FABULOUS CORPORATE PAY-PACKAGES ARE DEVASTATING YOUTH OF THE NATION

 

FABULOUS CORPORATE PAY-PACKAGES ARE DEVASTATING YOUTH OF THE NATION

 ( These are author’s personal views and are not supported by the editorial board ) 

By Ramakant Tiwari

During placement season of so-called prestigious educational institutions, we watch with envy and horror fantastic pay-packages offered by corporate hounds in the name of talent-hunting what may be dubbed as a very tough bio-competition to fertilize the prize ‘trophy’ among millions you know what !! This racy competition is beyond the purview of our honourable Competition Commission Of India and all sorts of ‘lure of the lucre’ are encouraged by our benign institutions to grab as many ‘TRPs’ as possible in the ‘Education-Mandi of India’. Dailies like the Economic Times publish details with chutzpah very next morning causing runaway heart-burn among less fortunate ones and joyous glee among fortunate ones. If you intend to lampoon me of suffering from ‘Sour-grapes’ syndrome, my response would be a wry grin as tables are soon going to be turned on you by the moment we conclude the discourse.

 

Credit side of the ‘Trial Balance’ of fabulous pay-package based on personal interactions, news snippets, reports, feedbacks etc. has only one head of momentary sky-high iruption of joy on the day of receipt of appointment letter. Number of heads on the Debit side of the ‘Trial Balance’ are far too many of noxious variety.  

 

These fabulous pay-packages are destroying our Youth-asset like slow poisoning with sweet and subtle doses of Arsenic. Once they join a private sector undertaking (company hereafter) at a fantastic pay-package, they are mandated to work two shifts i.e. almost 14 to 16 hrs. every day for a salary package less than for two persons clubbed together. Several perks like accommodation and health benefits etc. are likely to be non-existent or purported to be already included in the package. Major chunk of the fabulous pay-package evaporates with Income tax taking away roughly 30%, exhorbitant house rent in metros spurred by fantastic packages and other sundry expenses like travelling home to meet parents etc. So the fabulous pay-package finally boils down to a mediocre amount which one may comfortably earn in a much less strenuous occupation.

 

Right since their student years, they are entirely detached from their cultural moorings owing to too much pressure of studies, coachings, tutorials etc. to crack entrance then academic examinations for degrees to jump over to fabulous pay-package bandwagon earliest possible. They hardly have time to study scriptures, practice Yoga for personal upliftment or devote their precious time in propagation of Sanatana Dharma. These secular gems recoil even at the thought of studying scriptures while always keen to join training programs to facilitate grabbing higher pay-packages, read junk western novels, admire Shakespeare instead of Mahakavi Kalidasa and what not. Our well-paid managers have a flair of quoting Philip Kotler intead of Chanakya-Niti, Vidura-Niti or Veda-s from where western management scholars purloined their entire wisdom.

 

Obsession of fabulous pay-packages does not allow them to focus on their contribution to their corporate employer. All the time they are seized with the obsession, how to maximise it irrespective of number of job-hops and other consequences.    

 

Double shift rigorous work-schedule upto the age of 45 saps entire vitality of young lives, too exhausted and worn out due to burn outs with serious clinical aberrations. Unofficial retirement age in companies at all levels except top bosses is 40-45 these days. One may be eased out one fine morning without financial security in any form like pension etc. Job-uncertainty is so high that most of them cannot plan their future even for next month !! LTC may be there but for the purpose of encashment, not for proceeding on leave to relax and rejuvenate with family members.

 

By the time they are forced to bid adieu to employment career, there is a complete disconnect with parents, siblings and other close kins. They are unable to attend even their sick parents for the fear of job-loss due to prolonged absence from office.

 

Most of lesser known companies have their owners being rude, abusive or even exploitative towards their employees and managers who are compelled to live with that for the fear of losing job with no other alternative to fall back upon. 

 

Their contribution to society remains stand-still at zero. They are even incapable of rushing to calls of society to assist others in times of crisis. Too self-centred, too selfish, too egoistic, considerably reserved disposition of being arrogant snobs…are other proceeds of fabulous pay packages.

 

Reluctant to marry for raising families as they are squeezed of emotions and patience to marry and raise families. If married and family raised, they have no time to look after families raised by them. Growing number of youth are moving away from marriage or avoiding to procreate if married at all. Concept of parenthood is ever unknown to them then. Directly it means, society and nation drifting towards self-dissolution. These omissions have given rise to burgeoning divorces, surrogacy, live-in relationships, abortions, pre- and extra-marital promiscuity etc. etc.   

 

No one is left to attend ancestral properties or businesses developed by elders in due course of years. Probability of such assets being transferred into wrong hands runs very high while their parents had been once so proud in past when their children had cornered such devastatingly fabulous pay-packages.

 

Nobody appears to have documented progression chart of those coming out of campuses with fabulous pay-packages over years of their careers as to how many are able to maintain the pace of rise in pay-packages and how long as well as how many had to compromise at lower levels soon after much touted campus placement. As it is impossible for even a superman of management to consistently deliver fantastic performance to preserve their claim to fabulous pay-packages, most of them are ejected soon and have to settle down with jobs of not so handsome pay-packages. Thus freshers are tempted and trapped in the rigmarole of fabulous pay-packages to eternal stress, frustration and depression. Is there a way out ? Yes, there is but it demands wisdom, fortitude and perseverance to go for that.

 

Children must be advised to go for government jobs instead of a career of abject slavery in corporate sector. There jobs are relatively secured with financial assurances and they are able to honour social and family obligations.

Parents must not impose their unfulfilled dreams on their wards, must emphasize it’s quality of life that is more vital than transient gains after a rat-race.

Family business if it is there, must be preferred, expanded and raised to newer heights. One may even plan to start new business altogether if possible and be in command of ones life.

Women may prefer less stressful professions so as to be able to address other unavoidable obligations of life, family and society concurrently though is is entirely their discretion and prerogative to boot.

Corporate professionals must knit a strong and effective association (certainly not trade unions) across all sectors and industries to speak in one voice to managements in all such cases of stressful inhuman working conditions, pressurise them to provide congenial working conditions with a semblance of job-security and respectful conduct as well as not to offer fantastic salaries during campus placements. Such an association may also help those who have lost their jobs in locating next placement or may be provide minimal financial support to tide over crisis period. Such measures will certainly render professions in corporate sector more attractive and respectable.