Payscales

Shreya was making do with Rs. 3000/month salary. It was not much, especially since she was raising her son by herself, but still it was a livelihood and she managed. She taught Computer Science to middle and high school kids at a private school. A few years after her B.Sc in Mathematics she had finished her computer diploma course at a private computer center. Her teaching work typically kept her busy every hour of the day - the computer teacher was often called upon to fill in for other teachers who were absent and to help with a variety of school activities.

She had begun a correspondence source to get an MCA from Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU). This might expand her horizons and increase her expertise. In spite of her heavy workload and caring for her son she signed up for the course. The bulk of the course material was sent to her to learn by herself. Programming projects were done at the computer center MKU staffed in her town. This meant that after a long day at work she had to come home and work on assignments and when necessary go to the computer center to use the computers there. It was hard work, but she was diligent. She was determined to do well in the course.

Her first year exams were coming up, there were 10 papers. Relational database systems, programming languages, operating systems, all the standard computer science courses that one would see in the first year in a course at this level. She was working hard for the exams.

"Will you get leave to take the exams?" I asked.

"Oh, yes", she said. "They are very good about all that."

We went back to looking at her relational database course material. It was only some time later when the topic came up again that I realized - she would lose 10 days pay when she took the exam. 10 days pay cut when she took exams that would help her improve professionally. 10 days pay cut for something that would potentially help her do her job better. The job would wait for her to come back 10 days later - that was the school was being "good about."

As long as there are people who need jobs employers will get away with the least possible pay.