Karoshi
“Karoshi”, the Japanese term for the phrase “overwork death”.
Ever since the septuagenarian Narayana Murthy made the “70-hours per week” comment, the employers have taken it as the guiding mantra and furthered their exploitation of employees. 70-hours per week work schedule was justified by Mr. Murthy simply because his work and vocation coincided. The statement also emerges from an era where a competitive market did not impede with the core human values of leisure and productivity. However, the scenario of today is an adverse platform for millennials and generation Alpha, specifically for the former where the generation had to and is still struggling with the transition from snail mails to super-fast media.
A ‘70-hours per week’ motto is effective, perhaps, in a flexible and well-paid jobs. Narrowing it down to a teacher’s position in India (or anywhere in the world) is indeed exploitative. As a teacher, there is a fixed number of hours for which I am stationed in an institution, and then, I am forced to carry my work home – of preparing for the next day’s classes, coming up with creative ways to keep the classes lively and finishing all the clerical works (simply because the designated clerks are incompetent, lethargic, cleverly dumb and arrogant). The saddest part is that some institutions don’t bother giving vacations to their teachers. And the worse part is being a language teacher – because all that we end up doing is “tell a story in the classroom”.
Imagine dealing with such mindsets throughout the job, and the icing on the cake to hamper the individual’s growth is a set of mindless and direction-less work agenda. Show me a teacher who does not crib about his/her work. Personally, it is only the academic spirit that I would want to inculcate and have in my classrooms makes me endure all the other unnecessary and toxic paraphernalia that comes with teaching. The same is experienced in other work sectors too, where the core labourers earn less but those who supervise them earn a fat cheque.
Just a month and a half back, there was a news of a robot committing suicide in South Korea. The perfect irony for the philosophy of enabling and sustaining the economic growth of a nation! I am surprised and awfully shocked to see the condition of workers:
1. working creatures who have not upgraded in decades; have chosen a comfort zone in the same firm; and have built their lives around it;
2. manipulative creatures who make loud noises and cleverly pass off as working bees, where in reality, they are the most schematic and lethargic creatures;
3. those hardworking creatures who do not fail to improve themselves, yet remain inadept at tackling the first two categories.
What’s the point in working 70-hours per week for less or no growth! What is my assigned political leader doing for the teaching fraternity? How can I secure a government job based on my merit and not palm-greasing?
Good to hear. The problem is no longer welfare state exists. The capitalist tendencies in India are based on the choice rathan the way it should be. Education as a business making only money without thinking of other aspects na eed to be worked on. No takers though.