Sometime ago, as happens every so often these days, a comment went “viral”. It was a remark thatThis was widely reported in the media and soon led to a tsunami of reactions. there was anger at the CEO’s demand that employees who earn a tiny fraction of what the CEO himself earns should be expected to work even on official holidays, and the issue of workplace stress in India, which had been in discussion after the death of a 26 year old employee of accounting firm Ernst & Young due to alleged overwork, came back into focus.
The reason bosses like to drive employees to work without holidays and rest is known to everyone. It is because it enables them and their companies to make even more money. As if the sole measure of success in today’s corporate world is money. If the company shows ever greater revenues and profits, the CEO is considered great, shareholders profit financially, and some of the wealth is shared with the top honchos. These are the people who in any case earn salaries in the range of crores of rupees per annum. For example, the CEO who wants his employees to work without holidays, earned a salary of Rs 51 crore in financial year 2023-24, which is more than Rs 4 crore a month.
Most of his employees would probably never see even the equivalent of his one month’s salary in their lifetimes.
While money undoubtedly has its uses in a human life, the placing of money at the centre of human existence is a move of questionable wisdom because of the obvious impact that the stress of trying to earn ever greater quantities of it by working without rest has on health and family life.
It is also a mode of living that is completely antithetical to the genuinely religious or spiritual life.
Religions without exception place God, by whatever name, at the centre of human existence. Money is presumably not that God.
Spiritual existence, which may be distinct from organised religions, is more about an inward journey of seeking. The journey of the seeker, in cultures and faiths across the world and over time, is usually depicted as a solitary and meditative one that leads away from the temptations of money, power and lust.
A person who is chasing after money or power dressed in religious garb is often a fraud.
Money has little attraction for a truly spiritual person. This was exemplified in the life of Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa, who was famously allergic to money.
That level of detachment is hard or impossible for ordinary people, especially householders who have duties and responsibilities. However, even for the ordinary person working a corporate job, the sole focus of one’s life need not be money – which is the bottom-line that “career success” in the corporate world translates to. Good health, happy relationships, free time to travel, read, and relax with friends and family are all quite valuable in themselves.
Everyone knows this, but still people sell themselves into wage slavery under bosses who demand they work without holidays or rest. Why do they do it? Well, because they have no other measure of success in life except promotions and raises.
The CEOs and business leaders typically suggest that those who work longer hours will “do better” in their careers. Doing better means promotions and salary hikes.
Promotions without raises would not be so attractive. Therefore, in essence the carrot that is dangled to make people work 70 or 90 hour weeks is money.
The equation boils down to “time is money”.
Accept that it is not.
No one, not even the CEO, can buy back even one second of the minute that just went by with all his lifetime’s earnings. We may sell our time of life for money, but we cannot buy it back. Once gone, that time is gone forever.
Understanding the importance of time is at the heart of understanding human lives and societies.
Back in the old days, before the invention of the mechanical clock, most ordinary people had no notion of time except in terms of days and nights, and seasons. Devices such as sundials, hourglasses and water clocks existed, but their use was limited. The experience of time they provided, even to those who bothered with them, was inevitably local because there was no concept of a standardised national time, or time zones. Moreover, the smaller units of time, such as the minute and the second, were yet to be invented.
The mechanical clock, which began to emerge into public spaces in Europe in the form of clock towers about a thousand years ago, has changed the world.
Slower, older ways of being have been destroyed as ever-smaller units of time came to be monetised. Now we are in the age of the attention economy where every moment there is an alert on our smartphones trying to entice us to see a post or video, or buy a product, because someone somewhere will make some money by stealing our time.
The wonders of modern technology and the many conveniences it has brought were supposed to leave us with more free time. The car made travel faster than the bullock cart, cooking gas made cooking faster than using firewood, electric lighting extended the day and rolled back the night, the phone and computer brought the world to our fingertips, and in all of that, somehow, we got ever busier until now even retired people find themselves with no free time.
Work chases us now on our phones and computers, outside of any concept of working hours. CEOs demand an end to holidays and expect permanent availability to respond to messages and mails at any time of day or night. People burn out and even die of stress, but it makes no difference.
Or sense.
What are the CEOs thinking?
Every day we get news about the leaps and bounds by which Artificial Intelligence is growing in its capabilities. It is irrational to believe that this will not take away jobs. The earlier industrial revolutions replaced physical labour. The AI revolution is going to transform the world of mental labour. There are essentially only two kinds of work in the human world, physical and mental. A combination of AI and robotics along with the powers of quantum computing would be able to do nearly all the work that is now done by humans in the not-too-distant future. It is only a matter of time – and we are talking a decade or two, or maybe less.
The problem in such a “hyper automated” world is that there not be too many jobs left for people. The economy will crumble in such a scenario because there will be too few people left with the money to buy goods and services.
AIs and robots can work 24x7, but they don’t need to buy anything from the market.
Businesses thrive when markets are vibrant. To be vibrant, markets need shoppers. An abundance of supply and too little demand is a terrible situation for any business. It means either that prices will collapse or that they will have to cut production.
Instead of trying to force people to work 70 or 90 hours a week, any CEO with a vision for the future should be worrying about how to sustain demand in an AI-driven world.
Samrat Choudhury is the author of Northeast India: A Political History and The Braided River: A Journey Along the Brahmaputra
Samrat Choudhury is the author of Northeast India: A Political History and The Braided River: A Journey Along the Brahmaputra
