The cut & slice mania
The last I heard on this great global recession monster that stares India was that it is yet to fully affect our nation. But going by the downsizing and cost cutting (mainly through slicing of employee salaries) that Indian companies are engaged in, it seems many employers are taking advantage of the situation to compensate for their boom time frills they so heavily engaged in.
That seems to be the reason why India, whose growth may have slowed down a bit but nothing as killing as the working fields of the US has happened here yet, has become a hunting ground for doing hatchet jobs on hapless employees. The allegation here is that, and it seems true, most companies are indulging in pay cuts, rollbacks and increment denials to take advantage of the brouhaha over the global recession fallout.
So we have employees trying to adjust to 15 to 20 per cent salary cuts across the board, rollback of last year’s increments and denials of incentives.
Experts though will tell you these cuts are totally unnecessary as India’s robust domestic economy has to a large extent blunted the effects of the global depression. These experts point out that many of the companies indulging in such drastic measures are actually trying to protect their effusive profit margins which they are not ready to see a cut in. In most cases, these annual profit margins and projected business growth rates are in the range of 300 to 400 per cent, a figure which could be downsized without really harming the prospects of these companies. But an inward look is the last thing any employer wants to do. A reduction in their projection levels even by some decimals would save so many salary cuts but no one is in a philanthropic mood, especially when this has become an opportunity to downsize and cut costs without the fear of any employee exodus.
On their part, even the salaried class has tried to adjust to the inevitable, downsizing their personal budgets, shrinking their vehicle sizes, and even budgeting or totally giving up their exotic holiday plans. But many know, and have been avidly discussing in drawing room gatherings, how India is not facing a recession — only a slowdown which does not warrant such drastic cuts.
Which brings us back to the employers who have been making a killing doing what they could have avoided for now. The HR departments have discovered that the job that was being done by, say, 10 employees can actually be accomplished by just five. This means, a huge lay-off from which many in the ruthless mode have not shrunk away from. There have been so many cases of companies luring staff from secure though low-paid jobs to fancy designations and fancier salaries only to put them into the jobless and un-hirable category without even a decent notice.
Needless to say, this is criminal but no law of the land is there to protect you against it. So, we have a bigger, more experienced floating population asking for jobs and getting none. There are cases where an employee has not only faced a 20 per cent salary cut but also a rollback of his increment of last year as also the loss of the annual performance-linked incentives promised by companies to jack up salary figures in offer letters. A three-way bamboozle which he has no devices to stave off, let alone fight against.
Talk to employers and they do not really defend their actions where downsizing salary packages is concerned. What they are telling you to do is to look at the positive side of things even as they look after their unhinged profitability. So, you are told to literally stand in the corner and follow instructions, worse still leave.
The good part of this mayhem, one is told, is heightened work efficiency. Making use of the tremors emanating from the US, Indian employers have learnt to their mirth that they can now launch the very un-Indian performance based pay packets. The stress on efficiency has all the potential to become akin to what Greg Chappell induced in the Indian team. Fear will get heightened, intrigues will increase, employee health will suffer and the rush to outdo all will become the bad fallout of competition. An increased stress level never helped anyone. All it does is to act like a steroid with massive side-effects — efficiency and output will definitely increase but only for sometime before the hazards of drastic HR emails and threat letters start showing up.
Though Indian companies may see this recession as the platinum opportunity to introduce to a work-ethics bumbling India to the Japanese way of work efficiency. For, fact is that our country and its psyche, even in the world of private jobs, is light years away from a transition to such utmost correctness.
But then, going by the way 2010 is being envisaged, indications are that salary rise will be modest and jobs will switch from the supply to the demand mode and hiring companies would be in the driving seat, looking as they will be at sniping futuristics, promising nothing and turning into Spartans, sniping HR budgets with an iron hand.
In short, all this would have been more palatable if the intention had been honest and not a camouflaged personal interest. Just to quote the most recent spend that our nation would be incurring: The General Election cost, according to a CMS survey, would be nothing less than Rs 10,000 crore or $2 billion! Does that sound recessive? Certainly not!
Poll histrionics
As it is turning out, the General Election 2009 is resembling more and more of those films who come on a pre-release publicity high, cash in during the opening week and then fizzle out for sheer lack of content. The pre-release high in the case of India’s biggest political activity, started off with the Chief Election Commissioner seeking his deputy’s sack for being biased towards the UPA; then came the Varun Gandhi utterings and the resultant UPA overdrive to kill any mileage he may have worked out by deciding to withdraw his bail application and surrendering in a Pilibhit court. In what looks like an errata on the part of the Government, he was booked under the National Security Act, making it look like the farce the entire episode is on both sides of the spectrum.
Then came Sanjay “Munnabhai” Dutt and the Supreme Court’s correct decision to disallow him a candidature for Parliament. Whatever may be the present status of crime in politics, fact is that starry inductions into politics have rarely served any public purpose. Dharmendra is known to have never returned to Bikaner with any concrete developmental measures after being elected from there; one does not know where the small screen “Sita” Deepika Chikalia has gone; and Smriti “Tulsi” Irani has not been anywhere in the forefront of active politics, not to talk of the Jayapradas and the rest of them all.
Suffice it to say, stars should be no more than campaigners, adding to the colour of an election drive. In Parliament, they serve little purpose. Of course, exceptions are always there, like Sunil Dutt whose impeccable track record of public service through Parliament has been a shining example of commitment.
In this context, and least I would love Sanjay Dutt to get back to the Munna Bhai series and serve the bigger purpose of making a harried society laugh rather than to meander through the corridors of power for self gratification.
