Piyush Goyal’s remarks to Dutch business leaders that Indian workers do not pack up at 5 pm and are willing to work through weekends have kicked up dust at home. The Union commerce and industry minister, who made the comment at the India-Netherlands Business Forum at The Hague last week, doubled down later at an event in New Delhi by claiming work-life balance was a ‘foreign concept’. It is odd that the minister was hard-selling his vision of hard work to the Dutch, who have a 36-40 hour work-weeks and are known to prioritise personal time. In doing so, he may have inadvertently mirrored the fact that the average economic output per Indian worker is far lower than that of a European.
Goyal also reminded the nation of Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy's support for a 70-hour work-week and L&T chief S N Subrahmanyan pushing for 90 hours. The Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employees Union has clapped back at the minister, saying normalisation of long working hours has led to burnout among employees, impacting physical and mental health. Opposition leaders slammed the comment for glorifying a ‘slave mindset’ rather than professional skills.
Though he described Indian workers as “young, talented, skilled, aspirational”, Goyal may not have factored in the Gen Z zeitgeist, which has a generational disagreement on work-life balance. It is also worth checking whether government employees would be amenable to such work conditions.
According to an International Labour Organization report, an average Indian worker clocks 45.7 hours a week. In reality, IT, finance and marketing employees regularly put in 14-hour workdays. Studies by McKinsey Health Institute and Deloitte India show that around 59 percent of Indian employees show burnout symptoms—the highest in the world, which averages 20 percent—alongside depression (59 percent), emotional exhaustion (55 percent) and sleep issues (50 percent). Not just health—none of this is good for work, too.
While we aim for Viksit Bharat, we must look at countries that already qualify as developed—where work-weeks are shorter and productivity higher. Even if we consider that Indians need to slog between the present and that aspired future, we must ask at what cost. We cannot afford to push more Indians towards an unhealthy lifestyle bereft of family time, rest and personal growth. What kind of development would that be?
