Life after layoff

The India story is turning bleak for thousands as they face the grim reality of losing their jobs and running through their savings. Team DNA reports

Layoff is a dirty word in India. From the time popular outrage forced Jet Airways to retract its mid-October decision to sack 1,900 employees, few firms in India have announced such a move. But people are losing jobs. Just that the companies concerned have stopped making declarations.

The official position of most firms is that there is a freeze on hiring, but there won’t be layoffs. Yet, people are getting fired on various grounds. Countrywide data on the precise number of firings has not yet been compiled by any agency, but experts estimate that the figure runs into tens of thousands in the formal sector. But what about the workers on the periphery of organisations — the peons, cleaners, drivers, and security men?

“Companies are laying people off in phases. They are doing this quietly and are blaming it on everything but the downturn,” says Narender Reddy, a Hyderabad-based HR consultant. “The number of dismissals could be between 500 and 1,000 in Hyderabad alone.”

Though most of the job cuts are downturn-induced, the companies are citing any number of reasons to individual employees, many of them flimsy. Take the instance of Venkatesh* who was with a Hyderabad-based financial processing MNC. Venkatesh used to take leave every now and then to take his ailing mother to hospital. His colleagues and superiors were accommodating. But in the midst of the downturn, Venkatesh’s leaves suddenly became inexcusable. He was dismissed.

“I feel as if they took advantage of my situation to make their staff cut,” says Venkatesh. “I don’t know what to do. The market is so tight that I am unlikely to get a job any time soon.”

Even performers haven’t been spared. When Surendar Agarwal* joined L&T InfoTech in Bangalore, he never imagined that someone as driven and competent as him could ever get a pink slip. Last year, he got a “best performer” award, something he says he always deserved. Last month, he was shown the door. “I couldn’t fathom what hit me,” says Agarwal. “I am in a mess. I have a loan of Rs2,00,000 and don’t know how I’ll repay it.”

Agarwal, with a retired father, mother, wife, two children, and a brother to take care of, has been hunting for a job, but, ironically, his experience is coming in the way. “I have nine years in the profession, but nobody is ready to hire me,” he says. “Everybody prefers a fresher who can be hired at a low salary.”

Agarwal is at his wit’s end. “I cannot even afford to pay our monthly insurance premium of Rs5,500 anymore.”

Life is toughest for those at the bottom of the employment pyramid. Vikram Lokhande, a contract labourer, is clueless about running his household. The breadwinner in his family, Lokhande, 28, works at a small engineering unit in Pune. “We have a two-year-old daughter and my wife is expecting. And here I am, jobless,” he says.

Lokhande used to make over Rs5,000 a month after doing overtime. Next month, he won’t be able to pay even the monthly rent of Rs1,000 for his single-room house. “We have stopped having curries with our meals. We don’t have money to buy vegetables.”

In Surat, the diamonds have lost their sparkle for Pashupatinath Jha, a worker from Bihar, who used to polish the stones at a unit till last month. But the lack of demand in the West owing to the downturn has forced several of the city’s diamond-cutting units to close down indefinitely. “My money is running out fast,” says Jha. “I am on the verge of bankruptcy.”

With inputs from Satish Jha (Surat), Vineeta Pandey (New Delhi), Archana Dahiwal (Pune), Sobia Khan (Bangalore), and KV Ramana (Hyderabad)

* Names changed on request