Dignity of Labor — how far can you take it?
We are taught right from the childhood that we should work. Period. It doesn’t matter whether the job is big or small. In the context of Indian setup, the truth is different at ground level still.
I have seen people refuse work upfront and would rather do “more respectful”, “dignified”, “classy” and “stature” jobs.
Not Degrees, but You Decide
Once you have earned a degree, it is unlikely that you will work in a sweet shop or pack boxes during festivals. You would rather work in a company that produces sweets and supplies them at a large scale — after all it is important to study the manufacturing process and not experience it first hand on the shop floor itself, right? Even if the salary and the job security (a pipe dream) is comparably the same. Strange.
Legacy lurks
Traditionally, in families where business have been passed on from generations, it is understood that progeny will take forward the grand legacy into bright posterity. That the children will ensure that the family heirloom multiplies manifolds. Can you really ask the children of the business owners to mop the shop floors and then then the same one demand dignity of labor from our people that work night and day?
Agreed, examples are conservatively sprinkled in the Indian corporate world where parents (as owners) have encouraged, even asked their children to start at the shop floor before taking on the reigns of the mammoth empire. They are outliers are best.
The case in point is: will privileged siblings from family-owned businesses ferry cartons from point to point in a battered, obsolete truck and slowly rise through the ranks like most do?
But I paid a handsome fortune
Do you know one person in your social chain that would try to recover every penny ever invested in her/his education, lodging, traveling and even laundry? Asking a trained doctor to instead do home deliveries of medicines in the absence of employment. Would a doctor rather not sit home? I think a doctor would, even though she/he should not! The returns are not big and fast enough.
Family pressures and social setups
‘Mera beta nahin karega yeh sab!’ (Translates to “my child will not take this paltry job”).
Parents superimpose their aspirations and values systems. The former is fine to the point where the child is not pressurized beyond a “”reasonable” point but what about the value systems? Should that not be applied in conjunction with the aspirations? How about a reality check such as the 2008 recession and the one in 2023 that has just begun? The point is recession is a reality check. You pick what you get. Then why exercises choices when economy is upbeat? This is because we exercise choices when we are not worried about survival. So, it appears that values systems can put to convenient adjustments.
Is it really a survival issue?
Let us face it. People will not readily work if they had a chance to sit at home and watch movies.
People don’t budge unless the issue is of survival so where is the question of dignity of labor?
