Leisure Time and Social development: Contemporary Issues and Challenges

Hemlata Borkar Wasnik

SOS In Sociology and Social Work, Pandit Ravi Shankar Shukla University, Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India.

Abstract:

Today's era is the era of consumerism driven by technology. It has made human beings very materialistic. To fulfill these materialistic needs, we work day and night like a machine. This means less leisure time with family, friends and society. Lack of investment of time and energy in nurturing personal, family and social life can lead, and in many cases, have led to negative outcomes. At personal level, mental and physical well-being is affected. Lack of leisure time can lead to stress and unhealthy lifestyle which in long term can give rise to serious conditions like depression, hyper tension, and heart stroke. The family is affected as well. Lack of engagement between spouses can lead to disintegration and break-down of family structure. This has serious consequences for children within the family.This leads us to think about nature of development. Economic as well as social development is important for development and happiness of individual, family, and the society.In this research paper, we assess the relationship between leisure time and social development. This research paper is based on secondary sources.

1.     Introduction

Leisure provides rest and relaxes of people lives. People use their leisure time in a variety of different activities. Leisure has impacts on the formation and accumulation of human capital. Leisure is associated with ongoing personal development during adulthood. Leisure activities will increase individual’s creativity. On the other extreme hand, often long working hours and heavy workload is a reason for suicide because workload creates pressure and pressure creates frustration and frustration creates unhappy life and unhappy life creates loneliness and loneliness result in suicide.

According to the ILO report works in informal employment work more likely to work for excessive hours because they are outside labor law protection. The survey showed that regular wage or salaried employees worked for longer duration 53-56 hours than the self-employed 46-54 hours and casual works 43-48 hours. Many Indian companies are exploiting our country’s week corporate employee working hour policies. Most Indian companies make their employees work for at least 9.5 to 12 hours daily and sometimes even 6 days a week, especially multinational companies .This is due to a common belief that more working hours means higher productivity for the company, but in reality it only means faster employee exhaustion. Most employees after working for 10 hours a day and traveling to workplace from home and vice versa for at least 2 hours daily hardly have any strength left in them. Most people also suffer from health problems due to the long hours, so they cannot participate in social activities. Multiple studies have shown that working for longer hours severely affects the physical and mental health of employees, especially those that require sitting in the same place continuously. There are many countries abroad that have much less working hours but still have much higher productivity, for example Australia, Germany, France and Netherlands etc.

2.     Meaning of Leisure Time

The term “Leisure” itself has been used in a variety of different meanings. Thus Piper writes- Leisure, must be clearly understood, is a mental and spiritual attitude. It is not simply the result of external factors. It is not the inevitable result of spare time, a holiday, weekend, or a vacation.¹

The term is held to imply, however vaguely, the necessary existence of a body of qualities tending towards, refreshment, diversion or personal enrichment.²

Definition

Leisure is defined as freedom from the demands of work or duty. Everybody needs leisure in their lives, to balance the stress of work and life. Leisure is an essential part of our life. Leisure time allows us to think and reflect on important matter such as social injustice.

According to A.J. Veal, “Leisure is a state of mind which ordinarily is characterized by un-obligated time and willing optimize. It can involve extensive activity or no activity.”³

According to Robinson and Godbey, Leisure time, is the time when the individual does not work. ⁴

John Neulinger defines it in his major work, To Leisure: An introduction. Leisure has often been defined as a quality of experience or a free time. Free time is a time spend away from education as well as necessary activities such as eating and sleeping and playing of games.⁵

Thorsten Veblen’s explain the definition of Leisure in his book The Theory of Leisure. In pp.46, he defines non productive consumption of time as Leisure time.⁶

Sociology of Leisure is the study of how humans organize their free time. The sociological study is based on work Leisure relationship and focus on the relation between Leisure and culture. The type of leisure activity is substantially influenced by the individual’s situation.

John Wilson and Sheila Scraton have noted that it is difficult to define leisure. Its definition are numerous and often mutually contradictory, for as a discrete portion of one’s time or as a quality of experience irrespective of times.⁷

Joffre Dumazadier defines leisure as a style of a behavior that may occur even at work. At second level, it is any non-work activity. At third level, it further excludes family and household obligations, and finally the narrowest level defines leisure as an activities dedicated to self fulfillment.⁸

Universal declaration of Human rights acknowledges leisure as basic human right in article 24.⁹

3.     History of Leisure

The concept of Leisure has gained prominence in the 19^th century. It started in Great Britain and spread quickly to other rich nations in Europe. It has spread to the United States, even though it had a reputation in Europe for providing much less leisure despite its wealth.

Laurent Turcot’s in recent book Sports et Loisirs argues that leisure was not created in the 19^th century but it is imprecated in the occidental world since the beginning of history. Work and leisure are mostly characteristic of modern industrial society. The distinctions between work and leisure which apply in modern society do not easily cover such an organization of work. In Bali according to Mead there is no word for “tired “only a word meaning something too tired, which is used after relatively un common instances of hard labor.¹⁰

The analysis of some sociological problems of leisure did receive some attention in 1930s but most research is concerned with leisure as a moral problem rather than with the objective study of leisure as an area of social behavior.¹¹ The best sociological study of leisure however, is still that by Lundberg et al, which appeared in1936.¹²

The sociological analysis of leisure still remains very much a field Dominated by the literature. The sociological analysis of leisure will come more from out of the shadow of the sociology of work. The decreasing length of the average working week, The increase in the average span of life and the existence of a fixed retirement age have all contributed to the development of protracted leisure for the mass of the population. But not until fairly recently have sociologists begun to attack this problem, and try to establish what are the objective consequences of extended leisure for the working population.

