Sunday, June 5, 2011

IT people v/s Suicidal Farmers

Couple of weeks back THE Hindu, Only Newspaper I love reading, published an article written by an IT engineer. This article was written to inflate the reputation of IT engineers and break the myths regarding IT engineers among other segments of society.

This article was written to avenge another article which was demonstrating situation of farmers in India. Previous article's author had compared the salary of IT individual with the meager loan amount which compelled a farmer to end his life. IT engineer was sad with this comparison and he/she did not want people to make such in-significant and imperialistic comparisons in future. According to him/her
There was a sarcastic comment too: ‘This is equivalent to an IT couple's one month salary.' As a professional working in the IT industry for the past seven years, I was deeply saddened by that comment.

In rest of the article I will choose few points mentioned and try to put across my thoughts.

At the start writer has reasoned out the AC's requirement in IT offices. I think, Truth about Air Conditioned has been cut short to half by the writer. Our work places are equipped with Air Conditioned to protect computers and processors from overheating, Is this truth? All organizations have server rooms to keep fire spitting machines which are kept far away from humans. These servers rooms possess highly sophisticated cooling machines to tame dragon's fire. All of us use laptops and desktops at home and none of the machines, at home, explode without AC. It means, the whole premises does not need air conditioner. But it is really impossible to accept the truth so easily. Whether it is cafeteria, recreation room, gym, reception and meeting room all are equipped with the AC. If AC is not working due to any unprecedented condition our anger shoots up to seventh sky and we find someone to punish for the unknown crime. A farmer, who plows the farm in June, can not even expect a nice cold breeze. For him there are no options provided but to dare the sun otherwise entire year starvation will dare him. Why can not we people accept the impossibility of surviving without AC, instead giving excuses?

Next Working Hours for IT people have been called painful. I understand the definition of pain changes along with individual but there is a general consensus for pain which applies to each of us. Does sitting in front of computer, chatting with friends, cribbing about one chick or other, playing games and more unimportant tasks amalgamated with fewer important work related tasks amount to huge pain? Ask a labour what do 8 working hours mean for him. Ask a guy what does it mean to throw coal in furnace for 8 hours. Ask a farmer what pain means at the time of plowing the field or cutting crop. Ask a shopkeeper who open his shop at 8 AM and closes at 9PM. When people work for 14 hours everyday without even having rightful breaks on weekends than how can we be in more pain than others.

IT people were sacked during recession. Why? People working in IT and finance were the clear targets as their bank balance had increased exponentially in last couple of years. But recession not only impacted IT, every segment of society was facing recession's catastrophic results. During recession farmers could not sell the crop on its actual amount, which drowned them under debts. On top of cyclic recession, a farmer faces yearly monstrous natural calamities. Excessive rain, no rain, storms, worms, excessive heat, animals, cattle, drought and many other things can ruin the standing crop. Decision of providing the subsidy depends upon the need of person. Government can not provide subsidy to own 5 cars and 5 flats in a posh area.

Job Security is biggest concern for us and our perks are decided based on our performance. But you know what, a farmer's perks are decided based on land and its fertile power and God's wish. Even after all his efforts he might not earn enough to feed his kids throughout the year. If anything goes wrong during the 365 days of the year, his kids will not go to school and sleep without a meal. Here nobody will evaluate the hard work, labour and performance of the farmer, only thing which will amount in deciding farmers bank account is calamities.

IT people have purchasing power, does not it mean we are increasing inflation by reducing the value of money? Autowalah expect higher fare from a needy and poor guy, because he will get an IT engineer who will fulfill his unjustified money demands.

There were numerous more points, which were written but I can not keep going about each and every point there. But we need to understand Committing suicide is not so simple. Nobody wants to commit a suicide, but when there is no door leading to sunshine, then darkness consumes you. It is true we should not compare 2 different fields which are not correlated but if someone has made a mistake then we should not blast someone's emotions without understanding the situation of concerned individuals and on top of all still we IT folks are  in good white collar job and if we could just look at the other sectors we have no right to crib about our work.