Hamster On A Wheel

Toastmasters International is a not-for-profit educational organisation that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of clubs. My daughter Ankita, in Frankfurt, is an active participant. This helps her improve public speaking in German. I quote the English transcript of excerpts from one of her speeches:

“Abschalten is one of my favourite words in German. I’ve always felt that it is the best quality of Germans – being able to switch off from demands of daily life. In India, we emphasize a lot on hard work. ‘Taking a break’ means you are weak or perhaps lazy. In school, I studied like crazy to get good grades. Studied hard and did internships to get a ‘well-paying’ job. And in my ‘well-paying’ job, I worked 14 to 15 hours a day. My boss told me, ‘Why do you need a vacation when we pay you so well?’ However, when I came to Germany, switching off became a part of my life. But then came Corona and changed the meaning of ‘switch off’. The last two years have been particularly difficult for me. I already had a stressful job in the financial industry, it got worse when the lines between home office, zoom calls and personal life disappeared. But I kept going, like a hamster in a wheel. I thought I was a doctor and people were going to die of COVID if I didn’t work hard enough. Others at work gave me more and more work. ‘Oh wow, you work so hard, you’re our superstar!’, they’d say. I couldn’t say no. My mind and body finally gave in, I had panic attacks. I attended a few therapy sessions, and finally, in December 2021, I quit my job. I was so sick that I needed medication and my body and mind needed time to reboot. If I have learned anything from this pandemic, it is to take care of myself.”

I know a bright young boy who joined a multinational company after his Masters from a top Business school. His immediate boss kept him under constant pressure and was rough in his dealings. As the nice boy that he is, he tried to cope with the hostile boss and an unfriendly work environment, but it started to tell on his health. But, his boss was very insensitive, one day he told him, “I understand, you are soft on your subordinates. Every day I am shouting at you, at least on five occasions using vulgar words, you should shout at your juniors ten times a day using filthier words. Remember, you are in sales and marketing, you will never achieve the targets unless you keep them on tenterhooks all the time. And don’t tell, you are working eighteen hours a day; I don’t care even if you work for twenty hours a day. I just want the targets achieved.” In two years, he was selected as a manager in a big private company; he was excited to join. There, he impressed his boss with his ‘hard work’, little realizing that the reward for hard work is more work and even more work. He soon got exhausted and joined another position in a corporate sector, but sadly realised that the ground rules remained the same. Finally, he joined a ‘lesser job’ for ‘lesser pay’, and now he is happy. For him, it is a break and he plans to get enrolled in a PhD programme in Management and make a career in teaching.

One evening when I was in Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, I watched children from a remote village present a drama on participatory wildlife conservation. Two young girls from Mumbai, who were staying in that village for the past few months, had written and directed the impressive skit. While interacting with these bubbly girls I realised, that both were alumni of the Indian Institute of Management and were working for a hefty pay package in one of the “big five” international consulting companies. They had taken a break of two years, joined a non-government organisation and were living in that remote village.

Prof Weetman Gordon, during our Mid-Career Training programme in 2010 at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada made a very interesting observation; “You are all so intelligent and matured foresters, I wonder why they call this a ‘training’ programme? In a training programme, the boundaries are set by predetermined do’s and don’ts and it tutors the participants on how to remain inside that box. Normally, animals like dogs, horses, and lions in a circus are trained to respond in a particular manner to a particular stimulus. Human beings are not supposed to be trained they are to be educated unless they are required strictly to follow prescribed protocols without application of mind.” Having spent 5 years as a faculty member in Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy, Dehradun, and 3 years as Principal, Forest Rangers’ College, Angul, his comment made me introspect. Are we educating the new entrants to forest services or are we training them? Generally, “hard-working” persons do well at the academies and also in the field. And I believe that thinking out of the box has no correlation with academic excellence, neither positive nor negative. Therefore, I feel the academies should focus more on developing skills required for unstructured decision-making, laid down procedures would anyway take care of the other part.

Resources, as assets to accomplish organisational goals, are generally, categorised as Services, Equipment, Materials, Money, Space, Time and People. But is it appropriate to consider people as resources? The concept of the resource itself implies the absence of personal characteristics. Human behaviour is what distinguishes us from inanimate objects. Calling human beings resources at work makes them equal in all respect and erases their distinguishing features, both personal and professional. Unfortunately, present generation youth are being treated and exploited as objects everywhere, be it, the public sector or private sector, corporates, consulting firms, media houses and even governments.