There is no truth to his claim that Gujarat’s poverty reduction figures are the result of it shifting the goalposts. He presents insufficient evidence to prove his claim about the public health system’s failings. In contrast, the reduction in the infant mortality rate—the barometer of a public health system—suggests that public health delivery is likely to have improved. His argument on the widening rural-urban divide falls flat for want of evidence. He makes wrong associations to imply causal links between low agricultural productivity and a decline in the state’s production of foodgrains, while falling into the illiberal trap of denying farmers a way out of agriculture. He offers incomplete facts to mischaracterise Gujarat’s power sector, which happens to be among the best in the country. And he dismisses the state’s investment and employment record without bothering about such inanities as facts. We saw that the UPA government’s inability to reform India’s restrictive labour laws is hurting Gujarat’s ability to translate the investments it is attracting into more jobs for its people.

Shivam is on firmer ground on the Sardar Sarovar project: according to the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report, the state’s water authorities diverted water designated for “drought prone areas” to the urban areas of Gandhinagar. It is good to see Tehelka—whom one would usually associate with the anti-dam agitation—making these arguments. Similarly, Shivam might have a point when he talks about people displaced by development, underscoring the need for India to make its property rights regime more robust.

Where does this leave us? Well, that apart from some clever juggling of facts, Tehelka doesn’t really offer enough evidence to support its conclusion that Gujarat is ‘just another socio-economically vulnerable state’. The Congress party in Gujarat, Shivam writes, “wants ‘development’ to be the key issue in the elections”. More power to it. The interests of Gujarat’s electorate will be best served if it can present robust and well-supported arguments to argue where and how the state could have done better. Now that would cause some tehelka, wouldn’t it?

And, thanks to Nikhil, the data is available on the web too. Here it is where it is available at Google, since Google acquired the Trendalyzer software that Hans uses to present in the talk. Go, play with the data here, there are dropdowns on the x as well as the y-axis that make for some interesting analysis.

I could not embed the video, so, for now, you have to click the link above. It is worth it…

The EPFO is an unusual national provident fund in combining the features of a defined benefit scheme (Employees Pension Scheme or EPS, introduced in 1995) with those of a defined contribution scheme (Employee Provident Fund, or EPF) for its members. While the EPF balances can be withdrawn as a lump sum, the EPS is a pension scheme, with survivor benefits.

The EPS scheme is badly designed, as it fixes (defines) both benefits and contributions. This is mathematically impossible. As the scheme parameters change over time, either benefit formula and/or contribution must be changed for financial sustainability. If both are fixed, the scheme cannot be sustainable. This is demonstrated by the reported under-funding of Rs 25,000 crore, equivalent to one-sixth of its total assets. Moreover, in the absence of reforms designed to match its long-term assets and liabilities, the under-funding is expected to grow rapidly.

Contrary to normal financial practices, the EPFO Board deliberates on the interest rate to be paid to members at the beginning rather than at the end of the financial year. The EPFO trustees, grossly neglecting their fiduciary responsibility towards members and the taxpayers, have been engaged in attempting to secure through political and administrative means higher interest rates for the members than what their unprofessional and uninformed investment policies permit the funds to earn. From a national point of view, budgetary support to EPFO is not likely to benefit the aam aadmi, as 85% of the members had balances of less than Rs 20,000, accounting for 17% of total balances.
…

India’s stock market capitalisation exceeds $1 trillion. The depth and breadth of its financial and capital markets, which permit market-based efficient intermediation between savings and investments, are among India’s most important competitive strengths. That the board of trustees of India’s largest NBFI consciously refuses to utilise this competitive strength is astonishing. Even more astonishing is the argument made by trade union members of the board that such refusal is in the interest of the workers and the country. [DNA India]

If you work in an average corporate environment, and if you were to conduct a similar exercise in recall and in observation, you will probably come up with a similarly small number.

Does this mean disability of all kinds have been eradicated in India? Clearly not, because at every traffic light stop, we have all experienced a mix of feelings at averting our gazes from disabled kids dragging themselves perilously between cars to make a few paise. But for the sake of this post, let’s narrow our focus again, just as we avert our gaze from those disabled begging kids.

