“WHY ‘STRESS’ STRESS?

”
Dr.C.S.RANGARAJAN
Dr. S. JAISHREE and
Dr. R. REKHA

ABSTRACT

Call it by whatever name, strain, conflict or pressure are terms synonymously

and interchangeably used to denote stress. To begin with, it is necessary to
have an understanding of stress. Stress, resulting from the inability of self-
curative faculty (homeostasis) or the internal environment of the body to cope
with stressors gives rise to diseases and illnesses. It is also necessary to
emphasize that contextual factors within which the structure develops are the
determinants of stress. General support needs to be drawn in order to
distinguish between stress arising from domestic and occupational overloads,
besides looking at the relationship between role overloads and stress. Any
discussion on "Why Stress 'Stress'?" must not lose sight of the causes and
effects of stress, since stress-inducing environment is shown to engender
diseases and illnesses and thereby endanger life. Evidences therefore
establish a correlation of socio-environmental conditions and diseases. This
paper looks at stress in the industrial scenario and in the specific context of
Indian women. Managing stress requires certain mechanisms that could be
experimented within the very self of the individuals. In the society at large,
compelling need to counteract and counter-balance the ill effects of stress
arises and therefore remedial measures resembling the 'gallop of a snail'
should be done away with considering the fact that the prosperity of a Nation
depends upon the health of its people.

INTRODUCTION - AN APPROACH TO STRESS

The ancestry of the concept ‘stress’ could be traced to homeopathic system of

medicine. Stress is a dynamic condition in which an individual is confronted
with an opportunity, constraint or demand related to what he or she desires
and for which the outcome is perceived to be both uncertain and important.
Uncertainty over outcome and the outcome being seen as important are the
two necessary conditions precedent for potential stress to become a realized
(actual) one (Schuler 1983, 30). To put it succinctly, stress is the wear and
tear on the body. Stress does not take your ‘life when you do take the means
whereby it lives’. In other words, you take back your life every time you keep
stress vigilantly under constant check.
While the objective of this paper is to gain an insight and understanding of
stress, an attempt is made to call attention to the effects of stress. Research
is ‘retrodiction’ (Worsley et al 1970, 64) in the sense that visibly practical
accomplishments can be had by ‘looking backwards at past events and
making sense of them’. As held by Gouldner (1955, 12), human action can be
rendered meaningful only by relating it to the contexts in which it takes place.
In other words, time and place are the determinants of everything. Since this
paper is not an outcome of any empirical investigation, it restricts itself to a
narration of a social fact, namely, stress and identifies the probability of
establishing linkages and interrelationships between variables so identified.
Reliance is therefore placed on research and thinking that has already been
done but germane to this paper. Besides identifying some of the variables
relating to stress, this paper hypothetically views stress as a manifestation of
responses to environmental changes. Examples cited involve considerable
degrees of subjectivity, and therefore they are suggestive rather than
conclusive. Statistical tests of comparative goodness fit need to be applied to
objectively measure the data in an empirical investigation as and when
undertaken.

STRESS RESPONSE

The stress response, or the General Adaptation Syndrome is an innate, inborn

protective mechanism. Selye (1956) in his work ‘The Stress of Life’ argues
that human being possess an in-built homeostatic mechanism that keeps at
bay diseases and illnesses. Homeostatic mechanism , or a system of self-
regulation, involves the maintenance of a stable condition of health and return
to such a condition in the face of environmental disturbances. The
Homeostatic mechanism ensures a normal state with respect to both internal
balance and the relationship of the system to its environment. All of us have to
cope with the environment in which we live. From the air we breathe to the
dust we become, we are part of it and it is part of us , since stress occurs not
only from within, but also mostly from sources outside (Levinson 1970, 17).

