Yoga & The Working Class of India
Yoga has been gaining traction over the last few years. Though until now, its growth rates were better seen in western world then its homeland India. Then few years back, came wave of Baba Ramdev – The Yoga Guru who rekindled yoga as a practice among the masses. Although the biggest push to Yoga as a practice came in December 2014, when on suggestion and recommendation of Indian Prime Minister Mr.Narendra Modi, United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on 11th December, 2014 recognized “21st June” as International Yoga day. A big Indian push for a practice which can become a boon to the world.
The ground impact of this is yet to be seen but there has been increasing awareness and acceptance of yoga among individuals. Interestingly we saw Institutional interest in Yoga as well wherein government departments, Teaching Institutes and even private companies have started organizing yoga sessions and making it a routine for their employees. The institutional involvement can be a great boon for Yoga making it a lifestyle/status element for some and for others an opportunity to find time to do it out of their busy schedules.
Recently Indian PM Mr.Narendra Modi, while speaking at inaugural event of 21st International conference on Frontiers in Yoga Research and Its Applications(INCOFYRA) in Jigani, advised healthcare professionals to integrate traditional Indian treatment methodologies into modern healthcare. We all know that prevention is better than cure but it’s a philosophy rarely adopted by us. Results are ignored bodies and ignored minds we possess today. If WHO is to be believed India would loose more than $4.5 trillion by 2030 due to non communicable diseases or more specifically the lifestyle diseases. Diabetes, Heart ailments, lungs disorders topping the list. All these diseases are preventable with an active lifestyle and Yoga can be made integral part of it. To my limited understanding yoga has specific asanas to keep Heart and Lungs healthy. But it all sums up to us. Until we as individuals don’t start taking our own health seriously nothing is going to change.
A few days back, after reading my previous article titled, “Ignorance, Health Dilemma of the Working Class and a New Year Pledge … Welcome 2016 !!”, a friend who happens to be a healthcare economist told me that preventive measures like Yoga, exercise and healthy diets may seem time consuming to us, demanding time out of our money generating activities like our jobs, businesses; but he said that in long run a healthy body and mind makes a larger economic and financial benefit. In his views if a radical change is to be brought into the preventive healthcare and adopting practices like yoga institutions need to look deeper into their HR data. To my surprising look he responded by poking me to look at HR data of 7Med India and OpenGate’s, the two companies as an entrepreneur I live by.
I did it and was taken off the ground. Of all the leaves taken by our team mates (across all leave categories i.e. privilege, paid, sick etc.) more than 75% of leaves were taken on health grounds. Least most of the team had their sick leaves quota exhausted and were utilizing their privilege leaves because of their own or their family members health issues. In last 90 days, two of our key team mates had stayed away from work for more than 40 days due to lifestyle related health issues. I couldn’t have better understood what he was trying to say.
Time for me to re-think organizational development in light of the health economics driven by the health issues of my own teams. How about you, does your organization shows similar pattern ? A few said yes and a few didn’t knew and said may be. But all agreed that if overall health of their teams improves they would be a better organization in many ways.
An economic, financial and strategic decision point for Organizations. What are we waiting for ? Over a period of next couple of months, I would be working on making my own teams healthier and would be talking to fellow entrepreneurs about the idea and health economics behind it, to see if we can motivate few more on a healthy way.