But before we move forward, here is a working definition of disability which I will draw upon for this post:

“A disability is a condition or function judged to be significantly impaired relative to the usual standard of an individual or their group. The term is often used to refer to individual functioning, including physical impairment, sensory impairment, cognitive impairment, intellectual impairment or mental health issue. This usage is associated with a medical model of disability. By contrast, a human rights or social model focuses on functioning as an interaction between a person and their environment, highlighting the role of a society in labelling, causing or maintaining disability within that society, including through attitudes or accessibility favouring the majority. Disabilities may come to people during their life or people may be born disabled.”

Even though it is hard to find reliable statistics on disability in India, most smart people can see that both the commonly cited estimates – 18.5M disabled people according to the Disability Survey of National Sample Survey 2002 and 21.9M disabled people according to the Population Census 2001 – are rubbish.

Why?

For starters, the 2% figure is way off the numbers from other developed nations worldwide. In the UK for instance, nearly 15% of the population self-declares disability. About 18% of the population in the US is estimated to have some form of disability. With these comparators, it is evident that poor data collection rather than real low incidence of disability makes for this low 2% figure.

Further if we take a random piece from data about mental health in India, nearly 4M people in India suffer from schizophrenia, which implies that some 14-17M account for all other disabilities! A headline number of 18-21M is quite easily misleading and an age-based breakdown is even less reliable.

Back to the workplace then. Despite a raft of legislation aiming to protect access – including a National Policy for Persons with Disabilities dating back to 1993 – the participation of disabled people in the workplace remains poor. Even if we were to run, for argument’s sake, with this 2% figure, only an estimated 34% of that are in any kind of employment, excluding almost 2/3 of our disabled population. In this matter, India has plenty of company amongst the developed nations though the percentage of disabled people excluded may not be so large. But that is hardly something to be proud of.

What does it take to make a workplace embrace disabled colleagues, assuming all hygiene factors of work related skills and education are in place?

I think there is a threefold approach which can guide and shape our strategies to be inclusive of our disabled population. The shorthand is APT:

A: Awareness and Attitude
P: Policy and Process
T: Technology

I believe awareness would shape attitudes, and this remains the toughest mountain to climb in this area.

Here is an exercise for you. What is the first visual that pops up in your head when you hear the word ‘disability’?

If you said ‘a wheelchair’, congratulations, because in my series of awkward social experiments, to which my friends and family are often subjected, this has been a consistent find and you fit in the middle in the bell curve.

The truth is that mobility impairment is only a very small percentage of disability. Visual, auditory and speech impairments, mental health issues about which I have written before, and multiple disabilities make up the lion’s share of disabilities.

Disability is not just something one is born with; disability can come with age, life circumstance and from social attitudes towards not enabling access and inclusion. Being aware that disability can manifest in many ways can influence policy and shape processes. For instance, when we advertise open positions, do we signal our desire to hire from a cross-section of society? Do we even declare such intent through, say, a disclaimer at the bottom of the adverts? When we have candidates to interview, do we make them welcome especially if they have special needs such as access to the buildings, use of a special screen etc? Do we have disabled employees on board and do we take their feedback on continually improving our workplace not just at the work station, but in our facilities, our buildings and our environment?

The steps that corporate firms can take need not be limited to policy and process. Assistive (including adaptive and rehabilitative) technologies are here, well, to assist those with impairments of vision, hearing, speech, and mobility. Many NGOs worldwide work to fund the development and to accelerate the adoption of such technologies. Many firms too work in this very profitable niche. What is needed is the vision and the leadership in an organisation to deploy these technologies actively to enable and empower disabled colleagues.

Even as I say this, I am aware that discrimination and exclusion of disabled individuals starts much earlier in life, in primary education and sometimes, at home. Besides disability is not by birth alone and it could happen to any of us! All non-disabled people, who are leaders and managers of today and tomorrow, need to consider this issue.

