Curse of Holidays

Holiday 

i. an extended period of leisure or recreation, especially spent on away from home or in travelling

ii. is a day when a person has no work to do that is going to pay

The workweek in most western countries is from Monday to Friday. Some people extent the weekend to Friday nights. 

In some Christian traditions, Sunday is the Lord's day and the day of rest and worship.

Jewish Sabbath or Biblical Sabbath lasts from sunset on Friday to the fall of full darkness on Saturday, leading to Friday-Saturday weekend in Israel.

Muslim majority countries historically had a Thursday-Friday or Friday-Saturday weekend.

In the Christian and Muslim dominated nations, it is clear from the work culture is that the work follows their religion. It is the secular credentials of the nation. 

But unfortunately in our Bharat we follow the Christian way of Sunday as Holiday, and give concessions to the Muslim brothers to conduct their afternoon prayers affecting the work during the prayer time.

The French revolutionary calender had ten-day weeks called decades and allowed decadl, one out of then days as a leisure day.

In a diverse country as Bharat, with Hindu majority population, we are losing the tradition of doing the rituals during the various festivals owing to our importance to work. The leaves are highly restricted and even the availing the allocated leaves is a tiresome activity. In many cases, where possible the workers, employees are en-cashing the leaves. Many would be willing to work even on Sundays without any trouble or ill effect on their lives. There are certain workaholics, but those who achieved big are only respected, but those who didn't achieve according society are deemed to take leave.

It may also be possible, that many would find solace, owing to poverty, disinterest, in the workplace and would find peace of mind. There is a saying: Idle mind is devils workshop. When nearly a billion people are idling on a given day what thinking would be happening in these minds. If one of these devilish thought gets implemented we can end up having a Nirbhya case. It is no wonder that there are several crimes that are happening in the world but the psychologists never do any study in this regard.  The psychologists who might have been sponsored by entertainment industry, would like everyone us to believe that efficiency improves with a breaks in between.

The human psychology is not as simple as has been deduced and every person has a different metabolic rate, so also every individual would have a different psychological rate. When working in small or large teams, it need not be necessary to shut the work for a set period of time, but it would be worthwhile to keep the work continue and keep the people busy. The individual should be at the liberty to take the leave as she desires.

Let us see one example how the leave or forced holidays we are cursed with is working:

A muslim would like to fast his ramzan month and then come back to his work.

A christian would like to enjoy his time from chritmas to newyear or a few days beyond

A hindu might want to fully celebrate his navrathras or deepavali or any other festival based on the presiding deity of his family or his istadevata.

But Sundays in a given year where in most of the works don't happen, which is  14% of the total work time of a organization is idling apart from the holidays that an individual can take. When institutions like army, police, hospitals, public transport can work without any break why cannot the whole nation work continuously and allow the citizens to take leave appropriately with proper planning and be free in enjoying the holidays as they deem it satisfactory without any issues.

If a organization is having people from different communities, then the sentiments would also be shared. A person should have the choice to avail the leave without causing damage to the organization he is working. There would be better understanding and also increased in the output and better utilization of the facilities which would otherwise be idling. The central government staff are the most lucky lot of this nation who have weekends paid by the hard-working common citizens.

The poor hard-working citizen might not have money to pay income tax, but he is purchasing commodities which have all kinds of taxes passed on by the manufacturers. The culture of rest has to be stopped and the culture of work has to be promoted with holidays as a break as felt necessary by the individual or the organization in keeping mind the health of the individual. In every other case the human should be engaged else the devils will take over.

The curse of holidays can be turned around to a boon of holidays.