SHARING OUR RESOURCES: SALARIES
THE NATION IS ALSO DEEPLY RICH BOTH IN HUMAN RESOURCES AND ITS CREATIVITY IN CIRCUMSTANCES THAT REQUIRE RESILIENCE AND ORGANISATION. The time has come to reduce salaries from the top and share it with those less fortunate so that they do not become jobless.
As I’m scribbling my thoughts, the morning’s statistics are staggering: half a million dead; 10 million infected in 181 days, one million in just last week.
Appalling figures: the panic of the elite is rising as no vaccine is in sight though the search is desperate and hopeful signs are visible fitfully on distant horizons of some scientific laboratories. Billions are being collected to make the vaccine available to all who may need it.
At least that is the hype and hope. One of the tragic consequences of COVID-19 is how tens of millions of workers have lost their jobs: these ordinary men and women that one sees on the TV screens daily trudging on the streets of Delhi towards their villages in India and other cities in other countries is heartrending.
Or those queuing in endless lines at Center-Link waiting to enroll for dole or jobseeker, jobkeeper, jobfinder and still remain jobless.
Rich Governments
Rich Governments can do this for a while and take care of their increasingly unemployed or underemployed. But recession is deepening and if no remedy is found this will become our darkest depression. Its societal and psychological consequences could be appalling for our children and grandchildren.
The CEOS who make decisions about the destiny of the workers are really the fat-cats with huge salaries, bonuses, etc., if you knew the details it would boggle your mind and baulk your imagination.
How much money does one need to live a full and fulfilled life? The coronavirus has brought some of these issues and put it squarely on our dining table in front of our children.
The poor are affected as ever: but their fall is short; it’s the rich who are falling long and hard and no-one knows where one would land, head or feet first?
Gandhi said the Earth produces enough for the need of every one of her children but not enough for the greed of even one of us.
This applies more in Gandhiland, India, than anywhere else, although the virus is wreaking havoc in South Asia, South America and Africa with no end in sight. The numbers affected are spiking daily.
Big companies
Big companies and corporations are cutting their workforce mercilessly. Some are making a killing as the crisis mounts.
QANTAS, the spirit of Australia, has jettisoned hundreds of jobs except probably for the top bureaucrats.
This is affecting millions world-wide in so many businesses, corporations, international organisations, institutions, and banks.
The recent Royal Commission in the Banks in Australia showed that the bankers were not the only wankers but many subsidiaries were associated with their malpractices against ordinary folks who trusted them, especially the aged and pensioners.
And many young who had mortgaged their life’s earnings for a dwelling. I watch Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and India news bulletins with special interest: my family members, and friends live in these countries which continue to give breath to many of us. The promises made by several Indian prime-ministers for the past more than seventy years has not been met. True millions have been uplifted out of poverty but millions remain buffeting in those waves of abject suffering that poverty induces: it can totally demoralise and decapitate your will to live.
Sadly on the streets of modern Indian cities they are still fighting ancient battles of religion and caste, creed and communalism. The past can be so dusty that one can’t see the road ahead.
History’s rear-view mirror is not the safest way to have a vision of the future.
Urban poverty
Urban poverty is the worst. Mumbai, I’m told, has the world’s largest slum. Next to it is the tallest building created by one the richest persons in Asia, if not the world.
Unfortunately, I’m reliably informed, it is also a hideous modern structure. I must go and see it once we’re allowed to travel.
But COVID-19 is showing no signs of a let up. In fact it’s strengthening its vice-like grip in many countries and within these countries in the poorer parts of the communities.
The one good thing about this virus is: it doesn’t discriminate: where you’re born, what caste, what colour, what religion, what race, what country, what family-- are all irrelevant to its reach and revenge.
India is a big country and a bigger democracy. This means enormous freedom and the regimentation of China will not flourish in a place as varied and full of vitality as the Indian subcontinent. And the people who have incredible patience are now becoming patients.
The nation is also deeply rich both in human resources and its creativity in circumstances that require resilience and organisation.
Roti, kapra aur makaan used to be the slogan when I was a student in Delhi decades ago. It’s still the call and cry of around half a billion people in a population of 1.2 billion. The population has quadrupled since independence.
Today India has a large, if not the largest, number of billionaires, if you count black money hoarded by many. And the largest number of povertystricken people.
COVID-19
COVID-19 has brought it out in the open for others to see. It’s not a pleasant sight. The obvious can no longer be obscured by mantras and mythologies. Lives matter.
Your ‘domestic servant’ is not only vulnerable: he/she can communicate the deadly virus through a cup of tea or a glass of lassi.
I’ve been reading a bit about pandemic disasters of our world: the Black Death, which wiped out a third of Europe’s population, later led to peasant revolts which led to more rights and freedoms for peasants and labourers. Housing for the homeless and proper medical facilities and infrastructure are now inevitable if Governments are to survive with dignity.
The protest marches for Black Lives Matter have a connection with this worldwide virus and the lives of the unemployed.
Their jobs are gone and they’ve been made redundant after decades of service often on part-time salaries or hourly wages.
And that loss and anger are seen in the shouts of the protesters. We’re all interconnected and interdependent. One would have thought that the CEO’s and managers would show more than empathy and one way of doing it is to cut down your salaries so that you can still employ a score of others.
It is true of universities also where poverty is studied on paper at least. Here at the ANU the Vice-Chancellor, a Nobel laureate, has taken a 20 percent cut in his salary; other senior staff, I believe, have done that too. More will follow.
Salary reduction
Sadly the politicians haven’t as yet made any move towards salary reduction while several have been caught rorting the system of free travel and daily constituency allowance.
Many thoughtful people have been clamouring for an Australia-wide ICAC. So far not much has been done in that direction on a national scale. This brings me to the sad saga of USP: will the USP Council study the salary structure of the regional university and why some people in positions of petty power continue to give themselves exorbitant inducements, bonuses, etc., a system devised for them to pay themselves by themselves.
All is presumably legal; but is it moral in societies we have sworn to serve? Where so many are so poor what can be gained?
University of South Pacific
How come we have come to this pass? Tell me how many of these professors and administrators were holding chairs before they joined USP? Why such massive inducements when they were lucky to get very senior positions in the regional university funded by the taxes of our children and grandchildren. Compare their salaries with those in the other two universities, both funded by the Fiji Government. Surely the time has come to have in Fiji a basic salary structure for all academics and then add and change where a position cannot be filled by a qualified regional: most universities have that flexibility built in them. Taking a poor region on a ride is not the university way. My professor at Delhi was paid a pittance but he loved teaching: today he’s a leading international scholar of William Shakespeare’s single play, Hamlet. I visit him every time I go to Delhi for being such a mighty inspiration. I’ve written about him in a book Unfinished Journeys co-edited by my daughter Kavita Nandan. The time has come to reduce salaries from the top and share it with those less fortunate so that they do not become jobless. And it should apply to Parliaments, public service, corporations, universities and every publicly funded institution or organisation. The grit of our scientists will find a vaccine for the world’s worst virus: but the cure for our greed is within ourselves and a society’s self-respect for itself and compassion for its citizens. Luckily there are no statues of vicechancellors yet: USP will be a good place to install one if sacrifices are made and recognised by the leading lights of our region’s largest university.