Creating clear awareness and the right attitude, and ensuring it percolates down in society, is something that can start in the workplace. After all, we all go home from work and new thoughts and positive ideas can be contagious. May be it will catch on?

What do you think?

Some Resources:
Disability India: http://www.disabilityindia.org/
FAST-UK: http://www.fastuk.org/home.php

In discussions of equality, India usually does better in comparison to China. Proponents of India’s path to development often point out that income inequality in India has historically been relatively low. The UN Human Development Report 2006 estimated the Gini Index – an indicator of income inequality – for India to be 32.5 in 2000. This compares favorably with much of the world, including the USA and OECD countries (Sweden: 25; Norway: 25.8; USA: 40.8; China: 44.7; Brazil: 58 – low numbers are better).

Yes, India’s income distribution is relatively equal. But inequality is rising – fast.

A plot of several countries’ Gini Index (at Wikipedia) illustrates growing inequality in both India and China. To further prove this point, I drew data from the World Income Inequality Database (WIID) and prior UN Human Development Reports for India. The plot below shows the Gini Index from 1951-2000 (note: not all years are available; only figures from the National Sample Survey for consumption were used).

For observers of the India-China debate, indeed for observers of economic growth, this plot is illustrative because income inequality has exacerbated considerably, rising from a historic low of 29.6 in 1990 to 32.5 in 2000 (a rise of 9.7%).

Why Income Inequality is Important: The Case of Healthcare

The obvious question to ask, of course, is if income inequality is even important? After all, if absolute poverty is dropping, relative inequality may be acceptable? Not so, because relative inequality manifests itself in many ways – most of all by reinforcing patterns of social exclusion.

One example of this is healthcare. I had noted previously that the rate at which India achieved improvements in life expectancy slowed considerably in the post-reform era. A similar trend was evident in China. I suggested two reasons for this inverse correlation with economic growth:

1. As GNP rises, the resulting income inequality may be negatively impacting overall life expectancy. As fewer people earn more the GNP rises, but the large majority that gets relatively poorer are worse off.
2. Another ugly truth may well be that a market-oriented India and China provide far less for their people than did socialist India and China. Under the guise of reform, governments in both countries are not only withdrawing from the market but also from public services.

The correlation between GNP growth and income inequality seems to support both these reasons. But there is one final reason to believe income inequality negatively impacts health. A study of seven African countries, published by the World Health Organization in 2000 concluded that it is the wealthier citizens – not the poorest – that benefit most from public healthcare, because health facilities are better in rich, urban areas. In Ghana the richest quintile directed almost 60% of its health spending to the public sector. In all countries, except South Africa, the best-off groups mainly used publicly subsidized health care, while the poor – less likely to seek medical help anyway – generally turned to the private sector simply because it was more accessible, though also more expensive.

Conclusion

A correlation between growth and inequality does not by itself disprove the need for economic growth. Growth may well be a necessary condition for reducing poverty, and in India it has indeed brought millions out of poverty. But surely, bringing people out of absolute poverty cannot be the ultimate goal and the only barometer of development. What India must strive for is to improve the quality of life of people – which means providing better health, education, and other services to the poor and the rich. In this objective, income inequality matters in very tangible ways, and insofar as economic growth increases inequality it may make many worse off. Now if only the economists could come up with a solution for that conundrum.

An earlier version of this post appeared here.

These were the words of a manager I once had. Let’s call him “M”. Luckily – for me, that is – these words were spoken by him to his wife, an educated woman but a full time mother, in full hearing and view of a few engineers from work. Those of us, who comprehended what was said, were too stunned to speak. Others probably did not hear, or, out of conditioning or of acute embarrassment, continued picking on snacks as if nothing had happened.

Needless to say this language, this attitude of total disrespect, and an apparent objective to humiliate everyone was not confined to M’s home. They were all duly brought to work, where employees’ parents, their brains, their education etc were all routinely dredged out when there was no context for all this. These verbal assaults were regular, unstinting and conducted in reporting relationships with a clear power imbalance. Reporting to him, I received weekly threats that my next salary would be withheld and that I will lose my job because many were ‘dying to take it, you know’. The consequence was that while I carried on at work as usual, I lost weight and regularly threw up due to distress.

