The “Dignity of Labour” in India

Wouldn’t it be beautiful if you could do any job you like to fulfill your needs (let that need be just earning some extra bucks)? Yeah, right, it would be wonderful. But here arise the problem of “Dignity of Labour” in countries like India.

What is “Dignity of Labour”?

It deals with the philosophy of respecting the occupation of every person. No job is superior or inferior to any other job. There should be absolutely no discrimination between someone working as a Senior Web Developer and Server in a cafe. Every job has its own value, each person has his own reasons to work in that field, and each person has a different perspective on life, and we should respect that.

How is this affecting lives in India?

In India, there is absolutely no dignity of labour. For example, people don’t respect youngsters working in KFC outlets or any other similar profession that is considered a part-time job by many people worldwide. I have heard people saying “they couldn’t achieve anything else in life,” “they are so young, better go and study,” “I don’t consider it even a job,” etc. Why do people have such gloomy views? The reason for this is SOCIETAL and PARENTAL influence.

Only after a few years of childhood freedom, parents and society influence a child's thoughts. “Live with respect,” “Do a respectable job,” “Make your mama and papa proud,” etc., are some of the dialogues one can hear daily in an Indian family. I wanna ask what is a “respectable job”? How can someone say that one job is respectable and the other is not? Can a monthly paycheck decide the status of a job? What those jobs offer you as skills have no value? If this is your thinking, it is not only affecting you but also other people.

After listening to all these things, a child starts to wonder that any job that pays below a certain amount is disrespectable. He also develops the thinking of discrimination. You might be thinking I am exaggerating this issue as ultimately it makes the child ambitious and achieves higher status in life, so what's the problem in that?

The problem is that people start avoiding these basic part-time jobs like cafe workers, servers, bartenders, etc., due to their ‘disrespectful’ nature, which is considered to be basic jobs in foreign countries with no stigmas attached. They help you earn extra money, enhance your verbal skills, reduce financial pressure on you, and many more things. But most of the people who are getting enough money from their parents avoid these jobs even though students are the most qualified student for these kinds of jobs.

You’ll rarely see a college or school students working in India. Ultimately, students lack these basic life skills. The burden of schools and colleges also plays a very crucial role in this problem.

Article on Indian Education System coming soon.

What’s the solution?

The whole student community can be the harbinger of change. They can change this widely spread misconception about different jobs. Students should start working in different cafes, fast-food chain outlets, skill shops, barbershops, etc. People can learn basic technical skills and do freelancing. There are a huge number of opportunities lying on the internet too. All you need is a will to learn and work.

Most of the students are currently staying homes, so they can learn various basic skills online and start freelancing. You can even be paid for good handwriting. The main thing here is not money; it's the experience of interacting with the world. Just by doing basic work for an organization, you get to know a lot of things about how a company works, which ultimately helps you explore the entrepreneurship side of your personality that most of the Indian teenagers and youngsters lack in.

Plenty of online resources like Udemy, Coursera, etc., offers value for money courses to develop whichever skill that interests you.

Conclusion

“No job is inferior or superior to any other job,” and as Steve Jobs said, “Do what you love and love what you do” concludes the whole point. I will soon be publishing articles on “various ways to earn money online” and “Inside the Indian Education System.” So stay tuned.

Thank You for giving this article your precious time, and please give your honest reviews, agreement, disagreements, etc., whichever feedback you can give. I am a person who likes to go against stereotypical thoughts and mold my current beliefs into something better. So, I am open to any suggestions.

I’ll soon be back with an amazing article.

Cheers, See you soon : )

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FOOTNOTES :

I have already published this article on medium.com. I want to republish it at vocal.