The poor only seek livlihoods.
Yesterday, as I got off the cycle, a young lady came hesitantly to me and asked, "Do you need a cook ?". I wondered if I looked the kind who had cooks or servants !
But I asked where where she lived, and if she was a cook. She only said that she was in need of work. I took her number, and for that small conversation she was grateful. The poor only seek work.
If someone in Chennai needs her help (she said she lives in Thoraipakkam and can commute anywhere), please tell me.
Comments
- Aparna .... And then you complain that people engage other people to help in housework ... Livelihood generation my dear
- Yes, Vandana. It is essential in the here and now. And yet I would wish and work for a world where they had better and more honourable (as they themselves see it) occupations than maidhood,
- There are two truths. As always
- We again come back to the same discussion .... No job is small or big ... All are essential for the smooth running of society ... The person who cleans the streets to the factory owner who would provide employment to a few hundred ... All jobs are honourable ... Why do we classify some jobs as "beneath dignity" .... I look forward to a world where such mindsets could be changed and all jobs seen for their essentiality ( if there is such a word) without placing occupations on a social ladder ...
- Then for one, payments should match. The engineer should pay his hourly wage to the maid he employes at hourly rate.
- Aparna, as I see it you are trying to tackle to situation top down, which is next to impossible ... The engineer would say, "why should I pay the same as I have put is so much effort to get to be an engineer", which brings us to the root of the problem ....
- Even not all engineers earn the same wage. There are some engineers who earn less than cab driver. What we can do is to have minimum wage per hour and rest all is decided by skill, demand and supply. There is so much demand for carpenters, electricians and plumbers.
- Vandana Bhagatbut 1. the farmer and the weaver put in as much learning and effort as the engineer 2. till the engineer acknowleges that his earnings need to be at par with theirs let him not say that 'i consider all jobs equally honourable'. Yes, a sane education that factor in farming as well as reading in the need. Economic choices at a macro level are essential. Yes, we need to do what little we can meanwhile.
- Aparna Krishnan absolutely ... Traditional occupations should be given as much importance, maybe even more, as modern education ...As long as the person engaged in the occupation can take pride in what he is doing and sustain himself and his family ... It does not matter whether any engineer acknowledges parity or not ...The important Issue is to strengthen the masses from base up ....
- Are all jobs of equal value? Surely many are counterproductive? A farmer's work surely has more value than that of the nuclear weapons developer, the work of a sustainable forestry worker, in the face of climate change, has, in my opinion, more value than the work of the manager of a coal mining company. My pacifism means I see far more value in the work of those who try to find ways for people to work and live together than there is in the work of soldiers, freedom fighters or terrorists. That is not to say that those individuals who do these different jobs are more or less valuable as human beings, just that much of 21st century employment is perhaps better described as malemployment as it has a negative effect on our planet and ourselves.
- Completely agree. But when people are into beleiveing that the plastic making engineer is superior to the ragpicker who recycles plastic, where can I even get to these basics !!
- There are plenty of us trying, like the child in the story, to point out that the emperor has no clothes but it is hard to make ourselves noticed amidst the throngs cheering on the false hopes of unsustainable economic growth and paid servitude to the vagaries of corporate capitalism.
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