Cheap Labour or Mute Labour

India, is perceived as, one of the cheapest labour(both skilled and unskilled) country in the world.

I being in service industry, knows the ground reality of conditions of labour. Or in other words I can say that I have been observing them from very close and understand them very well because most of the time of my every day, is consumed in managing them.

This story is about the reasons why India is among one of the cheapest labour countries.

Scene 1

Skilled Labour

We can say every company in this era is planning for or already implemented cost cutting measures in their processes or services. The very first result of cost cutting is reduction in manpower. This for sure results in less operation cost of organization but simultaneously it decreases happiness index of individual employees. Because with time work will never decrease rather it will increase and would be shared among less employees. But as I mentioned earlier in one of my previous blog named Happiness Index!! i.e. organization’s top management is thinking only of profit without considering happiness index even little bit. On similar ground government is not considering happiness index in his manifesto. Therefore we are not in the list of happiest country.

I being a team lead manages 4 contractual skilled manpower(ITI/DIPLOMA).

Once hired, these skilled labour become our owned property. You can assign them any task which is not even mentioned in their job responsibilities. As employees were decreased they have to do others work too.

I tried to find out the reasons why they accept any task ordered by their so called owner’s 😀😀. Or we can say why they choose to be mute.

List of reasons

1) Most weighted reason, they are on contract basis.

2) Unemployment is so high that once employed they don’t want to be unemployed again.

3) Population of similar skill set is high enough which leads to high compitition.

4) They accepted this and now started enjoying it.

Scene 2

Highly skilled labour

Engineers like me are considered as highly skilled labour 😃😃.

After completion of first year in job (apart from probation period of one year) I got lowest performance rating. Literally I cried that day when this news was received. Being graduated from NIT Jalandhar, an institute of National Importance, I was not able to gulp this news. Previous line shows that I have an ego or proud of being graduated from NIT. But let me clear first, this is not the case. I never say or claim that being graduated from NIT, I’m the most technical sound engineer. No. Not at all.

Next year my rating improved not because I worked hard rather because I got lowest rating in previous year. Not best but better. After this year, my rating again decreased but not touched worst. And in 4th year by someone’s grace it touched worst rating again. But this time I wasn’t sad. Yeah it took me only 2-3 minutes to gulp this information. Why so?

In between 3rd to 4th year of job, I started reading The Holy Book The Bhagwad Geeta. Believe me or not once you read it and revise it too then automatically your take on different things will change. The only condition is that you already have some belief in God.

From the time, my brain was able to understand, I literally don’t give a shit to many issues like monetary issues, relations issues etc. I’m like happy-go-lucky kind of person. And after reading The Geeta this trait of me gained new heights.

In Geeta, it is mentioned that, Do work without any desire or  expectation of fruits in return. (इंसान को केवल कर्म का ही अधिकार है, उसके फल के बारे में चिंता करने का नहीं। इसलिए तुम कर्मों के फल की चिंता मत कर और कर्म से विमुख मत हो।).

So simple to understand. But difficult to follow. Same happened with me. When I received the news of lowest rating or promotion delayed. I was in shock. But deep down my unconscious mind played role of the Lord Krishna and repeated those Golden words i.e.  इंसान को केवल कर्म का ही अधिकार है, उसके फल के बारे में चिंता करने का नहीं। Within 2-3 min all sadness was vanished.

But we can follow this in the Ideal World. By Ideal world I mean to say that when everyone is following that.

I didn’t considered the factor that this isn’t an ideal  world. I didn’t knew repercussion’s of this.

One day my new HOD asked me that how many years I had spend in this organization. I replied. Then he asked my position/Rank. I replied. Then the first line he said broke my heart i.e. Looks like your promotion is delayed means you don’t work. The fruit of my work i.e. promotion on which I didn’t focussed as I learned that in Geeta but that’s the only thing that matters for my boss or in real world. This sparked anger in me. And again my unconscious mind played the role of the Lord Krishna and repeated those golden words. And my anger was gone. But this time I decided to note down the reasons of why I should be promoted and why not and after that will ask my Boss. I wrote those reasons but didn’t asked my boss. I had let it go. Don’t know why.     

I choose not to respond and follow those golden words.  Everything became smooth. I kept working like I previously did simultaneously learning new skills and using them to improve my work. This doesn’t mean I wasn’t working previously.😂😂

Few months passed smoothly. I forgot about delay in promotion, family forgot too about this. Now there is no discussion on promotion. Suddenly HR started calling those employees who got lowest rating or stay on  promotion  to ask employees why their performance declined.

I was in shock again.

This was totally opposite of  what should  be followed.

Employees should have gone to HR to ask why there promotion  is delayed or why they received lowest rating.

I tried to find out why I didn’t asked HR about stay on my promotion or lowest performance rating.

Why I decided to be mute.

List of reasons:

1) Fear of getting fired, if raised a voice

2) Fear of getting unnecessary tortures, if raised a voice

3) Fear of getting transferred to different location (Job Relocation), if raised a voice

4) Fear of getting transferred to different department (Job Rotation), if raised a voice

5) Lack of talent i.e.  you know that you are not as much talented as other organization’s required

6) Lack of self confidence i.e. you are not confident enough that you can take new job

7) No backup plan i.e. no plan if voice is raised and something extreme happened

8) In comfort zone in terms of monetary, and don’t want to change

9) Just don’t want to be involved in fight

May be these are the common reasons for every employees……. Hope so

We are not cheap labour we are mute labour

Being mute doesn’t mean we are weak.

P.S. Anyone, who had read it till last and didn’t understand anything or purpose of this blog, then  If you are curious to understand this then leave a comment and then we will connect and discuss. And if not curious then congratulations, time you spent on this is wasted.😂😂  Just kidding.

🙏Thanks🙏