FM Sitharaman’s Call For Stress Management Should Not Overshadow The Urgent Need For Strict Labor/Employee Laws To Safeguard Citizens?

Earlier this month, the unexpected death of a young CA at SR Batliboi & Co., a member firm of EY Global, has drawn attention to the audit profession’s ongoing severe workload pressure as firms deal with clients imposing strict deadlines, an increase in audit complexity, a surge in disclosures, increased regulatory scrutiny, and an unfavourable risk-reward ratio. In the midst of this debate, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has called on colleges and institutions to teach stress management training to assist students in developing their inner strength. Of course, this attracted sharp criticism from the Opposition, and many individuals pointed out that the minister’s remark was something sort of ‘Victim Blaming’. 

There is no doubt that there is a major problem in India’s working culture. In every department, to every industry, to every sector, enough complaints have been made where people have alleged that they are finding it difficult to work with toxic bosses and tortured work culture; and in the midst of all these, the Union Minister saying that the employees should have ‘inner strength’ to work displays enough an attitude of ‘victim blaming’ rather than doing an investigation in company’s toxic work culture and make efforts to improve the situation.

The toxic work culture- In startups.

The toxic work culture in the legendary pioneering edtech startup Byju is not hidden from anyone. On the one hand, the founders of the company cannot justify where they have positioned millions of their funds, signalling corporate misgovernance, and on the other hand, months have passed; still, the employees are not getting their salaries.

The situation has reached such a level that the ex-employees of Byju, who are now out in search of jobs in other companies, are not getting hired as the new companies fear that since they were a part of Byju, hence they would continue the malpractices in their organisation as well. The unrealistic targets given to employees in Byju are no longer hidden from anyone. So, there is a need for realistic working conditions rather than stress management lessons.

The other name comes from the biggest EV startup in the nation, which has recently gone head over heels with its Ola Electric IPO. The toxic work culture in Ola has reached that level that, apart from mental torture, the employees are subjected to physical pain as well.

In October 2022, it was reported that the CEO had asked an employee to run three laps around the several-acre-large Ola Futurefactory, all because a shuttered entryway was kept open! Can you imagine? It seems like the strict PT Sir from school, who will go the extra mile to punish a student who forgot one step while doing PT in the annual function. This raises the question of working Indians being treated as slaves and donkeys who would work day and night, and the master could use the hunter if they were not satisfied by the output.

The toxic work culture- In MNCs in India.

The departed CA Anna is not the only one who suffered such a harsh work culture. Days after this incident happened, another individual, Aakash Venkatasubramanian, acknowledged similar voices of unacceptable work culture. This Bengaluru techie, in a LinkedIn post, shared that his wife left EY due to the demanding 18-hour workdays that have become normalised in many multinational corporations in India. Venkatasubramanian criticised both the corporate culture and the Indian government’s lack of intervention, calling for reforms to protect workers.

Another individual, being a medical professional, has echoed similar concerns by saying that employers need to be mindful of their employees. Rajiv Mehta, a psychiatrist at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, while speaking to said, “All the stress that is occurring due to professional reasons or work reasons that is called work stress… the symptoms are decreased interest, sadness, irritability, decreased focus, forgetfulness, helplessness, hopelessness, death wishes, suicidal attempt; sometimes there are anxiety symptoms also associated with it”. Calling for a change in employer attitudes, Dr Mehta stressed the need for a more humane approach to work and said, “Employers must understand that workers are human beings, not machines. It’s essential to be assertive about these demands.”

An article titled ‘Long hours, no overtime pay: Are India’s archaic labour laws enabling worker exploitation?’ published at the start of this month, mentions how, despite working on the same projects, Filipino employees receive overtime pay, “while India-based employees do not receive any extra compensation, regardless of the number of hours worked“.

If the Union Minister is asking the employees to work on managing stress, then the government need to rethink the laws made for employees and pay extra for the work that they have done over time! Will the government do that- NO, and if Yes also, then there comes the draconian tax structure of India, which churns each and every drop of Indian taxpayers and is used not to develop the nation but to fund the freebies for political gains. Because if development is proper, without corruption, then we may not see potholes in roads and collapses in airports. 

