"Companies are not employing now because they are waiting for unemployment to get worse!"

As the Indian economy is looking at its worst crisis since its independence, the big media is silent and largely ignoring the plight of the common office worker and labourer on the street. But media ignoring something doesn’t mean it is not happening. We every now and then have access to a few news outlets that do give us the true figure of over 9 million jobs lost just in this year. But the other side of this is the Corporations. Are they really in a fix businesswise or are they just holding their positions right now? An interview with an insider in the corporate human resources scene reveals the best laid plans of the Corporates.

Welcome and thank you for speaking to me. Could you state who you are and what you do for our readers?

You can call me Shyam. I am the Head of HR at a Media House and it is one of the bigger Channels out there. I have been in HR all my life and I started my career back in 2000 when liberalisation was at its peak. I would say that I have had a good career and a fruitful one.

So, it’s all good then? You don’t have any complaints against the Corporate dream?

Oh, I have many complaints about it and I despise what the work environment has rapidly deteriorated to but for people like me there is no real alternative but to slave away in these conditions. The funny thing is that we make light of the plight of farmers when they say, “if we cannot do farming, what else do we do?” that is pretty relevant for us Cubicle slaves as well. What choice but sitting in cubicles and pressing buttons do we have for a living? That aside, work since the 2008 crisis has been steadily on a downturn. When I joined the media world, hiring was what we did! We were building teams and teams built products and products sold etc etc. Now, being in HR is about firing people in the least amount of time possible – down to mere minutes in fact.

You mentioned 2008. What was that like?

To be completely honest, I know about it anecdotally and academically. Since the company I work in relies on the Indian market we weren’t hammered by the world downturn that happened in 2008. But all my peers who were working in IT were finished and I think the Liberalisation dream run was reaching its finishing line then. I look at India now and look back at that crisis and I can only thank the then Govt for steadying the ship.

So what has gone wrong now?

Well I would love to say GST and Demonetisation and stuff but those are just the straws that broke a camel’s back. Things like GST are badly implemented but cannot sink business and I refuse to believe it can. Demonetisation, yes. But it has been a year since it happened and even if it killed the economy it cannot be stopping its revival – and when I say revival, I am talking about employee strengths returning back to sane levels.

I will be more specific, what has gone wrong in Corporations from a Human Resource perspective?

Well we are all told that business is down and there is a recession. That has reduced budgets and therefore we have to fire you and you and you. And then five days later we hire for the same positions at 50% of the previous cost, usually some newbie or so. We are of course automating to such a level that we literally have no developers on the floor anymore. I can’t remember the time that development happened at the “factory floor” so to speak. Nothing is made in India even. All the software and hardware used are in a SaaS model. The hardware otherwise can be fixed and maintained by some Ukrainian coder paid $10 an hour when we pay $100. The only people that seem to be having it good are the Marketing, Strategy and Innovation teams. I guess that would be the case of course but if we are struggling on low sales, how come Sales and Marketing never pay that price?

So you are saying that India the “outsourcing capital” is being Bangalored?

It is true. For a long time since the call center boom what have we essentially been? A center for cheap labour and that is it. All these damn IT companies that we see like Wipro, Infy, etc that got their 20 year tax holidays and profited, where are the “Word, PowerPoint and Excels” that are made in India? That is essentially the problem. India was either a Call Center or a Coding Center. We never made the product itself so we lost the labour the minute the rest of the developing nations could speak English and code. And honestly, India got lucky. We have the worst work practices and worst quality of products. It had to collapse someday.

We hear that 9 million jobs have been lost in the Indian market, what is your take on that?

I can’t say I am surprised! I am no fan of Modi or BJP, I have seen both at work but I keep that aside when it comes to matters of economics. It has been three years of every other nonsense but serious work with this Govt, really. Let me save you time by saying that folks like Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha have it bang on with their critique of this Govt. That aside, I can definitely say that there have been massive layoffs in the IT and Media. But it is not very straightforward as firing because business is down.

What do you mean?

Well, none of these companies are close to sinking or even to a major hit on their bottom line revenues. Most of the firing of the lower level staff happened with a huge bang but all those positions have been quietly filled up again. Now, if business was really down that wouldn’t be the case, so this is a case of companies burning their budgets somewhere else and the factory floor taking the hit.

But hasn’t that always been the case?

Well yes. It has always been the entire point of being in business to increase profits but there is a difference. When you start out in business you make money by expanding, producing more and selling more. After that you peak out and then comes the cut backs and cutting costs to keep the rate of profit continuously going up. This is the problem. It is not that profit is lacking, it is that the Company wants more of it. So, instead of starting and chasing new lines of business and wanting to expand, the company wants to ride the wave.

How does that make sense in the current Indian context?

Well, take the case of the IT majors that did their layoffs. Most of those positions have been filled again with temps or contractual workers. Additionally, projects that don’t align with the overall company NPV are being dumped – which would be fine if this was 10 years ago when you could refuse business, not now. Also, a more nefarious tactic is being seen in the media world were the cost of Content Acquisition is a major component of the Retail price. What happened is that companies buy Content, which comes with a Price that is literally pulled out of the Content owner’s ass. And the cost of content is constantly increasing year after year, quality is increasingly bullshit, and audiences don’t watch it. So, instead of kicking the Content Owners out of their “Asset Bubble” broadcasters are cutting labour costs instead and the net result is that India now has some of the worst broadcast quality in the world! This at a time when the internet TV players with the big bucks are already ripping Indian distributors a new asshole!

So that means that the Work is there to be done but Companies can’t afford manpower for whatever reasons?

Not entirely. They can indeed afford to fill these positions but they have realised something. With three years of Modi’s disastrous economics, unemployment has increased to such levels that the labor cost has come down drastically. Worse, the trend is set to continue so Corporations are waiting for the pool of unemployed to increase to such a level that wages come down further. It is basically Wage speculation on right now.

But that affects business as well, doesn’t it?

This is India. Indians will lap up any nonsense that is shown on TV. So even if the quality dips in content or technology by 50%, people will still watch it. This is the endemic “Baniya” mentality that Indian companies have always had – that instead of investing in quality, find the market for bad quality.

So, the future is bleak is it?

Well, if you are just joining the job market, this is going to be the new normal. For older generations like me, yes… this is the end of the line. Best to leave India altogether.