DISEASES OF ADAPTATION

The body suffers in a myriad ways in the face of continued and relentless
stress. According to Seyle, it is subject to external pressures or internal
problems such as worry or nervousness. Its inability to function at its full
efficiency is a consequence of its breakdown. As and when the demand on
the mechanism of homeostasis far exceeds its capacity to cope with, the
system caves in and the individual becomes sick. Cortisol, aldosterone and
epinephrine, constituting the ‘stress hormones’ serve the purpose of elevating
the blood pressure. With increase in heart rate, strain is placed on the blood
vessels. Heart attack, arteriosclerosis and cardiovascular disorders occur as a
consequence. As the need for glycogen as energy source arises, breathing
increases to supply more oxygen to convert to glycogen. There occurs an
elevation in cholesterol rate when the bloodstream receives the stored
glycogen. Consequent upon the diversion of blood supply from other body
functions, such as cognition and digestion, to areas needing more, memory
disorders, migraine headaches, confused thinking, stomach pain, indigestion
and various other gastrointestinal diseases including cancer are likely.

SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL EXPLANATION

Selye’s notion of ‘ stress’ stresses that disease is induced by stress. Selye

(1956) essentially views stress as a manifestation of responses to
environmental changes. Brushing aside the molecular level of explanation, the
causative constellation of a mass of disease is seen as residing at the
environmental level (Syme 1977, 73). Inner forces are in harmony with one
another and with the environment under ordinary conditions. When intrusion
upon this harmony occurs with the alteration in the environment, such a
situation creates a situation of instability and disequilibrium. The situations in
which these causes operate are of utmost concern in deciphering the equlibric
imbalance. While Selye emphasizes physical agents as stressors,
psychogenic factors and social circumstances are seen as includible in the list
of stressors. Distressful events get converted into stressors and compound
the odds and contribute to one falling a prey to some dreaded microbes or
organ malfunction. Developing symptoms is one response to stress (Wolff,
1953). The mere manifestation of symptoms itself is stressful. The means of
manifestation are as unlimited as the forms it takes are at variance with one
another. The symptoms of stress can be subsumed under three categories,
namely, physiological, psychological and social. Stress may be physiological
when relief from pain, which rankles in the heart, eludes. It may be
psychological when any troubling experience works on the unguarded castle
of the mind engendering depression. A number of diseases such as hysterical
paralysis and anesthesia, asthma, gastric ulcers, hypertension, and ulcerative
colitis are shown to have a large psychological component in their etiology. It
may be social when demands stemming from a variety of relationships remain
without being met. As a consequence of interpenetration of these dimensions,
social stress can cause biological symptoms and vice versa (Mauksch 1977,
132). Since fear or anxiety invariably accompanies these symptoms, these
symptoms, when unchecked, may mean death, personal degradation and loss
of chances. Disruption in organized activities and social relationship in the
family and elsewhere is the most likely successor. Keeping these aspects in
view, a sense of caution needs to be sounded emphasizing that ‘fear is the
one that one must fear most’. Pierce (1895, 119) is of the opinion that ‘ the
organ representing fear sustains a special relation to the functions of the heart
both in health and disease. Bright hopes characterize pulmonary complaints
as certainly as cough. Exquisite susceptibility of mind indicates equally
extreme sensibility of body, and those persons capable of fully expressing the
highest emotions are especially susceptible to bodily sensations.’ The forces
in the social, economic and cultural conditions produce diseases.
Maladaptation of organisms to their environment account for diseases. For
Rene Dubos (1959), a microbiologist of renown, man’s health lies in his
adaptation to his environment. Since stress is related to the pace of change,
environmental stress is unlikely to disappear considering the fact that change
is dynamic and ubiquitous. Formulating the hypothesis of ‘cultural lag’,
Ogburn (1922, Part IV) in his influential work on Social Change analyzed that
a large proportion of social problems afflicting mankind are a function of
cultural lag. Various health problems including mental health, poverty and so
on are seen as involving cultural lag. New diseases develop with every
change in environment calling for new adaptations to be made. As stress-
inducing environment increases and becomes a part of our day to day
experience, noise, pace, rate of change, activity and the like have a bearing
on the incidence of diseases. Calling cancer, heart disease, disorders of the
cerebral system and so on as the ‘diseases of civilization’, Dubos views that
our ways of life may have nefarious effects. According to him both affluence
as well as poverty can constitute a cause of disease. He goes on to add that
lack of nutriment, protein deficiency, malaria, tuberculosis, infestation with
worms, and a host of ill-defined gastrointestinal disorders are the greatest
killers to day in under privileged countries and in those just becoming
industrialized. With the improvement in standards of living, the toll taken by
malnutrition and infection decreases rapidly. However, other diseases become
more prevalent and pronounced. Prosperity brings in its wake heart diseases,
which constitute the leading cause of death. Cancers, vascular lesions
affecting the central nervous system and accidents come to occupy the
second, third and fourth places in accounting for death in such countries.
Chronic disorders such as arthritis and allergies affect those who are well fed
and well sheltered. Ironically, these disorders are ‘cruel only to be kind’ in the
sense they often ruin life, but do not destroy it. An ‘inner sense of death’ or a
sense of ‘living deadness’ emanating from our confrontation with the
environment becomes pervasive. The multitude of men ‘breathing with souls
so dead’ is on the increase. Looking beyond the organ system, the total
needs, both physical and emotional, become important facets in the
administration of medicare. Some drop of humanity and sensitivity to
emotional needs hold the ‘key’ key to ensuring the diminishing return of
stressors.

