CAN we conceive the human world without what we call world Certainly not! It is a highly complex social phenomenon, a product of what humans have been doing purposefully in an organised manner generation after generation. All the wonders of our world came into being as a consequence of work.

Organised work done individually and together has progressed incrementally having a cumulative effect; it transformed quantity into quality. Can a scholar conceive of modern digital and financial systems, and computing without Aryabhata (476-550) and Brahmgupta ( 7th century)? The former was a mathematician and astrologer who used zero in his astronomical calculations which paved the way for its use in calculus etc. The latter employed zero as a number, developed it as a concept and used it in arithmatic.

Mesopotamians and Mayans already had the concept of zero. It`s just one example from history how work done by mathematicians regarding zero led us to the modern world of IT where zero plays a crucial role in binary systems, digital programmes and computer programming.

But work is inevitably organised in the framework of the politicoeconomic power structures in each society. The upside of it is that it is an act of self-fulfillment, an objective evidence of human productivity that sets it apart from the animal world driven by instinctive impulses. The downside is equally manifest as Karl Marx very lucidly analysed it in his writings, the alienating aspect of work. Human labour, responsible for production, gets alienated and estranged from what it produces because of power structures. Products, a solid proof of human creativity and ingenuity, instead of objectifying the labour and becoming a means of selfexpression end up as their negation. When appropriated by forces ensconced in the power corridors the production emerges as a force hostile to its producer. Creativecapability turns into its opposite.

By the way, Marx was not the first to discover alienation though he theorised it brilliantly as a young thinker. If we look at our own history we find the recognition of alienation from worl< and one`s own self in the verses of 16th century poet and mystic Shah Husain aka Madho Lal Husain.

All his life he desisted from the glitzy temptations of worl( that produced conformity. `To spin its mamma who asks me, to spin the simple one who asks me/...I`ve learnt to spin daily / Shrap javelins impale me/ Now no sense remains, no memory / The spinning wheel I smash! All skeins unravel yarn-basket kick avidly, he says in one of his lyrics employing feminine voice. In another lyric he says: `O girls! With all that spinning I`m spent / Good the spinning wheel broke! Life`s been released from torment (translations: Muzaffar Ghaffaar).

Alienated work instead of fulfilling the doer hollows him / her out in a society that takes away the fruit of work through legally created illegitimate means.

No doubt work is what sustains life, individual and social. It has been /still is as much the need of workers as that of employers in a class society. The advent of machine age raised hopes about human emancipation from the drudgery of worl(. The more the machines, the less the work. It was thought that the use of machines would gradually free the man from the shackles of work. The work done with the help of machines in the modern era could create conditions enabling humans to sweat less.

Oscar Wilde believed that machines would enable men to get rid of ugly and dirty work they were compelled to do. Thus humans would have increased leisure time that would lead them to engage more with creative and imaginative pursuits. Sadly, such a dream could not materialise in the power structures we have built. Machine age did improve working conditions to an extent and eventually resulted in five day a weel( i.e. the standard workweek. But in a clever tricl( whatthe system gave with one hand took away with the other. By promoting and establishing consumer society the system in fact compelled humans to work more by dangling carrots ahead of them.

Since consumption has been made the measure of man one needs to work more in order to consume more. One has to do more work in the advanced societies in five days than previous generations had to do in six or seven days. That`s why it exhausts people but side effects are covered by a show of consumption which is supposed to provide gratification. Recently some Indian industrialists/ entrepreneurs, the latest avatars of the proverbial Banias, have exhorted the workers to work for longer hours. One has said that workers should work for 72 hours a week which means that one would work for 14.4 hours a day for five days or 12 hours a day for six days. What will be left of the workers after such a gruelling schedule is not his concern.

Another Seth exhibiting a misogynistic streak has said that workers should also work on Sunday for how long one can stare at one`s wife on an off day. Well, accolades for the Bania vision of family life. An enlightened industrialist joining the dialogue rightly pointed out that debate shouldn`t be about quantity of work but rather about the quality.

He concluded by saying; `My wife is wonderful. I love staring at her.

Lil(e him one should have time to stare at their wives, spend time with children and friends or simply while away time thinl(ing things and indulging in imaginings and daydreaming.

Poet Brecht shows us how the exploiters reduce the man and how he is more than the sum total of the work he does: `You who throw him into dirty yellow seas / Or into the black earth dig him down / More than you knew will swim towards the fishes / And more than you buried will rot in the ground.

And surely the man is `the doer of more than his deed.` If we care about the nature and quality of worl( we ought to ponder: should less be more or more be less? -soofiO1@hotmail.com