Our leaders must understand the young generations mood
Yes, the CPI (M) Politbureau that met in New Delhi recently saw the West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee clashing with his colleagues over the need for banning any strikes in the IT sector in the State. West Bengal under the now wise CM is trying to get out of a stagnant phase that was started by no less a veteran Communist than the venerable Jyoti Basu. Basu was also present along with the new boss, Prakash Karat, the more bourgeois type middle class urbane Communist.What was shocking is that these highly dedicated and also highly off-tract men had the gumption to say that IT is not an essential service!
It is what is the limit to go on strike. In Kerala, in Trivandrum, in front of the Secretariat, right in the face of the CM’s office, there is a permanent shelter where strikes, bandhs is a daily occurrence. We can see what Kerala and West Bengal had become economically backward. In Kolkatta too the daily parade of striking workers was once a routine. Not any more. Under the current CM there is a wide realisation the State had to move with the world. So, the IT industry is getting all sorts of preferred attention. The CPI (M) politibureau has some old hands like M.K. Pandhe, had the guts to speak for the need to organise IT workers elsewhere, notably in Bangalore. For which the IT industry body, NASSCOM, came out with a rebuttal saying IT workers are now what is called “knowledge workers” a term innovated by Peter Drucker, some 30 years ago and now the term had transformed into a new work culture for an entire generation. As it was said knowledge workers are not workers in the conventional sense, they are potential entrepreneurs in their own sense. Everyone of them is expecting to set up his or her own start-ups and this motivation is entirely new to the Indian environment. This is the generation when the youngsters who in their early twenties start with a very high salary their fathers would have got at the end of their entire long career in government or outside.