Every few years, India is ambushed by the same emergency. Crude prices spike. The rupee wobbles. Petrol stations see long lines. Panic spreads. Governments scramble—subsidies, price controls, urgent diplomatic calls to Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. And then, when the pressure eases, we return to business as usual and await the next fire. Trying to solve this problem only from the supply side is not a great idea. We need to look at demand. Among the many ways to manage it is reducing fuel consumption for the office commute. The pandemic recently forced the world’s largest social experiment and proved that a significant slice of the workforce could operate productively from home. Despite that evidence and lived experience, we have not converted experience into policy.
Digitally savvy India is uniquely positioned to treat remote work as a national strategy for creating inclusive, enabling employment.
India’s oil crisis is structural, not cyclical. In 2024, India’s oil and gas import bill stood at approximately $143 billion,
accounting for close to 89 percent of our crude oil needs. The office commute is a significant driver of road-fuel demand. Here is the arithmetic that matters: India’s IT-business management and knowledge economy sector alone employs over 54 lakh workers directly, with the broader digital economy supporting upwards of a crore. A 2024 survey found that 44 percent of Indian workers commute by private car, averaging 10-15 km each way. A conservative estimate puts the fuel consumption at around 1.2-1.6 litres per commuter every day. If just 20 percent of India’s one crore knowledge workers shifted to a three-day-per-week hybrid model, commuting reductions would eliminate approximately 2.4 to 3.2 billion litres of petrol and diesel consumption annually. At current prices, that translates into foreign-exchange savings of $2 to $3 billion a year—simply by redesigning the workweek.
The most persistent objection to remote work is that people do not work when unsupervised. The data disagrees.
Employees in hybrid arrangements worldwide report a 47 percent increase in productivity compared to full-time office work. A 2024 Zoom global study found that 84 percent of employees feel more productive in remote or hybrid settings. The Deloitte Global Workforce Trends Report 2025 notes that 72 percent of organisations believe commuting convenience directly affects productivity and retention. According to TomTom’s Traffic Index 2024, Bengaluru commuters lose over 130 hours annually to congestion—hours that could otherwise be spent working or recuperating.
Another frequent argument against remote work is that culture cannot be built unless people congregate in offices. A 2024 analysis of Trust Index Survey data covering 13 lakh employees found that cooperation does not require co-location.
A PayScale study covering more than 150,000 responses found that remote work is less influential in explaining job satisfaction and turnover than workplace
attributes such as feeling appreciated, communication quality, managerial effectiveness and development opportunities. Culture is a function of leadership, trust, communication and shared values—not physical proximity. It can no longer be left to osmotic absorption in an office; it must be cultivated through shared values, role modelling, communication, virtual events and periodic in-person gatherings.
India Inc forces people to migrate to Bengaluru, Mumbai or Delhi-NCR to find work. This migration inflates metros, strains infrastructure and hollows out smaller cities. Remote work breaks this trap. A 2024 Nasscom report found that employees in Tier-2 cities demonstrate 28 percent higher retention and 19 percent better job satisfaction than their metro counterparts. When India Inc hires a skilled professional with a competitive salary to work remotely, the benefits ripple outward. Small towns develop, women are included and empowered and the misery of migration is mitigated.
What should be done? Accelerate BharatNet. Over 2.5 lakh gram panchayats are now connected via high-speed fibre. Completing last-mile connectivity in Tier-2 towns is the infrastructure prerequisite for distributed work.
Tax incentives for remote-first companies. Firms maintaining a threshold proportion of hybrid employees in non-metro locations should be eligible for GST or corporate tax concessions. Savings from reduced urban infrastructure spending will more than offset the incentive.
Government as first mover. Union and state governments employ millions of knowledge workers. A phased hybrid-work policy for public-sector roles—where operationally feasible—would signal intent and build digital-governance capacity. India Inc must adopt performance frameworks. HR policy must shift from hours worked to deliverables delivered. The technology already exists. The nature of work has changed repeatedly through history, from hunting and gathering to agriculture, factories and offices. Now is the time to leverage ubiquitous digital technologies to get work done from anywhere, not only the office.
India has the digital infrastructure, talent base and a pandemic-era proof-of-concept. We know remote work reduces oil dependence, cleans the air, unlocks Tier-2 talent, brings women back into the workforce and improves productivity. What we lack is not evidence but the ambition to treat a commuting habit as a national policy problem. The office will not disappear—but the assumption that every knowledge worker must be in one every day is costing India in dollars, pollution, talent and lives. It is time to change that assumption by design, not by the next crisis.
Chandrasekhar Sripada | Clinical professor, Indian School of Business and author of Shaping the Future of Work: Building Flexible Work Options and Unleashing the Human Capital of Bharat
(Views are personal)