SOCIAL SOURCES OF STRESS

The concept of ‘cultural lag’, which cropped out in the writings of Ogburn is
defined as ‘the strain that exists between two correlated parts of culture which
change at unequal rates of speed’ (Ogburn and Nimkoff 1958:708). The
apparent inability of non-material culture to respond adequately to the
quickening pace of changes in material culture that accounts for the strain. It
is therefore the nature and growth of material culture, equated with technology
(Fischer, 1992:1-32) that serves, among others, as the context (Pugh and
Hickson 1976: 30)) within which the structure is developed. One aspect of
structure is formalization which includes roles, rules and operating procedures
dealing with several aspects of decision seeking, conveying and so on. Social
structures, according to a definition, which is French in origin, more especially
Durkheim and Simmel, are seen as the integration of role relationships in the
same collectivity. Social statuses and social roles are the major building
blocks of social structure. Even a single status involves the individual in not
one but a whole set of role relations and expectations. The possibility of
conflicting expectations inherent in such a ‘role-set’ (Merton 1959) is
suggestive of a discontinuity between expectations and opportunity. When an
individual occupies more than one status, it is logical to discern that he plays
more than one role. Multiple social roles with expectations associated with
each role make the individual devise methods by which he could discharge
his responsibilities associated with them. Seen through Mertonian scheme
(Merton 1959) of means-ends, discrepancy between means and ends is seen
as a basic social source of frustration and recalcitrance. Individual patterns of
adaptation can be viewed as ameliorative processes that lessen the strains of
dissociation. An examination of the sources of stress conveys that it involves
human relationships.

TECHNOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
Echoing Comte’s (1980, 10) concern for the advancement of society said to
be capsuled in over-production, Lynd (1939, 89) observes that
industrialization is a condition precedent to increase the standard of living of
people by increased production. The industrial mode of production has not
only given rise to economic organizations (Miller and Form 1980, Etzioni
1969), but has also brought men and women possessing varying degrees of
skills and dispositions together under one roof (Hyman 1971). The Industrial
Disputes Act, 1947 currently in force in India, defines the term ‘industry’ to
mean any business, trade, undertaking, manufacture, or calling of employers
and includes any calling, service, employment, handicraft, or industrial
occupation or avocation of workmen. Economic organizations also termed as
‘production organisation’ (Lambert 1963) or ‘utilitarian’ organization (Etzioni,
1961) rely on ‘remunerative power’. With cash nexus thus having been
introduced between man and his work, workers relationship to the
organization is explained in terms of distinguishable orientations such as
‘instrumental’, ‘bureaucratic’ and ‘solidaristic’ (Goldthorpe et al 1968, 38-41.)
Orientation to work is seen as a variable independent and involves workers
expectation for higher income, career advancement, and group cohesiveness
respectively. These orientations, however, overlap each other. Since
contributions or efforts from workers are contingent upon rewards or
inducements from employers, intrinsic or extrinsic concerns are not mutually
exclusive categories. Since the dominant life pattern of the educated person is
that of a progressive career in a selected line of work, the instrumental
concern of the employees remain increasingly concentrated in promotion.
Blocked career opportunities for advancement, for example, is likely to result
in retreatism or withdrawal of commitment, which is seen as a common
symptom of alienation. Rebellion is a more active response issuing from
resentment over promotion, which finds _expression in such behaviours as
active sabotage, theft and other “ca’canny” practices (Knowles 1954,10),
which include go-slow etc. In addition, the five core job dimensions such as
skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback can result
in motivation, performance and satisfaction when present (Hackman 1977,
129)) and serve as sources of stress in their absence either singly or in
combination. However, when the level of insecurity wrought into the job by
innovation far exceeds the limit of acceptability, the basic anxiety of people
turns towards work itself. Freedom, meaning and self expression in work will
therefore appear to be luxuries whose absence is experienced as deprivations
by those who have a steady employment (Blauner 1964). ‘Worker
protectivism’ may generate interest to look for what may be called by the
acronym ''PEEP'' - price, equity, effort, power (Barbash 1984: 38). When
‘protectivism’ turns out to be incompatible with their survival, workers’
responsiveness operates in favour of abandoning all covert and overt forms of
conflict.

