As executions go, this one too was fairly swift — but without warning. The bosses of a Siemens AG subsidiary needed just 70 minutes to remove Vivekananda Mahalingam, a 46-year-old engineer who had helped shape the fortunes and growth of the engineering giant in India for more than a decadeand- a-half, driving the operations of a 200-plus outfit that had offices all over the country. “What shocked me was the way he was asked to go and what pained me was the way the office — which he had actually set up – helped him pack his papers and mementos,” said an insider who watched with horror the developments that began at 0945 hours and ended at 1055 hours at the Gurgaon headquarters of the multinational. As Mahalingam walked out, his friends took to him to a nearby bar, where they relived memories. Mahalingam wasn’t allowed to pay the bill by his colleagues, but once they left, he realised he was in a vacuum. “I felt very lonely,” he said.
Vibha B Bajaj of American Express, a top global bank that also has gone through handing out pink slips at its India operation, would not offer an official reaction to the fear factor that hangs like Damocles’ Sword on employees. “You will only feel it when it happens to you,” she says.
She echoes a sentiment shared by Commerce Minister Kamal Nath at the annual meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in New Delhi recently. “I am worried, very worried,” Nath told reporters on the sidelines of the conference. His colleagues said the minister has been upset since his office received figures of job losses from across the country. Most worrisome were those from export-oriented units: they have crossed the 10,00,000 mark.
And as HNN found when it visited these until-recently bustling towns, dedicated to exports of one category of product — from textile epicentre Tiruppur to Surat’s diamond cutting edge; from Bhadohi’s rich tapestry of carpet-making to Ludhiana’s spin on hosiery — the story in each is essentially similar. Industry owners have made the proverbial hay in the sun of increasing demand, while creating no facilities for lakhs of very poor workers, or providing themselves with any cushion against possible hard times. The government has been absent in every sense, from infrastructure, to health and insurance.
But, of course, it’s not just about export- oriented units. Job cuts are de rigueur across the board. The reasons are simple: industrial output is under five percent, halved from 10 percent a year ago. Manufacturing is down at four percent (from 9.5 percent), while exports have dipped by 12 percent. The automobile sector has gone into a negative tailspin for October-December, while cross-country movement of goods has touched its lowest levels.
Corporate India’s death list is a virtual who’s who of the once lit-up marquee: DLF, Unitech, Larsen & Tubro Infotech, Motorola, Goldman Sachs, American Express, Reliance Retail, Kingfisher Airlines, Spicejet and Jet Airways.
Such is the fear psychosis that some corporate captains either try to make such terminations invisible, or sometimes, reverse such orders to contain possible damage to the company’s image. Zee Telefilms head Subhash Chandra Goyal recently blasted a top Zee Sports production head for firing nearly 12 people, without his say-so. “I do not want to incur the wrath and curse of my employees. Let me see how long I can take it,” he said.
“It is time for all of us to curb expenses,” wrote another channel head to his staffers, amidst widespread sacking from the sales team for non-performance and the indication that at least two — from a bouquet of seven channels — would eventually shut down.
Such is the fear of pink slips hitting the upper echelons of the employee pyramid — until recently a situation considered purely hypothetical — that professionals have begun calling doctors and helplines. Sahai in Bangalore gets nearly 100 to 200 calls daily. “Earlier, the calls were more about relationships. Now, the callers enquire about assistance to pay home, car EMIs and education loans for children studying abroad," says Anita Graciaf, counsellor, Sahai. Agrees another Bangalore-based psychiatrist, Dr H Chandrashekhar: “They wonder whether they will get jobs and what they will do until they get one. They are actually going through nightmarish times.”
Unfortunately, this is a nightmare from which one cannot wake up to a better reality: the job cuts are very real and across sectors. “I wonder how to handle my EMIs, rent, fuel for my car,” says Sameer Kulsrestha, who lost his job barely 24 hours ago at Google India, the India arm of the Mountain View, California- based internet company. Google is not reacting. In a response to a query on layoffs, a Google spokesperson said, "We have been reducing our dependence on contractors for over a year across locations. In rare cases, where restructuring impacts Googlers, we actively work on providing them with other opportunities within Google. In India, Google continues to hire to need. We are unable to comment on any specific initiative.”
The latest termination comes close on the heels of news of a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Decemeber 16 from Google. It shows a significant cutback in temporary employees to cut costs. Earlier, on January 14, in a statement posted on the company's official blog, Laszlo Bocke, vice president, people operations, said that Google will lay off around 100 employees from its recruitment team and terminate its contract with external hiring agencies, the first significant cutback in its 11-year history.
