3 days ago
- General
- New Indian Express
104 years of the B&C Mills strike: What is work's role in our lives?
The compulsive belief that work is a moral good — the work ethic — has emerged as a key force in legitimising and enforcing a social existence, entirely based on wage labour. As scholar and anti-work theorist Kathi Weeks writes in her book The Problem with Work, 'The behaviours that the ethic prescribes remain consistent — the identification with and systematic devotion to waged work". However, she also notes that how one justifies their compliance to the system can vary.
Most workers CE spoke to — daily wage, low-income — found it difficult to even comprehend a life outside wage labour, even hypothetically.
Babu (48), security guard at an apartment complex, said, 'I work 12 hours a day, and get about half an hour for having my lunch. If I don't work, it will cause fights at home. Would anyone like it if you simply slept all day?' When pressed to imagine a life of idleness, he went silent for a minute. 'I do not know what idleness even means. No such concept exists in my life,' he added.
