A rather intriguing controversy has blown up in recent months regarding the number of hours each person should work for the benefit of the country and their own well-being. It began with N R Narayana Murthy, the doyen of the Indian IT industry, proclaiming that everyone must work 70 hours a week. He had made similar statements earlier.
In October 2023, he stated, “I request that our youngsters must say, ‘This is my country. I’d like to work 70 hours a week.’” He obviously believes that anyone who works as he did—from 6:20 in the morning to 8 at night—would create more institutions like Infosys in the country.
Social media, for the most part, did not react kindly to his remarks. One Reddit user commented, “The man has equity in his company. Its success is his success. If you want your employees to work similar hours, then they need similar incentives—give them equity in the company or pay them for the additional hours.” Another pointed out that shopkeepers, petrol station operators and others often work well beyond 70 hours, earning far less than he does.
During the Kilachand Memorial Lecture in Mumbai, Murthy partly retracted his statement. He said, “These are not issues that should be discussed and debated. These are issues that one can introspect on, one can ingest, and one can come to some conclusion.” He then talked of “compassionate capitalism” and the necessity of respecting individual preferences.
S N Subrahmanyan, chairman of Larsen and Toubro, took it a step further than Murthy, suggesting working 90 hours a week, even on Sundays, saying, “If you go to the office and work on Sundays, you can escape looking at your wife. She will also be spared the onerous task of looking at you.”
My friend and colleague, the high-flying Amitabh Kant, also expressed similar views at another ideas summit, stating, “I strongly believe in hard work. Indians must work hard, whether it’s 80 hours or 90 hours a week. If your ambition is to move from a $4-trillion economy to a $30-trillion one, you can’t do it through entertainment or by following the views of some film stars.”
I have my own opinions regarding the $30-trillion economy. An Oxfam report titled ‘Survival of the Richest: The India Story’ highlights significant income inequality in India. The wealthiest 1 percent now own more than 40 percent of the country’s total wealth, while the bottom 50 percent hold just 3 percent. While Oxfam may not be very popular in India, its data cannot be dismissed, as several other reports corroborate a similar situation.
If our GDP rises to $30 trillion while most of it goes to a few billionaires, why should ordinary people work 80 to 90 hours to achieve this end? Achieving a higher GDP in terms of US dollars can never be the sole objective of good governance. The welfare of a country cannot be measured solely in terms of GDP. It encompasses a range of factors including reducing inequality, creating jobs, and improving health and education—in short, focusing on human welfare and happiness.
By prioritising GDP as a measure of growth, we risk making disastrous policy mistakes. The assumption that a country becomes happier as the rich get richer is fundamentally flawed and will invariably lead the government into policies that favour the wealthy in the hope that some of this wealth will ‘trickle down’ to the middle class and the poor.
This year’s national budget is itself an acknowledgement of the need to change direction. By making the rich richer, we risk reducing domestic demand, resulting in billionaires either leaving the country or investing their wealth elsewhere as domestic demand declines. The talk of trillions of dollars is but a mirage that the people of India should firmly reject.
Another issue relevant to working hours is the level of unemployment in India. The unemployment rate is currently around 8 percent, but youth unemployment is considerably higher at about 16 percent. For graduates, this figure climbs to 29 percent. Though these figures are alarming, they likely underestimate the true extent of the problem.
As Professor Rayaprolu Nagaraj, formerly of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, stated, “There are three categories of jobs: one, regular wage salaried workers; two, casual labourers paid for what they do; and three, self-employed individuals such as someone who opens a tea stall in front of their house because they have no other job. This is, in fact, disguised employment. When you say unemployment has declined, the truth is that self-employment has increased. While self-employment has risen, regular and casual employment has declined. The fact is, there are not enough jobs in the market.”
When unemployment is high and jobless growth prevails, does it make sense to exhort people to work 70-90 hours a week? The government should instead prioritise encouraging industries to create more jobs. The government, having long been a proponent of the trickle-down theory of wealth creation, has itself grown frustrated with the lack of investment. Nirmala Sitharaman remarked in 2022, “Since 2019, I have been hearing that industry doesn’t find [conditions] conducive, so I reduced the corporate tax rate... I would like to know from Indian industry why they are hesitant [to invest]?”
Ultimately, what the country needs is more investment in job-generating sectors by the corporate sector. GDP or per-capita GDP is not inherently meaningful. We need more jobs, less inequality, and greater prosperity for all levels of society. The challenge lies not with workers who do not work hard enough, but with industries failing to invest adequately and thereby create prosperity for everyone.
The country will not become viksit by employees avoiding their spouses on Sundays, but through more jobs, increased incomes, greater well-being and a better understanding of the forces of demand and supply. Let our objective be happiness for all, not merely GDP in trillions of dollars.
Psychologist Robert Puff states in Meditation for Modern Life, “It’s really all about work-life balance. If we achieve that balance, whether today is our last day or we live for a hundred years, we can look back and say, ‘That was a good life’.”
K M Chandrasekhar
Former Cabinet Secretary and author of As Good as My Word: A Memoir
(kmchandrasekhar@gmail.com)
(Views are personal)