Strongly Needed Time Value and Work Culture in Punjab

[Dalvinder Singh Grewal]

Strongly Needed Time Value and Work Culture in Punjab

Dr Dalvinder Singh Grewal
Prof. Emeritus, Desh Bhagat University
919815366726​

After my retirement from the army after 32 years, I got a job in the industry in Mumbai. The army and even the civilian bosses were very sticklers about time. If the work is to start at 8 AM, it will start exactly at eight, and one has to reach ten minutes before that. If it ended at five, it means we have to work till five, and for packing, another ten minutes is needed before we leave the place of work. Any delay was not only condemnable but also punishable, though it became a matter of habit, yet none of us was a latecomer. The same was applicable for all functions. Life went on smoothly. However, on return to Punjab, I found a major adjustment problem. This was of the time and the work culture. When I was invited to the parties at a given time, say ten AM, I would arrive ten minutes before as per my habit but be shocked to find nothing like a function at the time. The arrangement for the function would start at that very time or even later, and the host was found ready after an hour or so. The guest turned up two to three hours late. In the offices, including the government offices, the employees did not turn up on time. It was more so about the heads of departments, who occasionally landed one or generally two hours late. This habit had percolated even to home life, where the service renders, like aya, washerman, and house cleaner, had their own time. When I went to the villages around, I found most of the people gathered at the commonplace playing cards or gossiping around, whiling away the time and not bothering with the fields. Possibly they had left their fields to the migrant labour whom they did not even bother to regularly check. This had lost the value of work time altogether; work ethics had changed altogether. Hardworking farmers had become easygoing. Following the adage, ‘Do in Rome as the Romans do,’ I too tried to adjust according to the local culture and time, but I could not give up my longtimehabit of being exactly on time and working with utmost sincerity even though I was sometimes made the butt of jokes. As the time passed, Punjab started feeling the result of this change of work culture with the habit of ‘not honoring the commitments timely.’ The industry in Punjab started dwindling; the farm products went so low that they became uneconomical for the farmers, and the business started crumbling. The corruption took hold in offices since the babus did not provide the job in time but, in turn, demanded a bribe for doing their jobs. Students did not attend classes regularly, and the proxy system was largely in vogue. Skipping the classes, they would huddle somewhere at a forlorn place and be gradually lured into drugs by the drug mafia. The health standards in general also deteriorated as the hard work went out of the life of the general public. Since the education did not provide quality job seekers and the health did not meet required standards, the employment rate of the youth dwindled drastically, especially in the Armed Forces. There were about 20% Punjabis in the officer cadre in the Army in the seventies and eighties, which got reduced to a mere 2% in the twenty-first century. Similar were the results in other central government jobs and in industry, where Punjabis were gradually replaced even in Punjab by the migrant workers. Punjab has now fallen from the first position to the 19th position on all-India scales and is known as the land of farmers with suicidal tendencies, unemployed youth addicted to drugs, and failing businesses, industry, and agriculture. The peace-loving state has become the world of an angry as well as a disgusted public demanding solutions from the government for the problems that they created themselves. I feel that if Punjab has to rise from the ashes, it has to change its work culture and have the due value of time. The value of hard work and commitments to time for which the Punjabis were known globally has to be readopted. The culture of Punjabis as the dedicated students and teachers at educational institutions, the committed workers in industry and agriculture, and dedicated mothers to bringing up their children, and the control of the elders in families have to be inculcated again to get Punjab to its origins. No government can change the fate of the public; it is the people who themselves have to do it, and there is no alternative but to change.​