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The Indian Work Culture is All Play, No Work. Is it surprising why Indians don't take vacations?
A survey report titled “Indians choose money over holidays” in The Times of India reported that a whopping 85% of Indians were pleased with their jobs even though their jobs allowed them no time for leisure or holidays. The survey omitted to state that work, for a majority of Indians, is one big holiday! So who takes holidays or breaks in a holiday? Well, when one is enjoying leisure and that too paid for, why take a vacation & lighten the pocket(s) ?
In any workplace in our nation, employees are on extended breaks: tea, lunch, nap to name a few. If indeed Indians worked without breaks, all work would have got done many times over! Reality check: anybody and everybody will tell you how many times they have had to go for every single task like Aadhar card, passport, bank account details, insurance policy etc. Mind you, this is not just the public sector. The private sector’s forays into insurance and banking have made us realise that the private sector is one up or maybe many steps above the public sector in terms of discourtesy, customer dissatisfaction, complaints and many other things!
In offices around our country, employees opt for power naps to get set for overtime. Why overtime? Because salary is paid for office attendance and therefore to get work done, overtime needs to be paid! Why should any employee enjoy vacation when he can earn double or triple the salary by doing overtime? Indians are willing to exchange paid leave for money! That is the reason for a corrupt India. Not only are we corrupt in terms of money,we are corrupt all over – our mind set, which makes it all the more difficult, (nah, impossible!) to imbibe or even appreciate any new ideas.
Moreover, how can we Indians take vacations from work when we are enjoying the work, no, the office ambience? The workplace has so much to offer…free electricity which runs the air conditioners, the fans, the lights, the laptops, computers et al. In some offices ,some sites are blocked. Hence, employees seek such workplaces which allow free, unlimited access to all sites on the net! At our homes,we choose to install the most efficient power saving devices but in office, since we are simply enjoying them, we care a damn! So we misuse it to the maximum. Not only will the air conditioner be on, the fans will be on full speed too, to keep our heads cool.
Employees clock undertime by using office phones for long chats regarding everything but work! The net is used to chat up friends, relatives and rarely, for mundane office work. Some people type question paper sets for testing their kids. Some women are busy knitting sweaters in winter to keeps fingers nimble. Then, they get so nimble that they refuse to do work in office. Still others are exchanging recipes, tips and so many other things. Please do not be under the impression that this is indulged in by the ladies only. The amount of undertiming by men will lead to interesting revelations about cooking, knitting and other skills of Indian men! Whoever said that Indian men do not like housework….they love it. Men will undertime by arguing, discussing housework so that the undone work has to be done by getting paid for overtime! So undertime and overtime are complimentary and supplement incomes!
The survey also revealed that Indians refuse to take vacations as they want to be part of every major decision taken in their workplaces. Now ,that is so that decisions can be attacked, argued against et al so that it gets nullified ultimately and that too immediately! If they went on leave, how would they ever know which decisions to protest against? Indians are extremely argumentative and hence, there is no need to do any work as decisions (if any) have been discarded.
We take vacations provided it is funded by Leave Travel Concession (LTC), and how! Senior executives were recently caught in an LTC scam which came to light as someone had the ingenuity to travel Delhi to Jaipur via Sao Paulo (in Brazil). As the scam unfolded, it was clear that MPs were involved as well! Just goes to show that we are a dissatisfied lot, as we want to claim LTC for a world tour – nothing less. Next time on ,we will demand LTC on our Mars mission & other intra planetary travels.
It has often been said that in the IT industry and call centers, all are extremely busy working through nights and so on. If this is so ,why are so many employees on the bench? Or maybe, they are a nocturnal species who work only at nights!
When employment is all play, who needs vacations in India? After all, this happens only in India!
I am a law graduate from Government Law College,Mumbai.I am a Fellow in General Insurance ( technical qualification for insurance ) .I am a homemaker at present, having worked for nearly 16 years in General read more...
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