Moving closer to situations in India, the industrial policy has since been given
a new dimension. In the context of liberalisation, the industrial map of India is
getting progressively dotted with multi-national enterprises. There are ‘two
liberalizations’. ‘Internal’ liberalization calls for performance on the part of
Indian industry to produce quality products and render quality services.
‘External’ liberalization extends an invitation and opportunity for multinational
enterprises to enter Indian market. Though the Indian industry is caught in a
’double bind’, these ’two liberalizations’, being in the nature of a ’self-fulfilling
prophecy’ (Merton 1959) evoke new expectations. Our busyness revolves
around the business of designing and refining the best machines and the best
tools. These are intended with a view to make labour more productive and to
have a competitive edge in the global market by ensuring an advantageous
input-output ratio. Ruskin (1934, 102) emphasizes that the prosperity of any
nation lies in exact proportion to the quantity of labour, which it spends in
obtaining and employing means of life. It is a moot question whether
liberalization will take the Indian economy towards an unemployment figure
closer to zero percent within a foreseeable future? With accelerating
technological innovations, which form part of material culture, progress in non-
material culture is witnessed. A rise in standard of living and the gains in life
expectancy, for example, are the consequences of advance in technology.
These gains cannot be taken without their negative impact on society.
Besides population crisis, the redistribution of population has created urban
crisis. Consumption of precious natural resources with an eye on increase in
the Gross National Product and discharge of industrial waste and poison into
water has created ecological crisis (Backman 1975). This injustice to Nature
as well as to the wider society is not beyond us. The question that looms large
in everyone’s mind is whether we should wait in patience for the natural
termination of this disorder or write into the emerging economic scenario a
caveat that business while serving one element of society does not damage
another (Backman 1975). Man’s dependency on family would not have
passed over into dependency on employment but for the ‘technological leap
forward’. Technology is a blessing in disguise as it creates more jobs; and a
curse as it weeds out as many jobs as it creates. Technology, instead of
augmenting man’s subsistence, provides substitution for labour. The new
technology challenges existing institutional arrangements as a consequence
of which the problems of the future will keep on compounding and expanding
with the technological acceleration.
STRESS AS A SOCIAL PROBLEM

