Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as commuteristic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of commuterism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries? Two thing result from this fact:
· Commuterism is already acknowledged by all Indian powers to be itself a power.
· It is high time that commuterists should openly, in the face of the whole world, share their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Commuterism with a manifesto itself.
To this end, commuterists of various professions and walks of life have collaborated with me in this column, to air their views in this following manifesto.
Commuterism is the belief that everyone should commute to one’s workplace, spend sufficient hours in office engaged in an activity resembling productivity, and then travel back home. Of course, the journey is not the destination, but it is core to the idea of work. Critics have historically pointed out that Indians spend more time in office commute than people in most other economies. So? Aren’t our cities good enough for you, critics? Then why don’t you WFH in Abbottabad!
A 2018 Boston Consulting Group (BSG) report, ‘Unlocking Cities: The Impact of Ridesharing Across India’ (on.bcg.com/3AdPttv) pointed out that the level of congestion in Indian cities is significantly higher – averaging 149% – than in other Asian cities, despite Mumbai’s suburban rail and Delhi/NCR’s Metro services. More road-based cities like Bengaluru and Kolkata apparently fare worse. BSG, at least, proposes ridesharing – what
kshatriyas call carpooling.
The Travel Time Report Q1 2019 v Q1 2018 report (bit.ly/3Ph3lr1) goes one step further, stating that a work day in the four metros ‘constitutes at least 2 hours on the road’ – and an additional 1.3-1.6 times longer in peak traffic than in other comparable Asian cities like Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Ho Chi Minh City. As if to rub a commuterist’s nose into the data dirt, it adds that Mumbai and Bengaluru are the ‘slowest moving’ cities averaging no more than 19 km/h during commutes.
This pre-Covid report was conducted by ’employee commute’ company WorkInSync in 2018. Post-Covid, its dhanda, interestingly, shifted significantly to ‘enabling hybrid workplace’. In other words, to crush commuterism and have India’s white-collar workforce WFH/WFA. WTF!
Covid came as the opportunity to drive commuterism out of the urban Indian’s work experience. Whether the corporate CEO stuck in traffic in his Audi after crossing the Sea Link like a breeze, or the Delhi office-goer origaming his own body to fit into the Metro carriage from New Ashok Nagar, it is an experience inimical to our work culture that can’t be denied by new-fangled western technologies and fancy management-speak ‘productivity’ and ‘quality’.
The essence of the commute is to feel exhausted, mentally wrung-out for at least an hour or so after entering the office space. This can only be compared to the thrill of tiredness after a competitive run before a competitive swim. The time spent on the road coming in to work is not a ‘waste’ – as anti-commuterists would have it – but part of the ‘work will set you free’ experience that slackers and the under-/unemployed don’t get.
The post-Covid obsession to continue WFH or ‘hybrid working’ – the term itself sounding straight out of a formaldehyde jar engineered by a home-multibody Victor Frankenstein – is an attempt to deny this natural, healthy friction between a worker and his daily pilgrimage. As the likes of Musk and Goenka well know, where will the water-cooler ideas come from if we don’t gather next to the office water-cooler? Get non-augmented real!
The commute back home is no concern, since one has the luxury of being as dead-tired and bereft of energy the moment work stops. So, workers of the world, commute! You have nothing to lose but your sense of irony!