Anna Sebastian Perayil’s death due to excessive workload is not an isolated incident. The phenomenon is global. In the United States, a junior banker died last May after working 110 hours a week. In India, numerous similar cases occur daily, albeit largely unreported. These victims are often low-wage laborers, both men and women, toiling 10-12 hours a day, with an additional three hours spent commuting. Their exhausting schedules leave them with no personal life, nor time for their children.
If they reside in hutments near their workplace, there is always a lurking fear of their ‘homes’ being demolished by civic authorities. Alternatively, if they commute from the city’s outskirts, they spend around 15-20% of their daily wages on transportation.
Unlike white-collar jobs, those engaged in menial work, known as blue-collar employment, do not receive any benefits after their sudden death since they work in the unorganised sector. Furthermore, newspapers rarely report on their passing, unless they are involved in a major accident at the workplace or while commuting. With wages barely enough to make ends meet, they often have no savings or bank balance.
Seventy hours argument
Perayil, a 26-year-old chartered accountant, tragically succumbed to work-related stress in Pune. Her untimely death received widespread media attention, sparking a wave of sympathy. The timing was poignant, coming on the heels of controversial remarks by corporate leaders suggesting that Indians should work 70 hours a week for the development of the country.
What these ladies and gentlemen at the top do not understand is that there is an overwhelming percentage of Indians, whose number runs into crores, who are working for more than 70 hours as they do not get weekly off. If in any given week, they really worked for less than this, it may be largely because they could not get work due to absence of demand, or because of their sickness. If they are migrant labourers and are living away from their families their condition is even more pathetic.
It has become a fashion of sorts to highlight the plight of gig-workers or cab drivers, which is no doubt very bad, but wat is not brought to notice is the wretched condition of millions of labourers engaged in construction sector, mining, cottage industries and other related back-breaking works. Similarly, employees often referred as ‘chhotus’ working in restaurants, roadside eateries, tea-stalls and salesmen employed in showrooms also toil for unending hours with minimal compensation.
Hostile work environments, premature deaths and sexual exploitation
A young student shared a poignant story with me. He and his friend visited an upscale food joint in South Delhi, where they met a young boy employed in the eatery, barely in his teens. The boy struck up a conversation, asking, “Are you students?” As they talked, he revealed, “Today is my sister’s wedding, but I won’t be attending. It’s in my hometown in Bihar, and I can’t afford to travel.” He simply wanted to share his feelings.
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Personally, I know of several instances where young souls have died prematurely due to diseases caused by extremely hostile working conditions or related reasons, including accidents. Some of them didn’t even reach the age of 25. Most were boys, but a handful were girls as well.
Twelve hours of work is leisure for them, as they often toil for far longer periods without any weekly breaks. The tragedy is that these young boys are frequently scolded, beaten, and mistreated by their employers without provocation. In this stark reality, their plight goes largely unreported, as their stories don’t make headlines.
While sexual exploitation of working girls are all pervasive, even boys are not spared from it in many instances, when they are forced to work as menial labourers.
In some circumstances, the situation of underage boys could be worse as they are even stopped from attending schools while working, whereas girls who double up as domestic helps are allowed to attend schools by their parents to access mid-day meals.
An incident involving Kailash Satyarthi
Several years before Kailash Satyarthi received Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 I got an opportunity to be present in an All India Radio station which was about to record his interview on child labour. Before the interview process was about to start, a boy, maybe about ten-year old, started serving tea to all of us.
Noticing him, Kailash Satyarthi blurted out as to what is happening at the time when he was about to give interview on the violation of child labour law. The embarrassed host of that AIR station cut in to say apologetically, that he (the child serving tea) is actually the son of the tea-stall owner outside the radio station and not his employee — a difficult task to confirm this fact at that point of time. Yet Satyarthi said that his father should be told not to engage his under-age son in this work.
Those who are championing the cause of 70 hours a week do not know how impractical and absurd their argument is. Perhaps, they are saying so keeping in mind those working in private offices and ‘babus’ in government jobs. They have tunnel vision of development motivated by capitalistic design.
What they perhaps do not know, or wish to know, is that no country can boast of being developed where such a huge population is grossly underpaid though they work for more than 70 hours a week. The tragedy is that their contributions to the country’s economy are not recognised or appreciated.
Soroor Ahmed is a Patna-based freelance journalist.