Kristen, Stevens Richards mc Garth and Emily words saws that leisure based participation in social circus can improve mental wellbeing, render enjoyment in physical activity, encourage socialization, build resilience and relive from stress over all. The author highlights that the mental, physical and social benefits of leisure based circus participation are interrelated and can contribute to improve social change for children and young people.¹³

According to economic bureau report 2013 highlighted that the average Indian spends only 18% of time per week on productive activities, while 71% of the time spend on learning, leisure and personal care.¹⁴

According to a study conducted by Towers Watson in May 2018, close to half of the respondent employees in India reported excessive pressure at work. Around one-third of them pinned the blame an “overwhelming” productivity demands from employers.¹⁵

According to WHO report India is the most depressed country in the word. National care of medical health states that at least 6.5% of the Indian population suffers from some mental disorder. The average suicide rate in India is high and 10.9 lakh people commit suicide below the age of 44 years.¹⁶

Status of Policing in India report 2019 states that almost half of the women police personnel (48%) have reported not getting any weekly day off and only 29% of the female personnel reported getting one day holiday in a week.

Majority of the (81%) police personnel work for more than 8 hours a day only 13% of the police personnel reported working for up to eight hour on average. Main reason for staying back is too much work (32%). Majority of police personnel say that they have no-off days in a week.¹⁷ Effects of workload related data shows that three fourth of the police agreed with the statement that the workload is making it difficult for them to do their job and about 40% of the overall respondent completely agreed with this statement. ¹⁸

Maxwell says that Leisure is a social change agent at individual, community and social levels. It has the capacity to improve the human condition and it provides quality to life. So we can say that Leisure is a key driver of social change. ¹⁹

Leisure participation can improve personal competency and work performance, which will then enhance their labor productivity. The more important concern is that to some extent leisure can improve quality of life of individuals. Iwasaki (2007) ²⁰ found that leisure enhance quality of life, including happiness and positive emotions brought by leisure, self respect and positive identity obtained from leisure, social and cultural development promoted through leisure, Li and Tsai (2013)²¹ explored the relevance between specific leisure activities and particular personality traits. They argued that individual personality differences may affect leisure choices. Hills and Argyle (1998) also found that these personality differences could also influence the degree of happiness experienced.²² Snir , Harpaz Snir and Waring, says that Leisure and work are main parts of a person’s life.²³

4.     Objectives of the study

The rest of this paper is organized as follows. First, the relevant literature is reviewed and then the theoretical model is laid out to investigate the relationship between leisure time and social development.

5.     Methodology of the study

This paper is based on secondary data based sources. It is also based on empirical thoughts.

6.     Findings and Conclusion

According to national survey of India, working hours for the office is 9:00 am to 5:00 pm (Monday to Friday) including lunch-time. Lunch time is1:00 pm to 1:30 pm. Total work hours is nine hours. These working hours can extend to be very long in reality.  They take away part of human life that they cannot spend with their family and relatives and others. They cannot participate in family functions and other social activities because they have no time and physical and mental capacity for this activity. Metthew Zawadzki, the professor of health psychology, found in his study that leisure activity can provide immediate stress relief and other health benefits to just about anyone. When people engage in leisure activity they have lower stress levels, better mood, a lower heart rate and less burden.

According to National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) report, Indian workers who belong to urban areas works 53-54 hours and rural workers work 46-47 hours in a weeks. The NSSO Survey showed that about three–fourth, 74 percent of urban males and almost half of female 46 percent worked more than 48 hours a week in cities in rural areas while 58 percent male worked more than 48 hours per week around 72 percent female worked less than 48 hours per week.

National sample survey is the first official estimate of working hours done by a statistical agency in India and a quarter-wise trend was captured in the PIFS report survey. A majority of workers in India worked for more than 48 hours a week, higher than international labor organization ILOs prescribed time limit, according to the survey. In India, The Factories Act, 1948 also stipulates that a worker cannot be employed for more than 48 hours in a week and in case she has been, the employer has to provide overtime wages. Other pieces of legislation, including those notified by the state government have also prescribed a 48 –hours a week work limit.

According to the first time use survey conducted by the central statistical organization the average Indian spends only 18 percent of time per week on productive activities, while 71 percent of the time is spent of learning, leisure and personal and 11 percent of the time spend on economic production activities. The survey also finds that women are working for longer hours than man, in fact, 55 percent of the total work is done by women. The time use survey covered 18,591 house hold in the six states including Haryana, M.P., Orissa, Gujarat and Tamilnadu.

According to the first time use survey, Indian male spends 42 hours accounted activities as compare to only about 19 hours by females. SNA (System of Nation Accounts) activities consist of primary production activities like, crop, farming and animal’s husbandry, secondary like trade, construction activities and business and services. In SNA activities males spends only 3.6 hours as compared to 34.6 hours by females. Therefore female spend about ten times more time in extended activities as compared to males.

And non SNA activities like learning, singing, social and culture activities, personal care self maintenance males spends about 8 hours more than females.

This data show that women are working longer hours than men.

Suggestions:

1. Weekly working hours should be regulated more strictly.

2. Impose strict punishment if rules are not followed.

3. Women workers should get a fair amount of leisure time.

 References

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