An understanding of stress being seen as a social problem can be had in the

light of the various factors converging into the fabric of the Indian Society. An
examination of the constituents of a social problem conveys that it involves
human relationships, which seriously threaten society itself or impedes
important aspirations of many people. Social problems are seen as existing
when an organized society exhibits lack of new visions or remains oblivious of
its limitless capacity to order relationship among its members. When
relationships are increasingly being dominated by technology, workers get
caught in the vortex of a crisis of identity. Fear and anxiety that they may
become rootless with the possibility of being pushed into roleless roles as
casualities of technological advance envelop them. Given the insecurity of
employment with which employees are faced with, it is but perfectly natural for
them to attempt to retain and to look for some form of property rights which
social security measures confer on them. Unequivocal evidences indicate
that with the high growth rate, increases in the rate of unemployment are
bound to co-exist despite developing societies relentlessly engaging
themselves in creating more employment. While an increase in output is a
manifest function, a decrease in the number of employees either through
retrenchment or by placing constraints on recruitment becomes a latent
function. While ’retrenchment’ places legal restriction on the exercise of this
option, managerial discretion finds expression in two short words compressed
into what is fashionably called ’golden hand-shake’ or ’tearless termination’, a
deceptively simple phrase to circumvent legal provisions. Long term gains
gravitate employees toward short-term losses which retrenchment represents.
This displaced class, constituting the ’liberated margin’ or the ’reserve army of
labour’ thus becomes a part of the ’permanent leisure group (Miller and Form
1980, 155). As ‘twin threats’ (Blauner 1964, Preface), both technology and
population increase jointly and severally contribute to the decrease in
employment opportunities. Technological solutions imprison the social
structures and open up the floodgates of new problems. Mahatma Gandhiji
said that there should be no place for machines that concentrate power in a
few hands. It must have been uppermost in Gandhiji’s mind that
‘concentration of advantages’ would lead to ‘diffusion of disadvantages
(Russell 1988,54). ‘Domestic bliss’, which retention of employment offers, is
seen as never to return with the stress on optimal productivity resulting in the
neglect of the interests of dependent workers. As rightly held by Merton
(1959), the overall impact of technology upon the social structure becomes
nobody’s business through default. A sense of caution needs to be sounded to
the effect that before technological acceleration wreck our world, organized
intelligence needs to pool its resources and applies science effectively to
mastering the social problems which it creates. Both security of employment
and opportunities to advance and improve one’s status are the fundamental
preconditions of employees’ loyalty, identification and commitment to the
employing organization (Blauner 1964, 180). Therefore, the threat posed by
economic insecurity needs appreciation. Besides the number of individuals
willing to work, but unable to find work, youthful entrants possessing new
skills, make the already ‘deskilled’ workers encounter a ‘crisis of
disqualification’. It is technological change as a singular determinant of
capital-labour ratio that gives rise to ‘hiring’ of new generation of workers and
‘firing’ of older personnel bereft of new skills. Though no one likes to give up
for lost the time, and talent and labour he has embodied in any permanent
employment, with declining knowledge as well as skills, adult workers become
redundant. Redundancy, which embraces termination for any reason
whatsoever and howsoever engineered, is analogous to ‘industrial capital
punishment’ (Prasow and Peters 1983,288). For the disadvantaged workers,
the end of life becomes obscure in the sense that with the involuntary loss of
jobs, initial purposes and directions lose meaning for the anticipated future
(Redfield 1955). This fact must not disguise the possibility of their becoming
nothing, sorrow-stricken men with an imperfect profile and no profession.
Besides the loss of ‘birth right’ which employment represents, deprivation of
job decreases confidence, reduces social contacts, diminishes chances of
better integration into society, serves as a social source of stress and makes
the worker a member of the permanent leisure group. The rapidly increasing
proportion of aged people in contemporary society calls for critical attention to
the social and economic problems of old age. Men belonging to this category
wear out the rest of their life with shapeless idleness. They thus become
nothing, but ineffectual angels, beating their wings in a luminous void in vain.
Their fears and suspicions, uncertainties and frustrations make them confront
a ’crisis of confidence’.

