Rush-hour 24x7

It will soon be a year since Bala (name changed on request) joined as chief technology officer at one of New Delhi’s software development firms. Equipped with an MBA degree from one of Hyderabad’s premier institutes, he had everything going for him. It also helped that he was charming, witty, and a perfectly chivalrous gentleman — the kind that’s currently going out of stock. Work was exciting, almost heady. He had a team of 25 junior developers reporting to him. But, being boss felt a bit like being Spiderman — with great power came great responsibility. “The organisation culture was stressful — the kind that passed right down the hierarchy to the junior-most level,” he says.

Bala took it on himself to insulate his team from the stress. That entailed doing a fair bit of their work. After about three months, he found himself working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and taking work home. Then began the insomnia. “My eyes would open at 1.30 am each night. I would be up replying to emails most of the night,” he recalls.

After months of this, he was shocked when his boss suddenly yelled at him for his team’s weak output. “I was putting in my 110 per cent and yet it wasn’t showing. I realised I was doing something wrong.” That’s when he decided to seek therapy. A combination of sleeping pills and counselling sessions later, he embarked on some soul-searching. His therapist made him understand that he needed to delegate. And that he was expecting too much out of himself and his team. “I learnt to change my expectations — a bit like aspiring for an A-grade band, and not necessarily a 100 per cent score,” he explains. Eventually, his team took on more, and Bala learnt to lower his standards and focus on “getting the job done.”

“It breaks you, not being able to cope,” Dr Rahul Chandok, senior consultant and psychiatrist with Fortis hospital, tells BLink over a phone interview. While the physical damage can include blood pressure, diabetes and infertility, the emotional and mental breakdown is more lethal.

According to a survey by the global consulting firm Manpower Group, young Indians clock more hours at work than their global peers. Millennials (those born in the 1980s and 1990s) in India put in 52 hours per week on average, compared to 48 in China, 46 in Japan, 45 in the US, 42 in Canada, 43 in Germany and 41 in the UK .

The survey covered 19,000 millennials in 25 countries. “Millennials have a career ultramarathon ahead of them and they know it,” the report said. By 2020, millennials like Bala will form over a third of the global workforce, the report estimates.

So, why is young India working itself to disease and depression?

Trading freedom for pay

Psychologists say that a significant chunk of the work stress in India is related to globalisation and the onset of competitive corporate culture. The information technology or IT industry boom, followed by the outsourcing or BPO craze, saw workplace stress zoom to unprecedented levels. “The West saw in India a ready workforce that was willing to be exploited. And it came cheap. Young Indians had never seen salaries of that kind... the culture of long shifts, night shifts, weekend shifts and mobile workspaces that spilled into your homes became the norm,” says Chandok.

“For money, we were willing to trade away all our freedoms,” he adds. The struggle to cope with fiercely competitive workplaces and unrealistic targets was compounded by the pressure of making it all look easy and cool on social media.

Social media-induced competitiveness is having a telling impact, Chandok says. “Earlier, you didn’t see it and therefore never aspired for it. Buying a home or owning an Audi was not something young people did. Today, they stretch their neck out to do it.”

Delhi-based psychologist and healer Vikas Bajaj calls millennials the “cut-copy-paste” generation that measures professional success purely in material terms. Eighty per cent of his clients have workplace-related stress, he says, and blames it on the rise of the “American work culture” and high-paying corporate jobs.

He describes a client in his late 20s who was a workaholic and earning ₹40,000 a month at an MNC job that entailed a lifestyle of clubbing, owning expensive cars and drug abuse. This involved a monthly expenditure of ₹70,000. The frustration borne out of wanting more than what life offered generated anger issues, leading to violent outbursts against his family members.

“What we try to do is get clients to accept the reality of the challenges they face,” he says. That, in turn, helps them develop realistic expectations of themselves and their workplaces.

Addicted to work

At a leading private hospital in Delhi, 30-year-old emergency physician Dr Phalguna Kommareddy is about to start the first of his two 13-hour shifts for the week. On the remaining four days he has a six-hour shift. On record that’s 48 hours, but the reality is far different. “Burnouts are the highest in emergency medicine,” he says. Calling it a day and handing over to the next-in-charge is never easy.