The toxic work culture- In companies in India.

Leave the Multinational Corporations; even the Indian companies are not way behind in exploiting their own citizens. The recent debate of 70 hours work week (or 14 hours work per day, With 5-day work in a week) has sparked emotions nationwide about how an individual who has a personal life has to take care of family, marriage, child, elders, with travelling at least 1.5 hours daily in Bengaluru traffic can work 14 hours per day? Isn’t it ridiculous and inhuman as well? 

In July 2024, it was reported that A Proposal was mooted to extend working hours of IT employees to more than 12 hours a day in Karnataka. When asked about the same, Karnataka labour minister, Santosh Lad, says that the bill is not a government proposal, rather ‘Industrialists are pressuring them to pass 14-hour work day Bill’. Hence, it gets proved that how corporate powers shape the laws of the nation! Well this is not a new thing. 

The toxic work culture- In the private sector in India.

Recall the famous viral video of HDFC bank employees, where the boss can be seen bashing the junior employees for not completing their targets in such abusive language. In such a case of inhuman behaviour, stress management is not the need of the employees, but a strict law by the governance that will punish unacceptable behaviour in the workplace. Just recently, another young lady, Sadaf Fatima, an additional deputy vice-president at HDFC Bank’s Vibuti Khand branch in Lucknow, collapsed at her workplace, leading to her untimely death. So we need laws, not lessons.

The toxic work culture- In services in India.

Recently, the Kerala Administrative Tribunal (KAT) has held that the government cannot raise the argument of the scarcity of doctors to compel medical officers of ESI Hospital, Ernakulam, to work for long hours. They further submitted that the Human Rights Commission, on a complaint of the Association of Kerala Government Medical Officers, had directed the government to schedule the duties of the medical officer under the Health Service Department in such a manner so that they would not have to work for more than 12 hours within 24 hours.

So in the scarcity of medical professionals, if the government is pressurising the existing staff to work for insane hours, and if this Act destroys their mental health and they collapse (as in the case of Anna) or they commit suicide, battling with depression, they do not require stress management lessons, rather they need strong employee laws that restrict the usage of employees as machines. 

In airlines, a pilot group had written to DGCA saying that airlines indulge in malpractice while preparing their duty schedules, leading to mental stress and cumulative fatigue for a large portion of the crew. “Operators may publish rosters, but in practice, these are only nominal. Crew members are pushed to review their rosters every evening, even during their rest periods or days off, and are mandated to accept daily changes or risk facing disciplinary measures,” Federation of Indian Pilots, which counts over 5,000 pilots as its members said, asking DGCA to do a quarterly audit of rosters.

If this is the situation, there is no need for stress management lessons; rather, the pilots need proper governance so that they are not made to work on hectic schedules, which can not only lead to the deterioration of their own mental health but also pose a risk to the safety of the aviation industry as a whole.

Last but not least, The toxic work culture- In the public sector in India.

Take the recent case of SEBI, where the Grade A officers alleged their chief about the toxic work culture inside the organisation. The case of SEBI is not the only one in the public sector.

Last year in April, it was reported that the police force in India’s financial capital is crumbling under the burden of long working hours and a hazardous lifestyle. It was reported that in the span of 42 days, five cops in Mumbai died of medical issues. From dealing with citizens’ grievances to providing security for VVIPs and events that keep on happening, the men and women in khaki are under constant pressure. Many a time, they have to skip meals and stay up for hours. 

According to Deepesh More, a crime reporter with the Maharashtra Times, Mumbai police recorded 821 deaths of its personnel between January 2018 and April 2023. This translates into one death every 57 hours. While a few senior police officials termed More’s report “sensational” and a wrong interpretation of the rate of prevalence, it nevertheless serves as a grim reminder of the severe risks posed by workload and stress. 