M was an unadulterated, purebred bully.

Why am I telling you all this?

Well simply so that those of you, who suffer in silence, know that it *is* possible to recover from such bullying and come out unscathed and even look back on it as a bad dream. Because there are ways to cope, knowing that there is a time to escalate and there is a time to exit.

Bullying is not pleasant. It can take many forms but always involves some mix of denigration, criticism, humiliation, coercion and insults. It is not always easy to identify a bully. Many bullies employ a Jekyll-and-Hyde persona, have a volatile but manipulative personality, are generally insecure and arrogant, and the biggest test of them all – when questioned directly, either turn into meek mice or deny everything.

The effects of bullying are a veritable mix and none of them is pleasant, for the sufferer of bullying or his/ her family. High levels of stress and anxiety are common as are frequent illnesses, pains, exhaustion, sleeplessness,concentration and other memory related issues, panic attacks, depression and reduced self-esteem.

So how does one deal with a workplace bully? Well here are some lessons I have learnt through my experiences:

* Ascertain the pattern, if you are being bullied. What precipitates these verbal assaults? Are there particular settings? Are there particular times of the year (for instance, heads of sales may be under target pressure by year-end; you do not have to be understanding but it helps to understand the source of the bad behaviours)? The best way is to keep a diary with dates, places, incidents and content of the monologues (almost always). Remember if someone else is losing their head, you do not have to follow their example.

* Try and address it first with the bully. Be specific about the examples you use: the setting, the content of the conversation, the feelings you experienced. Many bullies are essentially insecure people, who do not always do well in 1-to-1 challenges. In many cases, you will find the bully may not apologise but he or she will back down. In other cases, such peace will, alas, not come to pass.

* Thoroughly assess the procedures – if any – in your firm for escalation and formal complaint. Be aware that if the bully is senior enough, many a time, firms will prefer to retain him or her over you.

* Escalate formally, if your organisational context allows and encourages it. Be prepared to stand your ground, especially because escalation procedures often distress those who escalate. Your office ‘friends’ may not want to hang out with you during this time, so make sure to have plenty of support available outside. Be prepared too, that the organisation may ask you to leave and you need to have a back-up, especially if your family depends on you.

* If you are vindicated, good for you! You may have conducted a great signalling exercise within the organisation at great personal cost, but many others may thank you for it. However if you have to leave, make sure the papers are all in order and do not show that there was some performance or individual issues, which blame you. Obtain a clear official reference from the company which certifies your work, designation and duration at the company.

* Next time you see a bully, be prepared to stand up for the bullied. Not everyone is as courageous as you are.

You probably want to know how I coped with M.

Well, I didn’t. I was very young. My company did not have a formal complaints mechanism. I was sapped of all my energy and my self-preservation instinct kicked in. I quit. Upon receiving my resignation, the man, who had assured me that many were lined up to take my job, phoned and asked me why I was leaving, whether it was the money or if the challenge was not enough for someone of my calibre. He tried to cajole me to stay by offering a carrot of a salary revision and offer of a holiday (that I did not take a day off in a year was not brought up). I stayed calm and told him that it was in his interest to let me leave on my terms, because if I were forced to articulate any more than ‘personal reasons’, he might regret it. In Europe they do not take kindly to mental harassment and bullying, particularly if it involves a male manager and a female subordinate.

I have experienced at least 2 more bullies since then. On both occasions, I was representing my clients’ interests in negotiations, so there was no exit option. On both occasions, I stood up – literally and figuratively – and declared the discussions adjourned until the lost tempers and reason were found. Surprisingly the bullies backed down, apologised and normally scheduled programming resumed.

