What is dignity of human life? Do we enjoy such a dignity in our workplaces, or lived places? Or is one’s dignity even recognised or appreciated by every other in your life? I have a new friend who does voluntary work with migrants in Malaysia. He says that their “dignity is denied from the moment they leave their country all the way up till when they land here; then they are further undignified by our lack for respect of basic human rights and values”.

A study of this value or appreciation of/for human dignity as applied and deployed in the workplace was my doctoral thesis research project. The first problem I ran into was with some of my very own professors. They wanted me to define dignity from an entirely secular perspective (because we are a school of science and not of religion or philosophy) without deploying any sacred values or religious premises.