Time to kill

There goes another popular myth. Contrary to widely held notions, it seems that the modern Indian is not exactly struggling to rescue life-saving titbits of precious personal time from choc-a-bloc work schedules. Multi-tasking, it seems, may have been wrongly deemed the essential survival skill for any early 21st century person desirous of catching his breath to smell the coffee. Time evidently, and somewhat surprisingly, is actually a commodity available to Indians in abundant supply. According to the first Time Use Survey conducted by the Central Statistical Organisation, the average Indian has 71 per cent of his time available for learning, leisure and personal care. Of the remaining hours, 18 per cent is devoted to productive work, and the rest on activities which contribute to economic production but are not included while tabulating national income.

The survey 8212; covering more than 18,000 households in Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Orissa, Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya 8212; is bound to interest feminists who constantly grieve over the unacknowledged labour put in by women. While men far outwork women when it comes to productive activitieslike agriculture and sundry trades and services, women more than make up with their contribution to non-national income chores caring for the children and the elderly, attending to routine and special household tasks. In fact, on balance, women relegate anywhere between one in urban centres and ten in rural areas more hours to 8220;total work8221; than their male co-citizens. The term homemakers may put off many with its obfuscatory evocations, but clearly modern Indian society is failing to accord appreciation and dignity to millions and millions of faceless women pottering about in financial dependence. And it surely does not require a time use survey to prove that.

Indeed, there is much that this survey cannot prove: for instance, the superficial conclusion that the average Indian voluntarily sets aside more than two-thirds of his weekly 168 hours to leisure. What about the days and weeks rendered unproductive in a predominantly agricultural society and the inability of a developing country to secure equality of opportunity for its people? What counts as leisure for some is considered enforced idleness by others. That is the divide a careful deconstruction of the survey could provide. For, contrast this involuntary nonactivity with the hurry sickness that afflicts other sections of Indian society. Those with access to technological advances, those consumed by a mass culture characterised by a proliferation of choice and trend-a-day passions have made time management a fine art. It is this subculture that has been breathlessly hastened 8212; where the urge make that, need to read twenty pages of that Booker-prize-winning books jostles with the imperative to do time on thetreadmill, which competes with the temptation to catch another episode of Atilde;sup2;f40Kaun Banega Crorepati after all, who knows when it may become the topic of powered business luncheon, which yet again reminds you of the yearning for an hour of daydream-soaked blankness, which in turn points you to the blue glow of the computer screen and 72 unread e-mails. No doubt, leisure is a very misleading term.