IF NOT MY WIFE, WHOSE WIFE SHOULD I STARE AT, SIR ?

                                  

So another Sisyphus has surfaced on our corporate horizon, putting his shoulder to the boulder of "nation building". The Chairman of L+T (Larsen and Toubro), a one lakh crore multi-national behemoth, not satiated with the Rs. 51 crore he brings home every year (which is 540 times what his average employee subsists on), wants his serfs to work harder so that he can amass even more and quickly move on to some other country before that same boulder crushes him. Mr. Narayan Murthy of Infosys fame wanted a 70 hour week, Mr. Subhramanyan has upped it to 90 hours, all striving for that 18 hours-per-day jackpot which the Prime Minister himself has set as a bar. All this would be absurdly funny if it did not indicate a deep sickness in our society, specifically the captains of our industry and polity (with a few laudable exceptions).

Sometime back I had termed these individuals as representatives of the new East India Company that now rules this sorry nation, exploitative slave- drivers and profit seekers to the core (India's New Colonisers and the new East India Company, June 3, 2023), and I am saddened to see myself being vindicated every day by both industry and the government. For what is going on under the garb of "nation building" is nothing but personal fortune building in one case, and power consolidation in the other. The new corporate template is "Make in India, Park it abroad." This consists of various strands. The first is to extract more of the honest tax payers' moneys by way of subsidies, incentives (PLI) and tax waivers (Corporate Income Tax now contributes less to direct taxes than Personal Income Tax-a first in our history). The second is to bleed the average employee and amass fortunes for the promoters and top honchos. (Corporate profits have increased by 300% in the last ten years while worker salaries, in real terms, have gone down by 1% each year between 2012 and 2022, according to a report by the International Labour Organisation and the Institute for Human Development). And this even though Indian worker salaries are the twelfth lowest in the world (and would be even lower if the inflation-indexed government employees' salaries are taken out of the equation)! The third strand is to pocket these profits and decamp to fairer climes abroad: according to the Henley Wealth Migration report 2024, 5100 dollar millionaires left India in 2023 and the expected number for 2024 is 4300. A pretty good recipe, if you ask me, for ignoring your own wife and staring at other people's wives in Davos or Biarritz or the UAE.                                                                                                                                                                        There is no empathy for the worker (whether in the organised, informal, gig, or self employed sectors), the farmer, the students, the MNREGA labour, the unemployed, or the hundreds of millions living below the poverty line (whose numbers have grown since 2014, according to independent economists). They are mere fodder to serve corporate interests or dutifully cast their votes in elections which are rigged. We continue to be one of the worst performing countries in the world in the Inequality Index (rank 127 out of 193 countries, below even Bangladesh and Nepal), and the Inequality Lab has stated that inequality in India today is worse than it was during British rule. So when people like our Finance or Commerce Ministers, or Mr. Adani, or Mr. Gadkari or Mr. Subhramanyan are held up as exemplars and role models by the INDIA TODAY type of Conclaves, and when they spout their version of what is good for this country's citizens,it is time to be worried at the sickness which is coursing rapidly through the veins of our nation. One is reminded of the words of Hannah Arendt, the German-American philosopher :

The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.

These robber barons of the 21st century are merely following in the footsteps of the Indigo planters and the cotton and tobacco planters of 18th century America. They have taken their cue from a government which is equally unscrupulous and venal when it comes to dealing with labour, employees and the middle classes: MNREGA budgets are slashed, lakhs are deprived of their rations because of Aadhar glitches and mis-matches, bank accounts are frozen due to the pestilence of frequent KYCs, provisions of the Shops Act and Factories Act regulating work hours and overtime are never enforced, "outsourcing" is cheaper than hiring regular employees, there is no law yet to protect the expanding legions of gig workers. This only encourages gentlemen of the Subrahmanyan, Bhavish Agarwal (OLA), Aadit Palicha (Zepto) variety to introduce a new economic feudal culture in our work places.

I do hope that the likes of Mr. Subhramanyan are among the 4300 millionaires planning to quit India in 2024, for we can do without their culture of insensitivity, exploitation and crass profiteering in a society that is already becoming vicious and brutal under the nudging of government policies. He may have redeemed himself somewhat by implicitly exhorting his workers to stare at other people's wives instead of their own, but that is cold comfort when you suddenly realise that someone else is staring at YOUR wife. Perhaps the best denouement to his thesis, as some wag on social media suggested, is to merge Infosys and Larsen and Toubro, and to encourage their employees to marry each other: they could then live in the office itself, and occasionally bump into each other during the prescribed toilet breaks. Leaving us retired blokes to peer at the neighbour's wife through our bifocals. As for me, I've been staring at Neerja for 47 years but she doesn't bat an eyelid. My sons say that I am old fashioned: instead of staring, I should Blinkit: satisfaction guaranteed in ten minutes!