M continued to build his career within the company and now works for a reputable organisation in the same industry in the USA. I hope he has changed his ways. In the USA, the way to the cleaners may be remarkably short, especially if someone is dragging you all the way up there with a stop-over at the courts…

PS: This post was written mainly because in the comments to my earlier post on mental health, Little Indian asked if I would write something about workplace bullying. I may not have addressed how Indian managers deal with it, but the story I relate above involved an Indian manager (“M”) with an Indian subordinate (me). The story could have taken place anywhere but my main aim was to help you be aware if you or someone else is a victim of bullying. Don’t wait to let the bully destroy you; deal with it.

With his wife, also a specialist doctor in a different field, I often visited him in the Psychiatry OPD where patients and their families awaited their turn. The range of emotions writ large on the faces of the accompanying members of the family of the patient ranged from exhaustion to exasperation, whereas confusion, fear, uncertainty and a host of others lined the faces of patients.

My brother took the time to explain various things to me: what the known causes of some mental illnesses were, how the various illnesses manifested, how to tell signs that there is an emergent problem, how one label differs from another, how the patients were treated, what the role of their family and work environment was in their recovery and so on. For a young teenager, I was probably then one of the most well-informed people amongst my friends and family.

More importantly the experience taught me to manage my prejudice. I say ‘manage’ because illnesses manifest differently and misunderstandings, about how dangerous mentally unwell individuals are, abound even though the patients are more likely to harm themselves than others.

The truth remains that it is the lack of awareness and therefore the abundance of prejudice (Latin praeiumacr.gifdicium: prae-, pre- + iumacr.gifdicium, judgment) not just at the workplace but also in the immediate and extended family, that keeps the incidence of mental health well-hidden in India. Now and then there comes a film, which tries hard to bring up the issue, such as Aparna Sen’s ’15 Park Avenue’ or Mahesh Bhatt’s ‘Woh Lamhe’, albeit not without enforcing the same stereotypes of violence, aggression, suicide and such like and then, nothing. Silence.

Things may be changing, if ever so slowly, as you can see from this blog by an Indian mother chronicling her daughter’s schizophrenia. Even so, by and large, the management of mental health issues remains a dominantly NGO activity in India, as captured wonderfully in this book.

With growing urbanisation, increasing work pressures (I am tempted to list all the personal blogs by Indian bloggers that admit to feeling listless, tired, demotivated and depressed about their work!), social isolation, increasing economic disparities and such inevitable joys of globalisation and industrialisation, the numbers of Indians with chronic depression, anxiety, mood and personality disorders, and eating disorders are only likely to increase.

There are however signs that in some workplaces in India, there is recognition that mental illness is not necessarily a red flag that calls for immediate dismissal of the employee. In a more structured and simpler social environment such a dismissal would be grounds for a lawsuit for discrimination but that is for another discussion, perhaps. More than ever before, an employee, who has suffered a bout of mental illness, needs a supportive environment and – in the absence of a universal healthcare system – money for ongoing medication and psychiatric evaluation and consultation sessions.

A few aware managers are taking the initiative to manage the concerned employees well by supporting them and helping them manage their workload, while ensuring that the employee does not face discrimination, ridicule, sarcasm, stigmatisation, further isolation and other behavioural traits of mental health related illiteracy in the workplace. Tall order for a manager, requiring resourcefulness, a great deal of emotional intelligence, authority and influence in the workplace, and to some extent, a willingness to take personal risk in his or her own career!

Much as I should like to name the multinational firms in Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore, where I know these practices to be well-rooted, my doing so will violate the privacy of many individuals. Thanks for your understanding.

You are an enlightened reader group. Do you have stories or experiences from your workplace to share? Please use the comments link below.

Much tut-tutting happened in the Indian press both times, but there was no commentary on the signalling effects of such untimely demises or whether the industry’s work practices need a closer scrutiny. I agree that Kiran Karnik, currently President of NASSCOM and an alumnus of one of the earliest batches of IIMA graduates, is in good health and apparently so are his executive colleagues at NASSCOM. But let’s face it – bad news does make more headlines than steady state does.

