Just in jest

Just in jest

While the French lead in giving workers off-time, we in India aren't far behind Only connect! exhorted EM Forster to his readers. Giving workers a New Year gift, the French government reversed the British novelist's dictum and gave employees the right to disconnect from their mobile phones and computers so that office work didn't disrupt their spare time. The French fondness for leisure ¬ preferably over an extended meal ¬ is famous. Even the august Académie Française, the linguistic watchdog which keeps beagle-eyed vigilance against Anglo Saxon intruders trespassing into the sacrosanct domain of the French language, has not been able to ban such entrenched Franglaisisms such as `le weekend' and `le bifstek' from rushing in where other Anglicisms fear to tread. French employees, who already enjoy a 35-hour working week which is the envy of workers in other parts of the EU, can now with impunity refuse to accept office-related phone calls or emails during their off-time. The `right to disconnect' came into law after the French labour minister, Myriam El Khomri, commissioned a study on the ill-effects of what she called `info-obesity' caused by people being unable to get away from work, even when they were off-work, because of the long arm of communication technology . While the right to be absent from work after working hours has been criticised by some on the grounds that it will adversely affect productivity, proponents of the new legislation can claim a philosophical endorsement for their view from none less than Sartre who, in his monumental `Being and Nothingness', argued that often absence has greater presence than presence itself. The Calvinist doctrine that work is worship can be countered by the Biblical injunction to consider the lilies of the field, which though they neither toil nor spin, out-array Solomon in all his glory . Which is another way of saying that if leisure is the curse of the working classes, work is the curse of the leisure classes. Closer to home, our own sarkar appeared to back this laid-back argument by continuing to make it mandatory for banks to shut shop on the second and fourth Saturdays of every month, despite the postdemonetisation cash crunch which witnessed many skipping work to stand in long money queues as though in compliance with Milton's pronouncement that they also serve who only stand and wait. Putting precept into practice, our lawmakers themselves played hookey from work by getting into a dangal over demonetisation and ensuring that the winter session of Parliament was a total washout. That shirk culture expands according to the time allotted to it is suggested by the story of the corporate recruit who, when told that timely clock-punching was a company rule, promptly obliged by giving the office clock a hefty uppercut that put it out of action, once and for all.