Wages for an Honest Rest

‘Being in the first batch of the new syllabus, I could sympathize with some of the spelling error though I must admit they created havoc in Maths but now the economics text book has got its facts awfully wrong’ muttered my son to no-one in particular as he threw down a text book. Being the only other human in the room I assumed I was intended to hear his words and thus asked him the cause of his frustration. He opened his text book and pointed out to the first sentence on a chapter on factors on production which was on ‘Wages’. ‘It is defined wrongly as compensation for work done’ he complained. I was confused. ‘But son, even the Webster and your more familiar Wikipedia will also define it similarly so what ails you so gravely?’ ‘People also get wages to rest at home’ he dropped a bomb. I pondered and started laughing. ‘You call that pension my dear boy and not wage. Besides it is cut during the productive period of the worker.’ I thought I pacified him. Hands on hips he declared that his knowledge on the subject of was not as lame as not to be aware of the concept of pension. ‘Today, India is perhaps the only country which pays wages for an honest rest at home for periods as much as 3 years. So do not tell me that this is the leave period during which the worker gets wages.’ Seeing the puzzled look on my face he slid the paper in front of me which had carried this news in an inside page which I has missed having dismissed it as a mess of red tapism. Here now was a ‘living’ example of a Private sector organization paying salary to 600 employees to sit at home. ‘Should I aim to get employed in such wonderful organizations?’ my son dropped a bomb.

As I read the news I appreciated that even the new school of economics had to be abandoned perhaps to be more rightly replaced by a Modern School of Indian Economics. Since I searched the net and did not find any parallel examples in other countries of a similar action for such volume of employees and such period of time, I had to restrict this new school to the territory of India. As an optimist I would like to view every situation with an eye of opportunity and now I fancied myself in the ‘dream team’ of the new school of Indian Economics. As I mused, I thought it best to jot down a few instances of Indian wages paid for no work done. Believe me, in India there was no dearth of examples in all sectors. However, such category of persons were actually already employed in organsiations for which they received the wages though their labour was in other fields.

1. Every body’s boss: All of us have bosses who get work done through us and other exploited colleagues while taking the credit for themselves. All of us remember the frustration when a Europe tour was gifted to him for a work done by us – his juniors. To add insult to the injury such an action has sanction of all the management schools by calling such hijack of credit as – delegation.

2. Most Government offices in the city: Whenever we needed to meet any person in an emergency, we never could find such identified person at his desk. In fact on a floor of 10,000 square feet there would be perhaps a maximum of one person at his/her desk. Such a person would have a standard answer to any query ‘I do not know anything. I am new here.’

3. Festival days: On days before and after Diwali, persons in departments interfacing with vendors are mysteriously found at their desks not doing any actual work. However they even do the unmentionable of liaison with accounts department to settle the outstanding payments to the vendors who shall feel instant gratification for an action they had shirked on the plea of matter of ‘other department’.

4. Housing Society Watchman: The watchman is never at his post when some visitor has parked in your designated parking place. His plea is that he is at the water pump when the trespass occurred. This situation occurs unless you are elected as Chairman of the Society. So much for democracy where all citizens are equal.

5. Any police complaint (non murder): When you greet the comfortably sitting and gossiping gentlemen you are supposed to feel guilty for spoiling their party, is the look you get, In case you did not get the point, after listening to your précis of the matter, you are asked to ‘settle the matter with the other party/insurance’ which stops at their noting. If you still want to persist in the matter, suddenly the men in uniform become philosophical extolling the virtues of forgiveness and release from material items of this world. Whatever be their method, it all aims at ensuring we do not start any work for them. Ever seen the smug faces when you get convinced by them and leave without escalating the matter?

I am currently building a team to start a website called ‘phukatpagarnaukri.com. I am sure I can sit back and rake in the moolah as there will be many takers. The only catch is that which employer will admit his listing under this website with a name as blatant as this.

Profit by Chance

Before I could even get a chance to learn anything about carbon credits, my son asked me a question. Since one asks questions only to those we hold in high esteem of knowledge, I did not want to lose face; as it would be lost forever. ‘Dad, how did Arcelor get excess credits? Is it life imitating art or art imitating life?’ He was referring to a serial I never saw, entitled ‘Sukh by chance’. ‘Son, accidents happen’ I pacified him. ‘In your career have you seen such errors in audit?’ he asked point blank. I hummed a bit and realized that I had indeed seen few instances of small amounts being deposited in wrong depositor’s account. But what took the cake was when ECS (Electronic clearing system) was introduced when the software vendors responded in a hurry and company dividends were deposited even in closed accounts. In our audit through the computer, these accounts showed up as sore thumbs. However, a similar large amount was admittedly rare.

