make such demands? This kind of thinking did not seem to be strange to her. For her, like for many others, compensation is not necessarily related to work. Often, the demand has nothing to do with work inputs or the results obtained!
The workers of the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) are among the better-paid public sector employees in the country. So highly paid that over 70% of the revenues of the municipality are spent on salaries and wages. Only 10% of the revenues are available to do the work the municipality was set up to do for its citizens. The Corporation has the highest revenue for any municipality in the country. Yet, the streets of Mumbai are dirty, garbage is not cleared for days and the water supply can be erratic. Even now, roads like Chembur-Wadala, with ₹17 crore having been spent less than three years ago, today resemble a continuum of volcanic craters. Truck and car drivers now refuse to use this diversion road, which was constructed with great hopes of reducing the congestion on the Chembur-Sion highway.
And many BMC workers subcontract their jobs as sweepers, et cetera, to others (relatives, friends from their village) who are paid a part of their own salary so that they can go and do other work to even higher income elsewhere. This way, they can earn nearly two salaries and retain the municipal housing, which is so valuable in Mumbai.
You will seldom find a municipal worker in uniform. They don’t want to be identified. They prefer to remain anonymous—so that their presence is never missed. Perhaps the only time they wear their uniform is when they do the rounds of houses at Diwali time, to collect tips. Collecting tips for shoddy work done, or not done at all!
Where has our timeless Indian concept of Karma Yoga evaporated? Karma Yoga means doing one’s duties, honestly and truthfully, without expecting anything in return. Whatever the task, one does it to satisfy oneself. Unfortunately, this is no longer happening. Many employees are in the habit of completing their tasks just because they are asked to do so. But if they learn to adopt and practice Karma Yoga, or skill in their work, they will find that it not only gives them mental satisfaction, but also helps in the growth of the enterprise in which they are employed.
An employee who works merely to please his boss or his seniors or just because he is getting a salary every month, not only cheats the organisation, but also cheats his own conscience. This attitude is detrimental to his personality and he will never get curious enough to learn and innovate in the workplace. And as a consequence, he will also never get recognition.
With Karma Yoga, you see God in your work by doing it sincerely and honestly. It is equivalent to praying to God and, therefore, it is rightly said that ‘work is worship’. In fact, every employee should aspire to give a little more to the organisation than what he receives. But the situation seems to be just the opposite at present. You see disgruntled employees in government offices- although they have job security, they hardly respect their work. They are more concerned with monetary benefits than with completing the allotted tasks. These employees are a burden to any organisation that employs them.
I was being shown around a factory in Singapore where I noticed everyone wearing a black stripe on the shirt pocket. I asked my guide what this signified. He said that the 200 workers were all unhappy with the management and with the black badge, they were showing their displeasure. Why are they not on strike? I asked him. “Oh, no, we could not do that,” he replied. “If we strike work, the company will lose production and sales and profits will fall. Then the company will not be able to give us the extra money we are asking for. In fact, we must now work harder, so that it will be easier for the management to grant our demands.”
What a marvellous attitude! What a change from the attitude of many of our employees in the public and even some private sectors, who often stand with outstretched hands or open drawers for gratification to do the work which they are already paid to do.
Perhaps we have completely exported the concept of Karma Yoga to other countries, without keeping some back for us at home!
(Walter Vieira is a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants of India - FIMC. He was a successful corporate executive for 14 years, capping his career as Head of marketing for a Pharma multinational, for India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka- and then pioneered marketing consulting in India in 1975. As a consultant, he has worked across four continents. He was the first Asian elected Chairman of ICMCI, the world apex body of consultants in 45 countries, in 1997. He is the author of 16 books, a business columnist, an international conference speaker and has been a visiting professor in Marketing in the US, Europe, and Asia for over 40 years. He was awarded Lifetime Achievement Award for Consulting in 2005, and for Marketing in 2009. He now spends much of his time in NGO work - Consumer Education and Research Centre, IDOBRO, and some others.)
Seeking something out of nothing has become the dominant philosophy these days. Some people blame the freebies doled out by the governments but the real reason seems to be a lack of ethics in work culture.