When we mock the working class, the joke is on us

In video No.1, we first see a young woman in a sari, making a tired gesture as she leaves an apartment, apparently after cleaning up. What we see next is a montage of apparent martyrdom—the woman’s employer putting things away (rugs, mats and so on) and adjusting other things to an exact angle (bins, buckets and so on). I have to admit I didn’t watch the whole thing because my eyes had rolled out of my head and fallen on the floor. Perhaps the video was rage-bait, content created deliberately to make viewers bang out “are you a crazy person?" over and over again in the comment section. I certainly wanted to type, “you have so much free time! You have so much free time to make this evil video because that woman cleaned your house, including under the bins and buckets." I didn’t because only typing when I have a hope of getting paid is the new secret to my productiveness. Sort of.

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In video No.2, we are shown various people looking important in an office/house under construction and then we see a painter sitting on the floor with a brush in one hand asking someone on the phone: Do you love me or don’t you? The comment section was almost entirely “hahaha so funny they are like that only."

Both these videos are the opposite of inventive, leaning so hard as they do on ye old “lazy servant" gag. At this point, making fun of the working class in India as lazy can only indicate your being on hallucinogens. According to the World Bank in 2024, almost 129 million Indians are living on less than ₹181 a day, that is, in extreme poverty. Also, in 2024, we learnt from the World Inequality Lab that the gap between India’s rich and poor is now wider than it was under British colonial rule. In case all of that sounds abstract, most low- and middle-income families are only one hospital admission away from being cleaned out financially.

Should we be surprised that white-collar workers are still so, let’s say, clueless about where their position in the world is? Do they not see yet another CEO demanding that they work 100 hours a week, not smile at their wives, take less holidays and understand that they are cogs in a wheel that is merely enriching someone else? If CEOs had a private social media network of their own (as opposed to public podcasts), for sure they would be posting videos of you calling your girlfriend and their CEO pals would be commenting “hahaha so funny they are like that only." For sure they would be posting martyrdom videos of them changing the fonts on the Excel sheets you made.

White-collar workers imagining they are special is what stands in the way of labour rights. We squeeze the working class and congratulate ourselves for being the most hardworking everywhere, for our hustle—as if we don’t have a little mattress top, memory foam cushion to fall into. A cushion that can be depleted in three hospital admissions but never mind. Historically, every single right that the white-collar worker possesses has come from a working-class fight, including the 8-hour workday that gives CEOs a rash.

In many countries, a multinational would have to work hard to achieve the dystopic state where they can allegedly make workers pledge (in a heatwave) that they would not take any breaks to drink water or go to the loo. But in India, we have decades of practice in making workers get kidney disease—across sectors. We live in a country where the government recently announced that it is not practical for locomotive drivers to take breaks to eat or use restrooms. Train drivers have to wait till the end of their shift.

The railway ministry told The Hindu that since 2016 the “duty hours of loco pilots were reduced from 10 hours to nine." Or they have to wait till the government manages to fit a loo into the locomotives. They have managed to fit 883 out of 15,000 since 2018 so that’s going to be a long time to hold it in.

And while we white collar-workers are making evil videos and drinking the hustle Kool-Aid, the working class is fighting to get labour rights back. Human rights lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj wrote in Frontline a few months ago, that even though labour rights have been shredded in India, “the working class does not stop fighting—be it anganwadi workers pouring into Mumbai’s Azad Maidan to demand better wages, the workers of the Samsung factory in Chennai insisting that their union be recognised, the tea estate workers of West Bengal demanding minimum wages, or the workers of Maruti Suzuki demanding reinstatement after 12 years of incarceration. Even if they are ignored by the media and the powers that be, they are very much there, everywhere, invisible like the dust, and just waiting for a storm to enter our eyes." 

I wondered if other countries have the same no loo in the locomotive problem. Apparently they do in the UK and there the procedure is that you call the signaller, ask for what is known as a personal needs break and the controller holds the train for a few minutes. Because human beings have personal needs. And calling your girlfriend to ask if she really loves you is a personal need.

Nisha Susan is the author of The Women Who Forgot To Invent Facebook And Other Stories. She posts @chasingiamb.

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