BENGALURU: Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy has urged the youth of the country to work 70 hours a week in order to compete with countries like China and asked them to not pick up "not-so-desirable habits from the West."
He made these remarks in conversation with former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai during the first episode of 3one4 Capital's podcast 'The Record', wherein he urged the youth to step up productivity and work hard.
Expressing concerns about India's productivity, Narayana Murthy said: "Somehow our youth has the habit of taking not-so-desirable habits from the West… India's work productivity is one of the lowest in the world. Unless we improve our work productivity, unless we reduce corruption in the government at some level, because we have been reading, I don't know the truth of it, unless we reduce the delays in our bureaucracy in taking this decision, we will not be able to compete with those countries that have made tremendous progress. So therefore, my request is that our youngsters must say, 'this is my country, I want to work 70 hours a week'," he said.
The Infosys founder said the only way the world will respect anybody is through performance.
"Performance leads to recognition, recognition leads to respect, and respect leads to power," he said and added that his "request to all the wonderful youth of this country is that realise this and work 12-hour days for the next 20 years, 50 years... so that India too becomes a number or number 2 nation in terms of its GDP."
In his message to the youth of India, Narayana Murthy said: "For the first time in the history of our country in the last 300 years, India has received some respect in the eyes of the comity of nations, and it is the responsibility of every Indian, but more so the youth to consolidate that respect and to enhance that respect manifold."
Talking about pre-1991 days, he said those days were hell for business people and India was absolutely anti-business. "Those days India was always three steps behind the latest technologies. And what 1991 did was it brought about a few fundamental changes. For me I always say that while we got political freedom in 1947, we got economic freedom only in 1991," he added.