Ironic officewear collection 2022

This is a serious editorial comment. However, because of the level of irony presented here shooting through the roof, this protected-from-humbugs space has been decided to air our opinion on the matter. The Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) has asked its employees to come in to work wearing traditional attire at least once a week. Like clockwork, 'political furore' has followed. The anvil-breaking irony is that the BJP has protested against the move, calling it - and here the needle flies off the dial - an 'imposition' of culture. No tsk-tsks please. Let's not be rude.

Well, of course, the same rules that make the imposition or prohibition of a dress code in any other part of India, say, Karnataka, distasteful applies in Tripura too. We're not going to once again go on about the rightness of allowing people to wear anything they want or not wear anything they don't - within the ambit of the law, of course. But the state BJP's anguish at being told that everyone - about 6,000 TTAADC employees, all of whom may not be comfy wearing, say, the rignai, the Tripuri dress worn by women covering the bottom half of the body - will have to 'go ethnic' on Mondays makes you decry both the distaste of imposed monoculture, as well as the unofficial decree that businesswear in a tropical country must include the suit and tie.