“Kya farak hai 70 saal aur 6 mahine mein? Maut toh ek pal hai Babumoshai. Aane waale 6 mahine mein jo lakhon pal main jeene wala hoon uska kya hoga? Babumoshai, zindagi badi honi chahiye lambi nahin.” (What’s the difference between 70 years and 6 months? Death is a mere moment Babumoshai. What about the lakhs of moments I am going to live over the next 6 months? Babumoshai, life should be big, not long)
These lines were immortalised by Rajesh Khanna, the first Superstar of Indian Cinema, in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s ‘Anand’ (1971). The film tells the story of a terminally ill individual who is determined to make the most of the remaining months of his life. In one of his early roles, Amitabh Bachchan plays a Bengali doctor who develops a deep emotional connect with the dying man and whom the protagonist lovingly refers to as ‘Babumoshai’ (great gentleman). The director also added deft touches to the narrative in order to drive home the central message of the film, i.e. life should be big in terms of impact rather than in terms of mere length.
There’s a small lesson from ‘Anand’ that is relevant in the presently prevalent ‘number of weekly work hours’ debate in terms of what is more important…the number of work hours OR the quality of work done. From every practical and competitive standpoint, it’s the latter that actually matters the most.
Understanding the Indian Workforce
So where exactly does this debate stem from?
A very broad perspective / argument could be that there was a time when 21 year old went to war or were part of freedom struggles for their respective countries as compared to today’s 21 year old living in ‘AC environments’ and / or having ‘breakup / relationship issues’. But this is more of a generalised ‘generation gap’ (‘yeh aaj kal ke bacchhe’ kinds) thought process.
Here it’s important to understand how the profile of the Indian workforce has gradually evolved over the decades. There was a time when employees preferred a more formal work environment where people did their jobs and never questioned the authorities/management. They believed in punctuality and professionalism at work. Then there was a generation of employees that was ready to work longer hours with limited work-life balance. They tuned themselves to think about work 24 x 7 and also expected others to do the same. Then came the workforce that put a lot of value on balancing their family lives with their work lives. They were generally skeptical, but more open to taking professional risks.
And now we have the millennials / the new generation workforce. This is the generation that is educated and perhaps the most compassionate generation we have seen till date. They care a lot about having meaningful lives and making a positive contribution to the society. Most importantly, they are the first generation to grow up with easy access to technology at home and school, which has made them tech-savvy, highly dependent on the Internet and energised by social media platforms.
Till around 20 – 25 years ago, official work could only be done from office. One had to use the office systems. The trend of having a system (and later laptops and tablets) at home was yet to come. Even mobiles were yet to invade our lives. But now things are completely different. The communication revolution has brought about a paradigm shift. Employees now can work (including working on documents and sending official e-mails from their mobile phones) from anywhere. And because of this, the new generation workforce’s experiences and the way they look at things are completely different from that of the earlier generation workforces.
Simple Solution: Good Time Management
Normal work shifts / working hours in our country are for 8 or 9 hours. On any working day, even if an individual spends 2 hours on social media (personal), personal calls, smoke breaks, lunch, online purchases and workplace gossip, there’s still a good 6 – 7 hours left exclusively for work…and if one really plans these 6 – 7 hours well and concentrates on only work in these 6 – 7 hours, she / he can finish a lot of work and also achieve impactful results during this timeframe. It is all about managing one’s time without any non-factored in distractions.
Also important is the coordination between team members…right from the senior to junior levels. Let’s take an example here. There’s a deck that needs to be prepared and shared with a client by the end of a working day. An executive is assigned to do the job. The time management has to be such that it factors in every level of approval. So if the document has to go to only one superior for the final inputs and approval, the deadline for the executive should be 3:00 pm, post which the superior reviews the document, adds in her / his inputs and shares the deck with the client by 6:00 pm. And if it has to go through more levels, then the deadlines for each level needs to be reworked accordingly. This will ensure that a good job is done and most importantly, employees across levels get to go home on time, which is of utmost importance for good work-life balance.
Here even if one level does not adhere to her / his respective timelines, everyone in the team (including the ones who have adhered to their timelines) will suffer in terms of work time getting extended to disputable levels without any enhancement in productivity.
Last Word
If ‘Anand’ is remade with today’s Corporate scenario as the backdrop, the punch dialogue would undoubtedly be ‘Babumoshai kaam sahi honi chahiye lambi nahin’, which simply translates to ‘work should be big in terms of impact rather than in terms of work hours’.
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