How much income does a person deserve from a job? This is a highly variable question. People sometimes demand more because the organisation is able to pay. Sometimes the honorarium taken has nothing to do with the performance in a day or in a month. Often, people demand an amount of money because they need that much money, which may not be proportionate to the work or effort. If a number of people are available for a particular job, people are paid less. In the hierarchy, people doing physical work earn less, as compared to the people using the software using brain and soft-skills.
For the work done in a day, people taking honorarium on a daily basis are more sensitive to the payment, than those taking the payment at the month end or lump sum.
Government staff gets dearness allowance from time to time when the prices of commodities increase. The dearness allowance will not have retreated if the prices plummeted. In my lectures to sensitise the officials on the plight of the farmers, I used to say that ‘the employees should be paid based on the percentage of the average rainfall received in a particular month.’ Only then the officials would understand and be sensitive to the uncertain life of farmers. Then everyone would pray for good rains and would take initiatives such as planting trees and reduce carbon emissions. To this proposition no one was ready. An agriculture officer gets more salary in a drought year when there is a drought and farmers are suffering. Probably such officers would pray for more droughts so that their salaries increase every year. In the world, there is uncertainty for some and certainty for the others. The people in the organised sector say, ‘it was the precise reason, to avoid such uncertainties in life, that they have studied hard and chosen a job which is secure and with an assured income.’
I was working in a Government agency on a project. Seen that 20 percent of the people were working very hard, to accomplish the 80 percent of the work. And 80 percent of people were accomplishing 20 percent of work. That is the 80:20 principle.
