The global economic crisis has struck and sob sob, all those poor flight crew who used to earn Rs 35000 a month are out of a job. The Times Of India informs me that they can now barely earn Rs 10000 a month in any other job. How will the poor souls make ends meet? And guess who are agitating for them? The CITU no less, in Kolkata and their twin, Raj Thackeray in Mumbai. And there is no reason not to believe that Amar Singh or Jayalalithaaaaaa (Or however many a s she is using nowadays) will leap into the fray in no time.
Please forgive me if I am not too sympathetic for these kids who were being paid at a level that even a doctor or a scientist with the highest qualifications are sometimes unable to earn. I know many many students of mine who would be glad to earn Rs 10000 a month and they are qualified doctors. The total lack of any sort of relationship between the type of work that a person does and the remuneration is something that shocks me. I am not surprised that the famous financial institutions are crashing left and right. Can you imagine, they are paying a person who studied engineering and then took a two year course from an IIM, literary crores of rupees. I mean, he is brilliant no doubt, but what business strategies can he have learnt in these two years that he will be paid more than many successful businessmen earn after twenty years in the rough and tumble of business? And the HR people who are paying these salaries are just wasting the company’s money and such a company is bound to collapse in the long run.
When I read the long mast heads in the newspapers about the flight attendants who have been laid off, and mind you here were all on probation, I wonder where all this outrage is buried when people are literally starving to death all over India? I recommend that you all should read the News item published widely but not discussed in yesterday’s papers. The Global Hunger index has placed India 66th among 88 developing countries in numbers of people going to bed hungry. There is NO STATE in India that does not have severe levels of hunger. In case you are interested, West Bengal ranks below Rajastan in the scale.
Forget the sufferings of the IIM grads who will have to sell off their fourth cars, forget the plight of the poor flight attendants who will not be able to eat out next Saturday and will be unable to buy the jewelery they had their eyes on for ages. Think of the wretched of the Indian Earth. Or else they will drag you into the reality in a way that you will not like. Believe me, that is what History teaches us.