WOMEN AND STRESS

When a departure is made from general to specific, Indian women may be

singled out for consideration. Assuming but not conceding that labour saving
devices, thanks to technological inventions, have ‘unburdened’ women’s
‘burden’ at the domestic level, their partial release from domestic chores has
helped some women to install ‘dual-career’ families thereby ‘burden’
themselves at the occupational front. Masculine pride born of the belief that
husband alone could support his wife and children would not have been
brought to its knees but for the increased cost of living and heavy taxation.
Such a situation made it necessary for a ‘two-spouse’ income envisioning a
‘higher per capita quality of life’ (Russell 1923: Preface). Despite two-earner
family becoming the labour market norms, ‘expenditure rising to meet income’
(Parkinson 1960: 3) becomes a source of stress, which involves ‘means and
ends’. Opportunity, capacity and motivation are the factors, which made it
possible for an increased number of women in general, and married women in
particular, to turn frustrating and insecure situations into growth promoting
experience. By the same token, it may be said that absence of these factors
in work situations is likely to increase levels of stress. Though longer periods
of education and training in each and every field of specialization are
presumed to create man-power shortage in a cyclical fashion, the removal of
discrimination and weakening of social disapproval coupled with increased
social awakening provided opportunities for women in large numbers to
throng the labour market and get employed in gainful avocations on an equal
footing with their male counterparts, befitting their qualifications and
dispositions.
It therefore boils down to the facts that ‘stress’ is a function of the interaction
between ‘domestic overloads’ and ‘occupational overloads’ which constitute
the sum total of ‘role overloads’. It is shown that working women still continue
to fulfill their traditionally prescribed obligations in their domestic roles besides
performing their occupational roles (Kapur 1970). In a similar vein, Ramu’s
(1989) study reveals that regardless of their work status, cooking, childcare,
and so on continue to be the primary responsibilities of women besides the
responsibility of caring for the parents and parents-in-law. The ‘central life
interest’ of working women revolves around the family and the secondary
importance attached to work paves the way for stressful situations being
faced by them as a consequence of ‘ role overloads’ flowing out of dual roles.
(Kapur 1970, Rani 1976, Chakrabortty 1978)). A relatively high economic
status thus gained as a result of installation of two-earner families implies
affordability to go in for substitutes for labour which domestic gadgets
represent (Ramu, 1989). Occupational overloads, being systemic, may
emanate from role ambiguity, divergent role expectations, role erosion, role
isolation, resource inadequacy and personal inadequacy. In his efforts to
identify some of the personal and organizational attributes that lie behind the
genesis of stress, Singh (1991) provides 10 dimensions such as lack of group
cohesiveness, role conflict, experience of inequity, role ambiguity, role
overloads, lack of leadership, support, constraints of change, job difficulty, job
requirement, capability mismatch and inadequacy of role authority. All these
dimensions are in fact variables and it will be possible to estimate the levels of
stress of role occupants at any point along a continuum. A ‘robbing Peter to
pay Paul’ situation has thus emerged. Is it a ‘blessing in disguise’ or the ‘most
unkindest cut of all’ for many a woman in a society where tradition still rules
the roost? Indian women may be seen as caught in a ‘double bind’ in the
sense that their educational attainments and labour force participation, their
commitment to marriage and family call for a balancing act in the midst of dual
roles. The issue of ‘balancing’ itself is not devoid of stress when the available
alternatives go without being exhausted. Both ‘dilemma of ends’ (Gouldner
1955. a) as well as ‘dilemma of means’ result in stress. It is precisely here that
stress-stricken individuals try to come to terms with it by slipping into such
behaviour patterns as innovation, ritualism, retreatism and rebellion. Failures
to meet the needs of role occupants, besides manifesting in divergent
adaptive behaviour patterns, will have a telling effect upon their health. The
imprints of work can be seen as reflected in family life and vice versa and
therefore work and family mutually influence one another and hold man
together or tear him apart.

NURTURE NATURE

Evidences amply demonstrate that there exists a correlation between socio-

environmental conditions and disease. Conditions are so hopeless for
humanity to dream of a complete physical, mental, and social well being in
such an infected environment. Being the single most important determinant,
socio-environmental factors could bring about a sharp decline in the rate of
morbidity and mortality as and when a semblance of an attempt is made to cry
a halt to environmental abuse. When one is able to bring about congruence
between his personality and socio-cultural environment, it vouchsafes for a
greater measure of one’s health. Ruskin’s (1934, 23) concept of ‘balances of
justice’, which includes ‘affection’, not only ‘means what one man owes to
another’, but can be taken to include his debt to Nature. Man owes to Nature
for its being bountiful. Those who scarcely deny the justice that Nature
deserves will enjoy the advantage of a life that is unlikely to be sealed by
death. ‘Smiling at grief’ serves as cushion to minimize if not altogether
eliminate the ill effects of life cycle events. Blunting the edges of some of the
distressful consequences of life problems rests on the coping repertoires and
access to and use of social support system. Besides changes that involve
gains and losses of roles, ‘emotional disturbance is most likely when events
adversely reshape important life circumstances (Pearlin 1982: 55-74). The
moot question is whether people must contend with such circumstances
overtime?

