For a paradigm shift

Today, almost everyone works in shifts. In many sectors, work is mainly divided into three shifts; morning, afternoon and night. While BPO workers rule most of the night, newspaper subs hack copies in the evening.

Of course, working in shifts is not a recent idea. History shows that even during the Roman Empire, workers toiled at night. With the Industrial Revolution came the quest for more profits and optimum use of the workforce and equipment, which led many companies to adopt shift work. In 1904, an estimated 3 per cent of the total labour force in Western Europe engaged in night work.

Shift work, as the International Labour Organisation terms it, is widely popular in most countries today (though not much in Russia, as Lee, McCann and Messenger note in Working Time Around the World ).

For instance, about a third of US employees work in shifts, while in China, 36.1 per cent of employees undertake shift work. No official data on this is available in India, but experts say with the boom in IT services in the past decade and beyond, shift work has gained considerable popularity.

That said, across the globe, there are few avenues for this huge workforce to improve talent, especially by way of updating skills or getting further education — especially in India. Few colleges run evening courses today, which have been found to benefit all types of shift workers.

In the past, millions of working men and women attended evening college and graduated in myriad disciplines. In many small towns especially, several graduates and post-graduates came up in law, economics, various genres of literature, sociology and other similar subjects.

But for a few initiatives such as the Continuing Education Programme of IIT Bombay, which offers post-graduate level courses in evening hours, evening colleges or courses are a rarity in India today. Even those that offer evening courses now do not promote serious disciplines, denying workers avenues to learn further.

In fact, Inclusive and Qualitative Expansion of Higher Education, a UGC report based on the deliberations of the working group for higher education in the 12th Five-Year Plan (2012-17), lists promoting evening colleges and universities as a key objective. But nothing much has been done on this front.

One may argue that with the arrival of correspondence courses and, now, the massive open online courses (MOOC), evening colleges are not relevant. But this is not true. Correspondence courses are not seen as a serious learning exercise in the corporate world. MOOCs require sound Internet facilities that support quality streaming, which is still a big deal in bandwidth-poor India.

On the other hand, colleges, where people gather and, as they learn, build friendships and share experiences, foster a knowledge ecosystem. Hence, the government should promote more evening colleges in the public sector to promote affordable education or incentivise private players.

Many cite declining standards of teaching as a key reason for the dwindling popularity of learning in shifts. Most (good) teachers prefer regular work hours; the evening shift is seen by many as a burden.

But experts say this can be fixed by hiring teachers exclusively for shift courses. If the government can encourage such teaching with incentives to teachers and colleges, the quality of evening courses will look up.

Evening colleges can make our cities and towns safer, as more people will travel during evenings and nights. The authorities will be prompted to ply more buses and deploy more law enforcement personnel. Tea shops, libraries, theatres and hotels will stay open late. Surely, that sounds good.

COMMENT NOW