That seems to be the reason why India, whose growth may have slowed down a bit but nothing as killing as the working fields of the US has happened here yet, has become a hunting ground for doing hatchet jobs on hapless employees. The allegation here is that, and it seems true, most companies are indulging in pay cuts, rollbacks and increment denials to take advantage of the brouhaha over the global recession fallout.
So we have employees trying to adjust to 15 to 20 per cent salary cuts across the board, rollback of last year’s increments and denials of incentives.
Experts though will tell you these cuts are totally unnecessary as India’s robust domestic economy has to a large extent blunted the effects of the global depression. These experts point out that many of the companies indulging in such drastic measures are actually trying to protect their effusive profit margins which they are not ready to see a cut in. In most cases, these annual profit margins and projected business growth rates are in the range of 300 to 400 per cent, a figure which could be downsized without really harming the prospects of these companies. But an inward look is the last thing any employer wants to do. A reduction in their projection levels even by some decimals would save so many salary cuts but no one is in a philanthropic mood, especially when this has become an opportunity to downsize and cut costs without the fear of any employee exodus.
On their part, even the salaried class has tried to adjust to the inevitable, downsizing their personal budgets, shrinking their vehicle sizes, and even budgeting or totally giving up their exotic holiday plans. But many know, and have been avidly discussing in drawing room gatherings, how India is not facing a recession — only a slowdown which does not warrant such drastic cuts.
Which brings us back to the employers who have been making a killing doing what they could have avoided for now. The HR departments have discovered that the job that was being done by, say, 10 employees can actually be accomplished by just five. This means, a huge lay-off from which many in the ruthless mode have not shrunk away from. There have been so many cases of companies luring staff from secure though low-paid jobs to fancy designations and fancier salaries only to put them into the jobless and un-hirable category without even a decent notice.
Needless to say, this is criminal but no law of the land is there to protect you against it. So, we have a bigger, more experienced floating population asking for jobs and getting none. There are cases where an employee has not only faced a 20 per cent salary cut but also a rollback of his increment of last year as also the loss of the annual performance-linked incentives promised by companies to jack up salary figures in offer letters. A three-way bamboozle which he has no devices to stave off, let alone fight against.
Talk to employers and they do not really defend their actions where downsizing salary packages is concerned. What they are telling you to do is to look at the positive side of things even as they look after their unhinged profitability. So, you are told to literally stand in the corner and follow instructions, worse still leave.
The good part of this mayhem, one is told, is heightened work efficiency. Making use of the tremors emanating from the US, Indian employers have learnt to their mirth that they can now launch the very un-Indian performance based pay packets. The stress on efficiency has all the potential to become akin to what Greg Chappell induced in the Indian team. Fear will get heightened, intrigues will increase, employee health will suffer and the rush to outdo all will become the bad fallout of competition. An increased stress level never helped anyone. All it does is to act like a steroid with massive side-effects — efficiency and output will definitely increase but only for sometime before the hazards of drastic HR emails and threat letters start showing up.
Though Indian companies may see this recession as the platinum opportunity to introduce to a work-ethics bumbling India to the Japanese way of work efficiency. For, fact is that our country and its psyche, even in the world of private jobs, is light years away from a transition to such utmost correctness.
But then, going by the way 2010 is being envisaged, indications are that salary rise will be modest and jobs will switch from the supply to the demand mode and hiring companies would be in the driving seat, looking as they will be at sniping futuristics, promising nothing and turning into Spartans, sniping HR budgets with an iron hand.
In short, all this would have been more palatable if the intention had been honest and not a camouflaged personal interest. Just to quote the most recent spend that our nation would be incurring: The General Election cost, according to a CMS survey, would be nothing less than Rs 10,000 crore or $2 billion! Does that sound recessive? Certainly not!
Poll histrionics
As it is turning out, the General Election 2009 is resembling more and more of those films who come on a pre-release publicity high, cash in during the opening week and then fizzle out for sheer lack of content. The pre-release high in the case of India’s biggest political activity, started off with the Chief Election Commissioner seeking his deputy’s sack for being biased towards the UPA; then came the Varun Gandhi utterings and the resultant UPA overdrive to kill any mileage he may have worked out by deciding to withdraw his bail application and surrendering in a Pilibhit court. In what looks like an errata on the part of the Government, he was booked under the National Security Act, making it look like the farce the entire episode is on both sides of the spectrum.
Then came Sanjay “Munnabhai” Dutt and the Supreme Court’s correct decision to disallow him a candidature for Parliament. Whatever may be the present status of crime in politics, fact is that starry inductions into politics have rarely served any public purpose. Dharmendra is known to have never returned to Bikaner with any concrete developmental measures after being elected from there; one does not know where the small screen “Sita” Deepika Chikalia has gone; and Smriti “Tulsi” Irani has not been anywhere in the forefront of active politics, not to talk of the Jayapradas and the rest of them all.
Suffice it to say, stars should be no more than campaigners, adding to the colour of an election drive. In Parliament, they serve little purpose. Of course, exceptions are always there, like Sunil Dutt whose impeccable track record of public service through Parliament has been a shining example of commitment.
In this context, and least I would love Sanjay Dutt to get back to the Munna Bhai series and serve the bigger purpose of making a harried society laugh rather than to meander through the corridors of power for self gratification.
Published on April 5, 2009 in Sunday Pioneer; http://www.dailypioneer.com/167291/The-cut--slice-mania.html
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