MAYDAY, MAYDAY - ENTITLEMENT AND OBLIGATION

“Workers of the world Unite! You have nothing to lose, but your chains!” The call remains the most reverberating takeaway from the communist manifesto of 1848. It inspired and continues to inspire millions across the world, in far more different ways than it was first intended to. “May Day” presents the best opportunity to evaluate where the slogan has taken us.  

I grew up hearing the musical version of the slogan, penned by the famous poet and lyricist Vaylar Rama Varma for the Malayalam hit film, Thulabharam. “Nashta peduvan vilangukal, kittanullathu puthiyoru lokam” (Nothing but the chains to lose, and to gain, a new world). The song played a significant role in irrevocably changing Kerala's socio-economic and political landscape. Almost all political meetings and processions, especially the left-leaning ones, played this song. There was a sense of romanticism attached to the movement. Many educated and influential people adopted communism and it took deep roots in Kerala. Overnight, tenants became owners without having moved even a little finger and many a landowner found their assets seized by the government and given to those who tilled the land till the day before. Social reengineering was quick at work! Those at the bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder assumed a sense of entitlement. Anybody with land and property became the class enemy. It seemed they all had become rich at the cost of the poor. The society suddenly appeared to turn benign and undo wrongs committed over centuries. It benefitted many and for those who lost, nobody cared.  

My cousins and I grew up in a well-off household. Empathising with the underdog was romantic. Naive, insensitive, and ignorant of the significant loss of land suffered by the family, we walked around the house playing “jatha” (procession) holding banana leaves in place of flags, shouting slogans and singing Vaylar’s song. Looking back, I admire the generosity and tolerance of those who let us be, despite their painful losses.  

Things soon started to change. Collective bargaining, a tool that ensured just wages and prevented exploitation became a potent weapon for reverse coercion and exploitation. Employers found themselves at the mercy of employees. Employees organised themselves into trade unions and sought entitlements, often unbelievably impractical and sure to kill the establishment. Trade unions vied with each other to milk the last possible penny from the ‘class’ enemy. Investors and employers were no match to the might of the collective with mindless demands. Cashew and coir once the biggest employment avenues of the state withered. Industrial production dwindled. Fields that once reverberated with folk songs fell silent. Agriculture became unprofitable and unsustainable. It just withered. My father sold all his paddy fields and coconut farms. He continued cultivating tapioca but that too, he stopped because he got fed up with suffering losses. I grew up and happened to read George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” once again. This time I had a different understanding of the book and my society.  

Soon, jobs dwindled, domestic opportunities dried up and people started migrating for work. Luck favoured Keralites. Successive governments had focussed on education. Keralites had become literate. Nowadays, literacy is not even distantly related to rationality or education. When job opportunities were drying up at home, the Gulf boomed. It was a trickle in the beginning, then it became a torrent. The educated, the semi-educated, the literate and illiterate, skilled and unskilled, alike found jobs in the Gulf. People migrated for work in thousands. Remittance initially in drops, soon became a torrent.  

The lack of job opportunities did not initially worry people. There was money to make in the Gulf. Any job there was acceptable. Although remunerations started depleting people did not mind it because when it reached home, money multiplied as the rupee depreciated. The landscape soon changed. Construction boomed, and consumerism driven by inflows flourished.  The state now depends heavily on the neighbouring states for food and the East and Nort-East for labour. Unions still have their ways of making a killing. Gawking fees remain the norm despite denials. Kerala is now a confirmed consumer society. 

Now, jobs are hard to come by and youngsters are leaving the state for good. Every junction in the state has huge advertisements by various agencies promising different ways to get out of the state and country for good. Most of them, take loans mortgaging the only property to get out hoping to strike it rich. Many with good jobs and steady incomes also leave the country. Most end up at the bottom of society in an unfamiliar destination, all by choice. Sadly, ego does not allow them to return. Even if they want to, there is nothing worthwhile to return. 

In evolved societies, the public at large is aware of individual entitlements. It helps them demand their dues from the government and service providers. The public holds legislators to account. Back home, free ration, unemployment wages, and free medical care have made laziness lucrative. Everyone is vying to get what they feel they are entitled to.

Obligation is the other side of entitlement. When the sense of entitlement is not accompanied by a matching sense of obligation, problems will creep up. It applies to organised societies, organisations big or small, families and even interpersonal relationships. Look around. We can find fault lines within organisations, families and relationships. 

Most organisational problems can be pinned to imbalances between entitlements and obligations. Some people are seen to enjoy entitlements without matching obligations while some are more obligated than entitled. Trade unions and vested interests find space to exploit the afflicted and the organisational hierarchy. It is the same in relationships. In the initial phase, the partner who feels less entitled and more obligated may overlook the disparity and even suffer silently for some time. In the long run, it is bound to create strains that can seriously and adversely affect the quality of the relationship. The silence of the afflicted party worsens the fault line and leads first to dysfunctional and eventually broken relations.

Entitlement-obligation imbalances, over time, become exploitative. Respect for established societal norms vanishes, first behind the curtains and then openly. Might, individual or collective, reigns. Law and order problems increase, and so do corruption and coercion. In interpersonal relations, unmatched entitlement -obligations lead to diminishing respect, slowly leading to emotional and physical abuse. When entitlement without obligation is the norm, society will experience anarchy, organisations will be short-lived and interpersonal relationships doomed. 

Mayday, Mayday!