Its evident to see that Anna Sebastian's untimely passing away due to toxic work culture has raged people from within.
While political parties on one hand are commenting upon this toxicity, on the other hand government has mandated a deep probe upon this incident which has ignited fire amongst many.
On Sunday, even Finance Minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman remarked upon the incident, emphasisng on the dire need for “stress management lessons” in colleges and universities.
According to Sitharaman “I was discussing an issue that has been in newspapers for the past two days. Our children go to colleges and universities for education and come out with flying colours. There, a woman who had studied CA well, unable to cope with the work pressure, three days ago, we received news--she died, unable to cope with the pressure."
According to the finance minister, the strength to handle pressure can be achieved through divinity.
“Believe in God, we need to have God's grace. Seek God, and learn good discipline. Your Atma shakti will grow only from this. The inner strength will come only with growing Atma shakti…Educational institutions should bring in divinity and spirituality. Then only will our children get the inner strength. It will help in their progress and the country. That is my strong belief,” she added.
And to this remark, the FM has received immense backlash from the opposition where she is clearly penalising the youth's incompetensy to not be able to handle STRESS properly.
“The ruling regime and the finance minister can only see the pain of corporate giants like Adani and Ambani, not the pain of the hardworking and toiling young generation where freshers like Anna are exploited by the greedy corporate system if they even succeed in getting a job in this era of historic joblessness,” Congress general secretary (Organisation), K C Venugopal, wrote in a post on X.
According to the Congress leader, it is “downright cruel” on the finance minister's part to blame Anna and her family and for suggesting that she should have learnt stress management at home.
“This kind of victim blaming is despicable, and no words can convey the anger and disgust one feels because of such statements. How heartless can this government be? Have they lost all sense of empathy?” he questioned.
“The parents are still recovering from this terrible tragedy. The toxic work environment should have triggered an honest review of corporate practices and led to necessary reforms that protect employees,” Venugopal added.
Her mother claims that Anna, who spent four months working for EY in Pune as a member of the audit team at S R Batliboi, an EY Global member business, also put in long hours on the weekends. Most days, her mother stated, she came back to her PG utterly fatigued.
The Centre intervened in response to the controversy surrounding the event, announcing that it would look into the working conditions at Big Four accountancy firm EY.