In yet another public sector, the Indian Railways, which is the biggest employer in India, witnessed the distressing call from their own loco pilots. In a letter to the railway board, women loco pilots said poor working conditions had harmed their health, causing UTIs and even miscarriages. A letter of appeal that women loco pilots wrote in April this year to the railway board noted that the lack of washroom facilities “leads to distraction of concentration on duty which can affect the safety of train working”.

In such cases of women loco pilots working for more than 12 hours with a lack of sanitary places, the employees do not need stress management lessons; rather, they need proper employee laws by the government that ensure the safety of the employees.

In another case revolving around the Indian Railways, it was reported that in August, a study by the RDSO (Research Design and Standards Organisation), which functions under the Railway Ministry, found that train controllers face multiple challenges at work, including “unattractive” pay scale, huge stress due to vacancy leading to health problems, and a lack of basic amenities. As per the roaster, Section Controller requires 30 hrs of weekly rest.

But in the absence of an adequate number of staff, sometimes the administration faces problems in arranging weekly rest or leave to Section Controllers. In a continuous work schedule, they feel burned out, and their productivity gets affected,” the report adds. In such a case, the employees need proper rest to rejuvenate and be productive in their jobs, and not stress management lessons.

One more case from the Indian Railways shows how employees are pressured to work overtime, and the government only wakes up about their pathetic situation when any disaster occurs. In June of this year, a day after the fatal train accident involving Kanchanjunga Express and a cargo train in West Bengal, Indian Railways announced over 13,000 new vacancies for assistant loco pilots (train drivers), which is three times more than planned as part of efforts to ensure safety.

Earlier, the Opposition alleged that 21% of posts of loco pilots and 8% of assistant loco pilots were vacant. Meanwhile, loco pilot organisations have been demanding a reduction in the long working hours of drivers. So, in such cases of government failure to hire the personnel, the existing employees do not need stress management lessons; rather, they need to be heard before it’s too late and another collision happens.

Coming back to EY, that ended the life of a young Indian on the pretext of ‘having an opportunity of working with the Big4 firm’.

Recently, it was found that an Ernst & Young (EY) office in western India, where Anna was employed, has operated since 2007 without a state permit which regulates work hours. Maharashtra’s additional labour commissioner, Shailendra Pol, whose team inspected the EY office in the western city of Pune, said it was operating without a mandatory registration under the state’s Shops and Establishments Act. The law caps the maximum working hours for adults at nine hours each day and 48 hours each week. This proves what Anna’s mother wrote in the letter after her death about Anna’s exhaustive working conditions was true.

So, the young lady died not because she was not able to manage stress but because she was compelled to work in inhuman conditions, which probably led to her demise!

Well what happens in EY is being already, very earlier described by the most controversial shark in an interview…..

Even the people from corporates themselves are demanding the framing of policies that safe the employees from being pushed into drastic working conditions. Corporate Outbound Expert Tanmay Pendse appealed to the government to frame “specific policies” that will help in tackling such situations.

At the end..

The National Human Rights Commission on Saturday took suo motu cognisance of the death of a chartered accountant girl from Kerala in Pune, reportedly due to excessive workload in her company. The Commission has also issued a notice to the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment for a detailed report on the matter within four weeks. The Commission has also called on businesses to review their work culture, employment policies and regulations to ensure alignment with global human rights standards. 

Regarding the suggestion that the Union minister gave regarding the teaching of stress management classes in schools and colleges- for that also, the government need to frame specific policies that compels the schools and colleges to conduct qualitative stress management lessons so that the kids coming out from temple of institutions leans how to deal with the dynamics of life.

Let’s hope the government make strict policies in every working sector, from private to public sector, from manufacturing to service sector, from business to profession, so that no more lives are slashed under the destructive, inhuman working conditions. If the strong laws are not there, maybe people will learn to live with stress, but either it will affect their productivity, which will constrain the growth of the organisation/industry or their personal and family lives will be affected, which will eventually tarnish the young, upcoming future of the nation.

So, from any end, the growth of the nation will be tarnished, and the dream of a trillion economy will be slashed if the working class, who are not only giving their lives to run the engine of the organisation but also paying hefty taxes so that the wheels of the economy keep running.