The Insanity of Modern Life

I live in Hyderabad, India.

As I was returning from some work in Hi-tech City, I was struck by the number of young people on the road going to offices with backpacks on their shoulders. This was in the evening by the way.

I did not see just one person. I saw many many youngsters with backpacks getting off of buses, walking through the crowded concrete jungle and on to their offices. In some cases, youngsters would walk a lot of distance from the bus stop or the metro station (local trains) to their offices.

Are we as a society in India really at this stage that youngsters and Gen Z trade in a college backpack for a work backpack that contains their laptop and then go and work in a job that they don’t like for 8 hours…12 hours without overpay… just to earn some measly paycheck to help them survive?

I see hundreds of people just walking or taking the bus or going in the metro every day. They just seem to accept the drudgery of life. Wake up, go work, get exhausted, come back home or to the men’s or women’s hostel where they stay (to save a few bucks), eat and sleep. Then they wake up and do the same routine all over again.

Come the weekend, everyone’s too exhausted to do anything except collapse and sleep.

And companies just LOVE these worker drones. They hire 100 people to do a job where 20 people would be sufficient and then claim… to the government… that they are doing their part in helping the economy by hiring people.

Of course then the market resets or the company’s profits are less than stellar and about 80 people are let go after making the entire workforce go through something akin to corporate Hunger Games. Or half of them quit after being disgusted by the corporate politics and micromanagement and the others are too dumb to realize it and are axed like Ned Stark from Game of Thrones.

And here’s where it gets tragic. Those 80 people let go? That doesn’t create a talent vaccum in the company. There are 200 more people in their place ready to do the job…for half the price. So companies exploit workers like they’re replaceable cogs in a machine.

Stop the madness! Stop the rat race! Everyday I see Indian Gen Zs getting up early and going to jobs they hate to earn money they need to barely survive while the rest of the world moves on with their life. Here in India…I mean Corporate India… you’re just an expensive number. The more number of hours you work (without overpay and without complaining) the more billable you are and the more money that can be extracted (squeezed) from the client on your behalf. Now imagine entire departments being overworked because each manager says so.

It starts all the way from the CTO right down to the fresh graduate. Everyone is billable and expendable! You’re not being billable? Get replaced!

Service companies like WITCH companies are the worst offenders in this regard. Product based companies can be slightly better but corporate India worships the almighty dollar and even 12 hours doesn’t seem enough when you want squeeze every penny from well paying US customers. For them, we are just cheap labour. 1 dollar goes a long way in India. Imagine 25,000 dollars. That’s peanuts to large American corporations that deal in millions of dollars in revenue and turnover and profits. But 25,000 dollars can buy you TWO Indian University graduates willing to kill themselves to make YOUR vision come to life. And once they go, they can be replaced by 4 more people willing to work for 20,000 Dollars.

Yeah, no wonder US companies LOVE outsourcing their work to India. We have no dignity left in our country. We gained independence from the British more than 85 years ago but our mindset is still bent on pleasing the White Man because he carries dollars and pounds. Never mind that the White Man himself sees us as his equals now and is willing to give us the respect we sorely deserve, we are still stuck in our colonial past and willing to sacrifice our youngsters to the Rat Race.

People should wake up. Being part of the system doesn’t mean you should be asleep. Wake up and see the burnout, the misery that is corporate India, the layoffs in the name of AI or cost cutting measures and the lack of hobbies that is literally killing young people (we hear about more people hanging themselves or throwing themselves off of buildings now than ever before). Corporate India doesn’t have a soul but if everyone gets back a LITTLE humanity in themselves and managers don’t treat workers like replaceable wheels or cogs, then we might have some hope for the future.

Stop this insanity!

(A Millenial)