Udta Punjab or Udta India? Drugs and the Corporate world.

Dear Sajith,

It is 10.30 am in the morning. A product manager is providing a brief to the designer in a large online retailer. The designer is taking longer to absorb the brief. 

The irked product manager asks the designer, "Have you sniffed this morning?". 

The designer says, 'yes' - it increases my creativity and keeps me focused.

The product manager is a close friend and she was sharing this with me last weekend when the whole 'Udta Punjab' hullabaloo was happening. 

Drug abuse is not just a Punjab problem, it's become an India-wide problem. She happened to share that about 30-40% of the young population in her company ‘smokes-up’ (i.e. consumes drugs) and it's become quite 'social'. 

Different people have different reasons - some think it’s cool, some find it rebellious, many claim it to relieve boredom, stress or then it’s peer pressure.

And the profile of this urban sniffer is now young, educated, working, middle and upper classes, with disposable incomes - both men, and women. It is no more a character that you see on the movie screen or a homeless, dispossessed, criminal fringed man on the street. It is not even just restricted to the Page 3 audience or the highly rich, elite class. 

From a time, when this profile was distant enough for at least the middle and educated white collar class to now when India is #1 in heroin consumption, it has been a rapid change!

This is creating a whole lot of problems for the corporate world. Several employers are reporting the common symptoms related to drug abuse - random absenteeism, declined productivity or marathon stints of productivity, frenetic mannerism, daze, and disorientation.

Would substance testing along with background verification and random drug testing at workplace be an answer to this problem? In that scenario, how do you balance employee privacy vs. the employer’s right to maintain a drug-free workplace?

Is creating more empathetic, stress-free workplace a solution to this? What will it take for corporate world to create awareness about this major menace that our country is facing?

Scary!

Mohit Gundecha, Jombay