DOWN, BUT NOT OUT
Jagdish Surve, 49, a former deputy general manager in the IT department of a multinational logistics company in Mumbai, received his pink slip this April. Losing his job was a shock, he says, because he had been working with the firm for 19 years, and the layoff came in the midst of the national lockdown. Though there had been an anticipation of job cuts at his company for some time—it had been acquired by another global logistics firm last year—no one expected the new owners to fire around 100 staff members while they were already grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic. “For me, it was a culture shock. Many of us were asked to leave because the new management saw our salaries as exorbitant,” says Surve, who is his family’s sole bread-earner. He is now managing his home expenses and those for his son’s education from his savings, which he says can see him through perhaps three more months. New jobs are difficult to come by—the employment market is presently going through a
