Empaths — the receding tribe
By: Kumar Sharma
Tags: Employees, Corporate Greed, Empathy

‘Empathy is all about finding echoes of someone else in yourself’ - even though the quote is quite simply worded, it still takes up years to wake up the dead consciences in some. At initiation, the creator decided to embed two basic differences between homo sapiens and animals - enable enhancement of life quality using the brain and to be able to feel for fellow beings’ plight. As gratified as he would be with the advancements made, the disparity in the second feature would make him feel disgusted of being ‘the one’. Probably, wouldn’t even mind if the entire distinctly concepted race goes to the dogs.

With the current situation prolonged all over the country, there are two distinguished rip-offs going on. One with the administrative disability which is quite ragingly evident but the other inflicting furthermore mutilation while staying very well concealed, would be the corporate insatiability eating into the survival of the bonded middle class. The generic populace while trying to save their loved ones are blind-sided to conceptualizing that they are being gnawed off from the other end. This debauchery would leave them looking for bits and pieces of help to compile their lives later on, once the covid tsunami mends.

Here is where empathy failed to work its charm. Even though, the profit margins have been going through the roof, it hasn’t translated into paybacks for the employees. With colossal declines in infrastructural overheads, most businesses moving online and enforcing a pay-gap last year - the earnings have marked a golden era. At this point in time, when the employees anticipated receiving a windfall for being loyal and dedicated in the turbulent times, a gigantic log of deceit has been shoved up. With incidentals going haywire owing to medical liabilities and extremely heightened cost of living, an entire section of population has been pushed on the backfoot and regrettably, towards oblivion.

My peculiar deliberations with managers over the years have fueled my belief that the cost of human life is almost negligible in our country. The word ‘resources’ sums up the exact approximation for us - just contraptions with an inability to feel. One of my managers once stated that he would want to bestow every possibility on his kids - a statement that might make you go ‘awww…’. However, what we oversee is the repugnance in the sentence - the complete lack of any sympathy towards the progenies of the employees. How can a leader completely overlook the welfare of the fellow beings and still wake up the next day with the same fervor to lead teams?

What is even more bothersome is, the vulnerability of employees. Everyone being cognizant of the facts and still being forced to present an act of allegiance to have food on the plates. So, why to compose something that all are already aware of? The elementary answer would be, to force oneself to not grow up the corporate ladder to be one of the soulless leaders. Certainly, ascending would need some impertinent steps but dug deep somewhere within the psyche should be - ‘there is a nobility in compassion, a beauty in empathy, a grace in forgiveness.’