Feb 7 2016



Abrar was on the bus this morning. He was asked to be based in dubai in the new year but was now being asked to fly in to iraq again. It wasnt clear if he was going to be based 50pc in iraq or just conduct business travel. There is the difference in net compensation - per diems are gathered which are not spent since all meals and hotels are paid for.


I thought about the reorg in the materials and transport department again. Much as i wanted i could not avoid this. It just came back to me repeatedly and astounded me each time. The decision making around how many  as well as the mix of people to sack, relegate to dubai and keep as status quo was confounding. The reasoning was exaggeratedly specious. Yet there was no mechanism to challenge it.  Several routes were considered ( detail adds here). I am often complaining about how the opposition party in the indian parliament is an arbitrary blocker to any initiative that is tabled by the bjp. I now saw why this was not altogether a bad idea. Left to our own devices we will not always choose equity. There may not be malice involved but merely obfuscation around the perpetual and universal  idea of justice.  Amartya sen expounded on this with an emphasis on economic justice but perhaps the context of his arguments were not entirely inappropriate to ascribe to the scenario that was before me.

Details of the reorg- i present only the features of salience and omit any analysis of the reasoning, politics and gamesmanship that were constantly adulterating my clear train of thought on the matter.

1)Overall mandate for headcount reduction was 35 percent and when you add to this the people who were to be based in dubai instead of iraq the number was around 45percent. A staggering number as it is. However when i did the math for our dept i found that the net headcount was 60percent and when you add to this dubai based staff it was 75 pc. Didnt seem right- was far more excessive than the overall company. 2)Thereafter, it was expected that most if not all the cuts would come from one sub department namely projects. This was because it was the project funding that had dried up- which was the main driver behind the staff reductions to begin with.  Curiously,  there were no cuts in this department save two staff who would leave after three months- who were going to leave anyway so it was natural attrition.

3) finally, it became apparent that 9 out of the 10 Pakistanis  employed in the department had been affected one way or another.


So on the face of it, three lines of inequity instantly emerged.  1) the leader had inordinately sacrificed his foot soldiers in a bid to preserve himself 2) in determining his sacrificial lambs he had discriminated on the basis of personal preference  3)  prima facie he seemed to have further discriminated on ethnic grounds

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