But apart from export units, some of the worst victims of layoffs and the downturn are in labour-intensive sectors such as textiles, leather, tourism and services. Four days ago, Shashikant Tripahti, 29, was asked to leave his job at Chavi Travels. He says the company couldn’t meet his basic demand: the Rs 18,000 they owe him for the last three months of work. Tripathi had been working at the car-hire company since July 2008, but says he got paid once every few months, and never the full amount. “I know that not a single driver has been paid for the last three months,” Tripathi says. He’s now on the lookout for any job that will help his family — his wife Mamta and daughters, Sakshi, 8, and Nandani, 1, stay afloat. When he approached another car-hire agency in Gurgaon, they called his former supervisor for a background check, and refused him the job. “Now, I’m even willing to assist manual construction workers,” he says.
For the last four months, Tripathi has been unable to pay his rent or his dues to the grocery store. Last month, the food supplies stopped coming. Since then, Tripathi has been living off money and groceries borrowed from relatives. Potatoes are the only vegetable one would find in his kitchen right now. While he and his wife can cope, he says the greatest challenge has been affording milk for his oneyear- old daughter. The hardest: watching his elder daughter get pulled up in school because he hasn’t paid up the Rs 90 monthly fee for the last three months.
Similar struggles continue across strata and sectors. In textiles, industry and government sources estimate that seven lakh jobs have already been axed and almost as many more are on the cards. Take a look at hospitality and tourism: from October to March, it’s hard to find an unbooked houseboat in Alappuzha, the picturesque Kerala town that thrives on backwater tourism. Not this year. A row of empty boats is moored forlornly to the banks. “My boat has been idle almost every third day this month,” said Sali, an operator, sadly.
“We had never faced this kind of a slump, not even post-tsunami,” says VC Zacharia, a houseboat owner. A fall in tourist inflow has led to about a 30 to 35 percent drop in the earnings of boat owners, and either a fall in income or loss of jobs to an estimated 7,000 persons dependent on the houseboat industry.
Far north, the snow covered slopes of Gulmarg and placid waters of Dal Lake in Srinagar in Kashmir are equally abandoned. The shikaras are empty, the faces of the boatmen desperate. The meadows of Pahalgam are brimming with flowers, but of tourists there is barely a sign.
Hoteliers are offering up to 70 percent discount on tariffs, but no one has been turning up to avail of them. For hotel and restaurant owners, struggling to recoup the losses from an economic agitation, first in Kashmir and then in Jammu, this is a severe blow. The layoffs have begun.
Abdul Majeed, once the proud owner of four hotels in Srinagar’s posh area of Zero Bridge, close to Rajbagh, was forced to close down three. He’s trying to survive on the business from the fourth, but for his laid-off employees, there is no such cushion. “After I recorded zero percent occupancy for several months, I had no choice but to close down my hotels,” says Majid.
Even Goa, the one destination that could have been relatively immune in such recessive times, has caught the virus. Internet searches for hotels during the December-January peak season for visitors shows that although small, absolutely cheap places to shack in are invariably full, it’s the four and five star properties that have room. Walk-in customers willing to upgrade from low-cost accommodation have reportedly found very competitive rates being offered by otherwise rather snootier properties.
At a time existing job-holders find it difficult to retain their jobs, what about the 10-odd million who join the Indian workforce each year? In this season of retrenchment, the only certainity is uncertainity. And that lay-off levels will be high; recruitment levels low.
But while there are no solutions to the hiring dilemma, there are some tangential paths new brooms can take. Consider this one posted on the blog of a Delhi-based newspaper: on a three-hour drive from Nagpur to a cluster of villages in Chandrapur district, Rachael Barber, global head, community investment, Barclays, talked about how employee engagement in local communities is high on the bank’s sustainability agenda and how staffers from the age of 24 to 60 are opting to work for charities, supporting causes and giving away a good portion of their time, without expecting monetary return.
In fact, one of the top five questions that B-school graduates in the US and UK are asking potential employers during placement sessions is, “Will I get a chance to do voluntary work in your company?”, says another Blog. In 2007, Barclays invested £52.4 million in community projects around the world, and more than 43,000 colleagues in 29 countries were involved in fundraising and volunteering initiatives. Barber says skillbased volunteering adds maximum value to aid recipients. This becomes more relevant when you see ILO estimates that there are over 88 million unemployed young people (in the 15 to 24 year age group) around the world, comprising half the world's total unemployment.
While volunteering is not mandatory, it does have the potential to add to the employee's annual appraisal. Consulting and accounting companies have traditionally done a lot of community work, partly because it is easier for them to move their consultants from place to place. Ritu Anand, deputy global head of human resources at Tata Consultancy Services recently spoke about how the company’s employees were actively seeking voluntary work, choosing to devote weekends on village projects without claiming compensatory offs.
None of this is likely to help those still employed retain their jobs, or those recently laid-off to feel better about their loss, but in hard times, every sliver of satisfaction must be extracted. And perhaps, in developing the ability to gain more from possibly earning less, lies a future rosier than one coloured either the green of greed — or the pink of that final slip.
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