Effect of Cyclic Meditation on Job Stress Levels of Indian IT Professionals

Abstract

Over the last two decades, Information Technology (IT) based industry in India has newlinetransitioned from million dollar industry to billion dollar industry. This industry grew from newlineUSD 100 million in the financial year 1992 to USD 108 billion in the year 2013 as per newlineNASSCOM 2013 annual report. Over 100 million English speaking population, computer newlineawareness to students in early college times, favorable government policies and low cost newlinegeographical advantage, are some of the reasons for this growth. Majority of revenues for newlineIndian economy in private sector are driven by IT sector as per NASSCOM 2014 annual newlinereport. As most of Indian IT professionals work for IT based global service providers, they newlineneed to tune to the customer demands in meeting aggressive targets as well as to adjust to the newlinecustomer country time zones. One cannot ignore short-term contract nature of IT job, newlinecausing Job Anxiety for Indian IT professionals. Due to the characteristics of job performed newlineby IT professionals , they are often getting victims of Job stress conditions. Job Anxiety is a newlinemajor component in driving the Job stress for Indian IT professionals. This has taken a huge newlinetoll on the physical and mental health levels of IT professionals. Acid peptic diseases, newlineexcessive alcoholism, asthma, diabetes, tension head-ache and hypertension are some of the newlinediseases experienced by IT professionals. In a cross-sectional study performed on 1071 newlineprofessionals on IT and ITES professionals working in Bangalore, alarming facts were found: newline31% of IT/ITES professionals are hypertensive with approximately 5% having malignant newlinelevels of hypertension (Giridhara babu et. al, 2013). This study further suggests that newlinehypertension in IT/ITES professionals occurs a decade earlier compared to the rest of India newlineand two decades earlier compared to developed countries.