STRESS MANAGEMENT
Since a stress-free state lies in death only, special skills need to be developed
to deal with stressors. Mastery of grief comes not from rejecting the past, but
from recasting it in terms appropriate for the present and the future. Without
being exhaustive, it can be stressed that the “ stress on stress” is intended to
strike more and sink deeper into the minds, thus leaving behind the strongest
impressions that it is the mind that makes a ‘heaven of hell or hell of heaven’.
After all, ‘wars begin in the minds of men’ and therefore ‘it is in the minds of
men that the defenses of peace must be constructed’, of course through their
own individual mechanisms of defense. Nurture nature and She will nurture
you. It is possible to keep stress below its disruptive level if we can assist our
bodies to cope with being stressed. Man is a product of consciousness and
matter- a byproduct of desire. The sensory organs react to various impulses
from the human matter which results in feelings of joy and sorrow. The answer
lies in meditation, exercises, counselling, recreation that includes leisure time
activities and recourse to social support systems and above all, prayer.
Meditation, for that matter ’transcendental meditation’ takes the sensory
organs and mind away from the inputs to which human matter is subjecting
itself. It helps man to disengage himself from surroundings and realise
consciousness. While cutting at the roots of stressors, transcendental
meditation enlivens the human vital organs. This is also being advised as
clinical therapy for some acute ailments. It is believed that ‘much of the stress
of life grows out of one’s feelings of separateness from the world’ (Quick and
Nelson, 1985). Building supportive social relationships both inside and outside
the factory gate, in the context of structural persistence of the joint family
system in India, is necessary in order to cope with stressors. It is to be borne
in mind that ‘more things are wrought by prayer than the world dreams of’.
You must pray to Him ‘who walks on the wings of the wind’ for the simple
reason that prayer takes your pains away. The simple fact that one needs to
become conscious of is that pain is a far stronger sensation than pleasure. As
Drydon holds, ‘all happiness that man can gain is not in pleasure, but in relief
from pain’.

CONCLUSION
Coleman (1976) declared that with the 20th Century began the age of anxiety
and stress. Though stress per se is not harmful, we should set it to work for
us. The way conflict, equated with stress, is managed rather than suppressed,
ignored or avoided-contributes significantly to the effectiveness of any
organization (Follet 1991,21). In the present day context, a ‘two-way’ focus
becomes essential. ‘Focus inward’ implies coordination of employees
behaviour within the organization to bring the best out of them. As employees
gain ‘a new dignity from responsibility and a sense of individual function’,
alienation curve will begin to decline (Blauner 1964,182). If ‘balances of
justice’ (Ruskin 1934, 23) takes within its embrace ‘affection’ which implies
‘what one man owes to another’, then capital owes to labour for its being the
sole creative factor. ‘Focus outward’ emphasises the need on the part of
employees to address themselves to customer-specific issues and needs.
When capital owes to labour, both capital and labour together owe to the
consumer for making the wheels of industry to hum with activity. Therefore
pushing employees ‘outward’ toward customer itself is an exercise intended to
meet the needs of the organization. Ways and means of finding solutions to
issues relating to ‘focus inward’ and ‘focus outward’ will help stall the solvency
of the organization becoming suspect. Organisational excellence hinges on
resolution of such issues. Organisations remaining oblivious of their
responsibilities in social terms will be hoist with their own petard sooner than
later.
It therefore calls for devising the means whereby all the members of the
community can reach a minimum standards of health, economic security and
civilized living and can share according to their capacity in the social and
cultural heritage. Protection of health, mitigation of injustice and alleviation of
economic anxieties will vouchsafe a country’s power of defense. The chronic
problems and conflicts that people often experience within the context of
social roles have profound effect on their overall well being. As Parsons
(1958) holds, health becomes the state of optimum capacity of the individual
for the effective performance of the roles and tasks. A society cannot afford to
waste its human resources. Man’s progress depends upon his handling of
resources. The most important of all resources are human resources, the
energy, intelligence and purposiveness of people. It is through the energetic
exploitation of human resources, a society can achieve and maintain the
goals of individual well being and social harmony. The prosperity of a Nation
depends upon the health of its people. It is health which is not only essential
to the accomplishment of every purpose (Pierce 1895, 9), but can serve as a
mechanism of social defense to catapult a Nation into the zone of three ‘Ps’,
namely plenty, prosperity and peace. In fine, where there is anxiety the
imagination is called upon to destroy it by an act of reconstruction.
Reconstruction lies in ensuring an increase in the ‘per capita quality of life’
(Russell 1923, Preface). Increases in quality of life, health and prosperity
follow one another thereby creating a ‘vicious circle’.

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