Gopikrishna Durgaprasad, a 25-year-old from Andhra Pradesh, had joined an IT firm in Pune only a few days before taking the drastic step of ending his life.
Farmers and the country's IT professionals hardly have anything in common professionally, but both are going through the same crisis at present, i.e. an uncertain future. While the country is already reeling under a spate of farmer suicides, the recent suicide of an IT professional in Pune due to his 'uncertain future' has sent ripples in the IT sector, which is facing massive layoffs.
Gopikrishna Durgaprasad, a 25-year-old from Andhra Pradesh, had joined an IT firm in Pune only a few days before taking the drastic step of ending his life. In his suicide note, Durgaprasad clearly mentioned that he was worried about his future as he felt that there is no job security in the IT sector.
Unlike the farming community, the number of cases of IT professionals committing suicide is not high. But Durgaprasad's recent suicide has highlighted the vulnerability of the IT professionals at a time when the IT sector has been hit hard financially and a massive amount of layoffs is already underway.
On Thursday, IT giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) announced the results of the April-June quarter and reported a nearly 6-per cent fall in its net profit, which stands at Rs 5,945 crore. Other IT firms are also facing a similar financial setback after the global economic meltdown. Apart from the worldwide financial crisis, the US government's change in policy of creating jobs within the country has also affected the IT sector in India. These and other financial factors have made the otherwise lucrative IT sector vulnerable, with more than 50,000 IT employees at the risk of losing their jobs this year.
While the fear psychosis of losing jobs is gripping the IT sector, cases like Durgaprasad's suicide have forced IT employee forums to take steps to address the crisis on an urgent basis. On Friday evening, members of various IT professionals' forums organised a candlelight vigil in Hinjewadi IT Park. Though the main motive of the candle march was to pay homage to Durgaprasad, the larger purpose was to bring IT professionals together at a time of crisis to avoid any such incidents in the future.
Speaking to DNA, Deepak Patil, a founder member of Maharashtra IT Professionals' Forum, said, "The industry is going through a tough period and it is the employee who has to face the brunt. The employees are in a never-seen-before situation and are not sure about how long they can retain their jobs. With a gloomy future, the incident like the recent suicide can take place in the future as well and there is thus a need for IT professionals to stand together in this crisis and help each other in every possible way."
Social media is flooded with IT professionals' accounts of how they were asked to leave their companies on short notice. Recently, there was an audio clip that went viral in which a techie working with one of the biggest IT companies was asked to leave by the firm's HR department in a day. With such kinds of horror stories on social media, IT professionals are scared that they might well face the same situation in the near future.
Puja Kumari, an IT employee working in Pune, told DNA, "The present situation in the IT sector is such that we do not know if we will have a job tomorrow. The companies are mercilessly cutting down their staff strength without even giving people the proper time to find another job."
According to some employees, company managements are nowadays creating new reasons to fire employees. Elavarasan Raja, the Pune and Mumbai coordinator for Forum for Information Technology Employees (FITE), said, "The companies are coming up with new ideas to fire their employees. They are setting very tough performance improvement programmes (PIPs) so that most employees are not able to clear it, and once an employee fails to clear the test, the company gets the reason to fire him or her."
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Gopikrishna Durgaprasad had joined the IT firm in Pune just a few days ago
In his suicide note, he mentioned he was worried about job security
The sector has been hit hard and many firms have planned massive layoffs
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