It was many years ago. I had just upgraded myself from a goldsmith to web designer in my professional life. Once I met this old man, who is an elder cousin of my friend and part of a royal family in Kerala. He is a well read man and we had a lunch time conversation at my friend’s place. “What do you do?” he asked me. I told him that I was a goldsmith but now work in the IT sector. “Youngsters these days prefer only white collar jobs“, he told my friend. “They think lowly of the ordinary jobs. How is this world going to function if people do only white collar jobs?“. I wasn’t surprised but was angry on his statement. I told him that the only reason that I got out of my previous job myself was the lack of respect that people had towards the blue collar workers.
We say that every job has it’s dignity. We talk about it a lot. Yet we seldom practice it. I know how people treated me when I was just a goldsmith. People didn’t even recognize my presence let alone respect. You would feel the difference of attitude everywhere. Among your friends, cousins and in the neighborhood. I am not neglecting that there were some rare good souls who valued me for who I was, but mostly I was treated with low priority in these circles. I understood it only when I changed my job, got a good salary and spoke English (yes, that’s still believed to be part of the elitism in our society).
Coming back to the royal old man and the people he represent, I think there is a class of people who don’t want the working class to upgrade themselves to a better living condition. Take the old man for example. He used to air travel when even public road transport was a rare thing in India. He was part of the Royalty, so money and respect came easily. But he shrugged off the people who fought with their life and won themselves a good living without a glorified lineage or any Godfather to back them up. And people like him cleverly use the statements like “people don’t respect ordinary jobs” while they themselves wouldn’t do any of those jobs.
We complain too. That these days masons or carpenters have become very rare to find. “How are things going to work if everybody’s looking for white collar employment?“. But would we go ahead and do the work ourselves? No. Would we take it as our profession? Absolutely not. Because we know the wages it is going to bring and how the society would treat us with that. We complain about the wages too. “The mason charges Rs. 350 a day. If the charges are skyrocketing like this, how are we going to survive?“. 350 bucks a day brings a mason less than Rs. 15,000 a month. And in the monsoon season, many of them are left jobless for days. Plus he has his own family to take care of, perhaps a daughter to marry off with dowry, the price hike affects him, and he faces every single crisis that we face every day. Yet those of us who draw more than 30K, 50K or Lakhs of rupees every month complain about his charges, but we don’t forget to ask for our annual salary hikes, bonuses and other benefits.
On this May Day, I would like all of us to think about the dignity of labor. And the need to respect people for who they are, not based on what they do. We all preach loads. When do we start practising it?