To an observer with experience in the nascent heady days of the Indian IT industry, but now with a health hat on, these two untimely demises appear to be more than coincidental. They are probably indicators of the general working practices of the industry, and their long-term health consequences. Such is my interest in the matter that recently a consulting prospect in the IT industry told me, jokingly I was assured, that if I were to get any consulting projects with Indian IT firms, I should keep a firm rein on my desire to make their employees aware of their rights as human beings and as employees, and the need to take stock of their health periodically. Not a good sign of management commitment, is it? But since one swallow does not make a summer, lets examine some trends.

In the 1990s, the industry was characterised by long work hours, even longer during industry jamborees, fuelled by a lot of testosterone and alcohol, never punctuated by exercise or recharge time. Those who left work at 6 or 7 pm were described as part-timers, albeit jokingly and most found it hard to take days off. Women in management roles in the IT industry – not including HR, accounting and software development – were few and far in between, some of whom are now at the helm of leading technology firms in India and elsewhere. Either we played the game by these rules, or we didn’t; but some of us struck hard bargains about working to different rules and were supported by our managers. Many of my colleagues from that time are still in the industry but experiencing, despite being relatively young, chronic problems such as overweight, neck and back pains, high blood pressure and cholesterol, and in some cases, the need for untimely bypasses.

Through the noughties however, with India being described as the world’s back office and increasingly the front office, the nature of work has changed slightly. And to already well-ensconced bad health habits – including lack of exercise, lack of regular health check ups, regular consumption of scrumptious but artery clogging foods – some new culprits have been added. To long work hours, we have added irregular work times, including night shifts, and an upward trend in eating out. The former does a lot more damage than just interfere with the normal circadian rhythm of the body. These ill effects are widely studied and well-documented. The latter, while almost always foods rich in sugar and fats, is made possible by good monies being made by young people too tired to cook or to relax otherwise after long work hours. There are some signs that more and more young people in urban areas are now taking to gyms, but with a greater focus on trendiness and appearance than on health and in the absence of solid data, it is moot whether actual exercise taking has increased.

Statistical data about India, that allow the examination of a correlation between working hours and chronic health problems, or even comparisons with data from other countries, are hard to come by. But the link itself is well understood.

In the interest of ensuring that the Indian economic boom does not become a one-time burst but remains sustainable in its growth, it is well-worth asking whether it is time we started investing in the health of the workforce today. Awareness, capacity and delivery mechanisms are all essential, but in a corporate context, what is required above all is management commitment. And to that end, I hope NASSCOM – and the Indian IT industry – bosses are listening.

Preeti Aroon, over at FP Passport, asks why the slum-dwellers of Dharavi prefer TVs to toilets.

I’ve visited Mumbai many times myself, and I’ve always wondered about the TV antennas poking through thatched-roofed shacks. How can “these people” buy TVs when their kids are malnourished and wading through sewage-infested water?

I suppose it’s a matter of priorities. If you are accustomed to eating light meals and not having a toilet, you just might prefer a TV over heartier food and latrines. TV provides an escape from misery.[FP Passport]

If at all it’s a matter of priorities, Preeti needs to ask why they are so. “Never had a toilet, so don’t need one now” is not good enough an explanation.

Toilets are not very useful—especially in urban settings—unless there is a good system of sanitation. You can build a toilet, but you can’t just buy sanitation. Similarly, running water is not something you can buy from a shop even if you had money (as many people in Dharavi do, that’s why they can afford to buy TV sets). So the residents of Dharavi are not seeking any more escape than their well-heeled counterparts in parts of the city that do have good toilets and running water. No, the residents of Dharavi chose to buy TV sets because the government has failed to provide them with sanitation and water supply.

When states fail to provide public goods, people try to provide them privately. That’s why you have captive power plants, Aquaguards (as Atanu Dey reminded me recently) and private security guards. That’s inefficient but oftentimes the only option. But sometimes—like in the case of sanitation and running water supply—you don’t have this option. So you just live with the fact that you can’t. And watch TV—where a shrill reporter is reporting the latest outrage (how could the authorities at Tirupati have allowed the Bachchan family as many as 20 minutes in the temple!)—because you can.