An emergency medicine room can feel a bit like the McDonald’s of trauma. There is an endless procession of emergency cases waiting to be treated in a punishing process-driven flow — a smashed skull or punctured spleen in a road accident, a cardiac arrest, a broken limb, burn injuries... nearly 100 of them each day. Speed is crucial. Kommareddy and his team of doctors jump into action by intervening in three ways: resuscitate (revive), risk stratify (rule out life-threatening ailments through quick diagnosis), and coordinating patient care (dressing, catheter use and so on).

Then there’s the Triage — sorting victims in the order of emergency, from 1 to 3. Cardiac arrest, for instance, would be triaged as 1 and given priority over a broken limb in 2. But in India, patients rarely show a willingness to respect this order, says Kommareddy.

The hardest part is dealing with relatives and friends — their impatience at waiting for their turn or, worst of all, their hostility in the event of the death of the patient on arrival. “Their aggression, verbal abuse shake you to the core. It makes you question your self-worth and why you’re in the profession,” he says. When one of his colleagues was recently beaten up by a mob of relatives, the hospital administration watched in mute silence, he says. In government hospitals, the shifts are even more gruelling. An emergency physician would typically step into his shift on a Monday morning and manage to leave only on Tuesday night, clocking 36 hours non-stop.

Despite the serious challenges to work-life balance, Kommareddy manages to maintain a cool and composed Zen-like exterior. He insists that he never compromises on sleep, timely food, physical activity and daily meditation. “If you don’t have enough time out, your lack of focus in the Room becomes a burden to everybody around.”

He hasn’t taken a single day off in the last 10 months. Physicians like him are entitled to 28 days’ leave annually, but only a few use it unless they are in an emergency themselves.

“Most of us are adrenaline junkies,” Kommareddy says in all seriousness. “You are in a position of power where, for that brief period, you feel empowered and in charge of making life-changing decisions for the patients.”

And then, just for a moment, he drops all signs of seriousness. “At least we’re spared from taking our work home!” he rounds off with a laugh.

Vacation-deprived

India has been ranked the fourth most vacation-deprived country globally, as 63 per cent take fewer days off work than they are entitled to, according to a 2016 report by online travel aggregator Expedia. For context, the countries that fared better were Spain and UAE (68 per cent), Malaysia (67 per cent) and South Korea (64 per cent).

The report shows that in India 40 per cent of those surveyed did not use all their vacation days as their work schedule or staff shortage did not allow it; 27 per cent found it difficult to schedule a family holiday; 21 per cent feared that important work decisions might be made in their absence; and, interesting of all, 21 per cent felt they would be perceived positively by their employers if they didn’t claim their entitled leave.

“If you are rewarded for responding to work emails when you’re on a holiday, how can you ever take your foot off the pedal?” asks Chandok. “Why do organisations fail to see that for an employee to maintain a healthy quality of life, the right to leisure should be a fundamental one.” A quarter of those surveyed said they expect to keep working beyond the age of 70 and 14 per cent claimed they are likely to work until they die.

According to Delhi-based clinical psychologist Adhishree Yadav, there are three reasons people overwork: It could be their personality type -- a perfectionist who prefers to micromanage; when work compensates for the lack of a healthy social life; or when work is used to escape from reality.

Dr Vijaykumar, a Bengaluru-based consultant psychiatrist at People Tree Maarga, says that often the nature of the job itself engenders job stress.

The reason stress faced by doctors is not spoken about as much as that of IT workers is because of the general expectation that doctors work long hours, he says. “Farmers experience an incredible amount of stress as much of the factors that are needed for a good crop — rain, weather conditions or market price — are beyond their control.”

Additionally, in cities like Bengaluru, factors such as traffic congestion can add to work-related stress, Vijaykumar says. A client he counselled worked for an MNC, clocked 14 workhours a day and spent two hours each day commuting. On weekends, too, the work pressure was demanding. Eventually it broke his family as his wife sought comfort in another man and he attempted suicide.

Getting treated

“In India the act of seeking help means you are either ‘weak’ or ‘mad’,” says Bajaj. Though attitudes are changing in the urban centres, and more people now seek therapy, there is still no widespread acceptance for it, he says.

There is ample evidence that work-related stress has led to severe anxiety, disturbed sleep, loss of weight and appetite, obesity, panic attacks, high blood pressure, muscle tension, physical pain, infertility, and even suicide attempts. But few acknowledge the danger, let alone seek a remedy, says Yadav.

“If there is a physical problem we don’t mind spending on 10 doctors, but if something feels wrong in our minds, we decide that the fault lies within us somehow.”

COMMENT NOW