The article, “The difference between a job and work” (Editorial page, May 6 ), draws attention to one of the most pressing issues of modern society — the creeping de-personalisation of employment. The job-work dichotomy, however, is not a peculiar aberration of the 21st century. It entered public and academic discourses during the Industrial Revolution when the squalid conditions of factories used to be highlighted by writers and political thinkers alike. The wretchedness of factory jobs as a symbol of human degradation has now been replaced by the metaphor of the cog-in-the-machine monotony of automated office work. It is debatable, however, whether the state can be construed as a moral creature that is obliged to infuse employment with meaning and purpose. The modern political economy is not an ethical construct. It is an economic edifice that rests on the foundation of economic security by providing jobs to those who need it. The health of an economy is measured by the number of jobs it provides to citizens, whether full time or part-time, whether life-long or contractual, and not by the subjective satisfaction that people find in their jobs. The point is that finding dignity in the jobs is a task that belongs to the realm of individual enterprise.
V.N. Mukundarajan,
Thiruvananthapuram