Before I dive into my story I would like to ask all the readers about Batukeshwar Dutt .
How many of us remember him?
Let me tell you he was an Indian revolutionary and he is best known for exploding few bombs along with the great freedom fighter Bhagat Singh however as Bhagat Singh was hanged to death Batukeshwar was given Life imprisonment and even though he begged that he should also be hanged he was tried and given life imprisonment and he got to see the free India and its reality which was in fact even darker in the hands of few selfish Indian Politician and he then quoted that Bhagat Singh always suspected that even if India gets freedom, it will be not a happy India if it goes in the wrong hands and selfish minds.
Well, I can feel the pain today very deeply and I cannot tell you how painful every moment is to see that even after 71 years of freedom we don’t get to enjoy this freedom at our workplace and employees are ill-treated, humiliated and tortured by some of the most savage men whom we call Seniors, our superiors and even sometimes our Leaders though they are all Indians just like us they sometimes behave just like the Firangis did and they have such a great feeling if you call them Angrez.
Fighting a battle every day at the workplace is not just burdensome but also painful as “Emotional Harassment” is not limited to just an employee but it pierces into every family member associated with that employee and yes I mean mainly the spouse and the children also suffer the same pain every single day .
And the irony is that this piercing cuts you deep yet it leaves no physical marks and the colour of blood is not seen oozing out, this harassment tortures you mentally and ruins you emotionally it cannot be measured in a standardized way so an employee and his family has to go through a very hard-hitting time.
Well for most of the employees working in India “Emotional Harassment” could be an extraterrestrial term in the professional arena.
Though the apparent reason is not that the Indian employees have such high standard that they have never come across something like emotional harassment, abuse or torture it is only because we are all so used to this phenomenon of letting ourselves mistreated at the hands of senior management that we never think of shielding ourselves from this ill treatment. Just like we all thought in our pre independence era that Gora babus from Britain are God sent Bosses and we all had to bear them no matter what.
I am talking about it because I cannot stand anyone who stands for it and one such heartless case which shook me from within , made me question about the dignity of an employee at the workplace in India after so many years of Independence as this was happening in one of the well known Boarding school of India.
So, I raised my voice I tried to bring this issue up and the first thing that happened was they
”Shut me down”
I thought when I will raise my voice against this issue and ink about it the management will seriously probe into it but rather than understanding and discussing the problem, they not just simply denied it they went a step ahead and even sent a warning letter using unprofessional and threatening language.
And for the first time in my writing journey I realized how scared they were of the power of ink and I was indeed proud of myself to see them getting scared and it will certainly encourage any good believer in ink to write more and even better to leave a strapping impression and call for a change.
One thing that strikes my mind is the “classless” attitude of superiors trying to build the future of this nation because they are the people who are heading a big school in India .It makes me also worry about the future of our children who are getting educated by these selfish and valueless mentors .
Many schools are fighting hard to stop the teen bullying however in this school not just teen bullying is a problem, Adult bullying by the managers is openly rampant too and things like group boycott of an honest employee ,publicly humiliating ,Isolating and abusing is quite common and this is happening because the managers are allowed to do so by the Superiors.
And this is where I realized that this area of “Emotional harassment” which is very subtle to define needs a strong platform from where an honest employee can stand, fight and raise his voice.
Dear readers if you are thinking that I am talking about sexual harassment and taking sides of gender then let me tell you that we do have at least few laws against the sexual harassment and certainly it needs to be more stringent but what about the law and commandments against genderless harassment like man to man harassment or women to women harassment, we have to open our eyes to the “Harassment” keeping the gender aside.
When we understand the term “Harassment “ at workplace and define it ,we solve half the problem. And this is why I am trying to ink so much about it.
We need clear rules and guidelines at our workplace that defines and gives no one a right to
- Publicly humiliate any employee
- Abuse
- Emotionally torture
- Gives impossible deadlines to complete the work
- Isolate from the work
- Making biased committees ,without any Verbal or written warning
As employees we shall be aware of our rights and enjoy our freedom even at the workplace , when we decide to work for any organization/institute we allow ourselves to grow, learn and improve but not be used, abused or tortured.
Talking in statistical code, in India around 90% of employees are emotionally abused and publicly humiliated but these employees do not talk about it , and the number one reason why they never report it is because they are so confident that they will never get a support from their co workers, peers or superiors as the biggest problem is everybody wants to save their own job.
I see that coyness and being submissive is the biggest weakness that has led emotional harassment take its deep roots in the Indian work environment. We don’t work as team we don’t see communication as a powerful tool to Solve problems though we have started pouring in a lot of money and time in soft skills training , we don’t really work the way 21st century workforce is designed to be, we behave just the way our selfish emperors, rulers and kings did when British invaded us .
Even today we are thinking of our own benefit , we are never together, we never raise our voice when it needs to be raised and later we have so many comments to pour in. I see nothing has changed we are still being ruled by some of the superiors who carry some false haughtiness of departed British officers .
This selfish attitude is indeed very dangerous at any workplace and when we talk about the education arena if this attitude creeps in it will bring in doom as educated minds with no values are no less than devils.
No employee deserves to be treated worthless and the biggest weapon to fight this harassment is strength, courage and voice .
So, be a true professional stand up and fight against this harassment and enjoy your freedom even at the workplace because being alive, free and awake as a free citizen of India will hold no good until and unless we are free even at our workplaces .
So remember you might be only one at this moment but we all know the power of one match if you raise your voice with full vigor and strength you will be no less than a powerful explosion much needed for the deaf system as Bhagat Singh rightly said “If the deaf are to hear ,you need to make a big sound”.