‘If the company is in steel manufacturing, it must be using fossil based energy generating high heat. So how does such energy glutton smoke belching unit get credit?’ ‘Perhaps it is due to the effort taken to reduce the colour of the belching smoke’ I joked. ‘I get it’ answered by son brightening up my day with the hope that his questions would be finished. ‘Some organization does the calculation of what pollution is prevented and credits are given.’ I nodded, trying to pick up the newspaper to continue my reading. ‘Where do you suppose the calculation went wrong in these days of computers with floating 14 decimal points in the ALU of the chip?’ Now he had bombarded me with the Information Technology mumbo jumbo. ‘I doubt very much if computer were used for calculation of such a task at such an early stage. I think they used only calculators’. I speculated. ‘And were the calculators ever wrong?’ he demanded. ‘They were not wrong since they were marketed’ I pacified him but we had seen genuine revenue gains for our clients when the discounted bills of exchange were of high amounts running into hundreds of crores.’ ‘So?’ the predicted question came and I paused for effect. ‘The Bank clerk used to be working on an eight digit calculator and never noticed the extra digits not being accepted by the calculator as he used to look at the register only and punch almost blindly.’ We both burst out laughing at the silliness of the situation which translated into lacs of unexpected gain for some. We summarized that since the companies under Arcelor were so many, the calculations must have pushed even a 25 digit calculator (if there is one) to its limit and thus the error. ‘So it pays to be large’ my son remarked stopping my mirth with the dead serious philosophy which countered my favorite one which was, size does not matter.

‘Is a carbon credit worth in money?’ came the fundamental question. ‘I guess so’ I replied. ‘Will he sell the credits?’ asked my son. ‘That is the idea’ I replied. ‘The one not cutting pollution will have to buy the credits and only then he will be permitted to carry on belching pollutants.’ ‘You mean that now we shall see advertisements inviting people to buy such certificates?’ my son concluded. I realized that now this was a new opportunity for advertising agencies to start a specialized ‘Carbon’ department of creativity. My son looked at me with disbelief. ‘Do you mean to say that people will actually sell these certificates so that some others can carry on polluting the world?’ I did not know what to say to this.

‘Perhaps we should endeavor to get carbon credits of our own so that we too can sell our credits and become millionaires’. My son’s bright idea now blossomed. ‘Perhaps you can come up with how non-factory owners like us can get carbon credits’ I pre-empted my responsibility to scratch my head. He scratched his head and came up pointing a finger at a small space near the window we called balcony and said, ‘We can get credit for those four pots of plants Mom has planted.’ I looked at the one broken pot of weeds and a rusty oil tin sprouting a thorny stem of a rose without a rose and shook my head saying, ‘too small to account for any credit whatsoever.’ He continued, ‘whenever we went for a picnic, we used to relieve ourselves near a tree. I know for sure we were adding fertilizer for the benefit of the tree. It will be our right to get credit to reduce the green house gasses by helping a tree grow stronger and taller.’ I advised him to make a list of such actions and maybe we can check on the internet if there is any advisory list on credit qualifications.

‘Do you predict economic downturn after 2 years?’ my son asked as he sat to jot the list I asked him to. ‘Dear fellow, we are hoping to recover from the present downturn and you are suspecting another downturn? I must speak to your economics subject lecturer.’ I almost scolded him. ‘You had yourself written earlier’ my son reminded me, ‘that, now and even in the 80’s, the downturn came after the real estate had heated up’. ‘If you are referring to the Dubai Company then let me assure you that Indian companies may not get affected though the workforce will and we will have exodus of overseas labour.’ He summarized the situation, ‘in Dubai they were reclaiming land from the sea. This has worked in the past like in Mumbai Marine drive and Nariman Point where the buyers are mostly commercial. Even Japan has reclaimed land for airport. But in Dubai, it was done in a fancy shape for commercial profits expected immediately and highly levered.’ ‘If we agree there is no real estate heating up, where is the concern?’ I demanded blindly. ‘Carbon credits’ he answered. I waited for the clarification and it came. ‘Isn’t this, making money out of thin air?’ The basic truth hits always below the belt and believe me, it hurts.

My son had effectively identified a scam of Global Proportions with the official seal of many countries. My mind raced to the future of carpet baggers and scamsters. We are the country where the stock exchange scams have taken place as well as the stamp paper where money was literally stamped. Horrors of horror, this is a legitimate conjuring of thin air to currency. When this is the official version I cannot even imagine what the scamsters will develop for this market.