Thank you dear subscribers, we are overwhelmed with your response.
Your Turn is a unique section from ThePrint featuring points of view from its subscribers. If you are a subscriber, have a point of view, please send it to us. If not, do subscribe here: https://theprint.in/subscribe/
N.R. Narayana Murthy, Founder of Infosys, suggested that young Indians should work 70 hours per week to compensate for their low productivity. Around the same time, S.N. Subrahmanyan, Chairman of L&T, expressed a desire for employees to work even on Sundays and implied that long work hours fuelled China’s economic rise. He exhorted his employees to work 90 hours a week so that we catch up with China. These comments have triggered a flood of criticism, memes, and impassioned discussions. The debate is still raging even after a month. However, setting emotions aside, the real questions to consider are:
- Is a 90-hour workweek sustainable and necessary for optimal productivity?
- Can a nation’s economy grow rapidly and magically simply by increasing work hours?
The modern workplace thrives on collaboration. Work does not get done in isolation—it involves colleagues, suppliers, customers, and service providers embedded in the value chain. Technology has improved efficiency, but expecting the entire ecosystem to operate with optimal efficiency at extreme work hours is unrealistic. Furthermore, today’s work is driven more by creativity and innovation than by sheer manual effort. Innovation thrives on experience, passion, and most importantly, the freedom and space to think. A toxic work culture that prioritizes hours over quality and creativity is unlikely to produce high-quality output.
The idea that long hours compensate for poor productivity is fundamentally flawed—it is like trying to put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it. There are times when extended work hours are necessary, such as product launches, implementation of new systems, system upgrades, or crisis situations like equipment failures or system outages. However, these should be rare occurrences. If they happen frequently, it suggests deeper issues in the business model.
If low productivity is a concern, companies should address it through improved collaboration tools, continuous training, and process improvements rather than demanding excessive work hours. Companies like Infosys built their fortune providing low-end IT services to clients in OECD countries, billing by the hour at dollar rates and paying pittance to the employees (in relative terms). Now that this model of labour arbitrage is collapsing due to AI-driven automation and in-sourcing, our out-of-touch leadership is trying to squeeze more hours out of the employees instead of reimagining the business model with focus on innovation and creativity.
Now, let’s look at the ‘China’ argument. India and China had the same per capita GDP in 1978. Until then, under Mao’s communist China, the Chinese were dying of starvation and overwork (the same is true of North Korea, even today). If China’s per capita GDP is five times that of India today, it is not because mindless slogging and long hours of work. It happened only because of a radical departure from the communist model of economy and total embrace of free market capitalism (in economic sense only) from 1978 onwards. The Chinese worker is not five times smarter or does not work five times harder. It is the availability of capital per unit of labour that determines per capita output. Labour productivity plays a limited role in the whole equation. Catching up China requires major reforms: land, labour, banking, foreign investments and most of all, a heavy dose of deregulation. However, you are unlikely to find any industry leader urging such reforms. They are happily ensconced in the statist regime, where regulations and entry barriers restrict competition.
What is even more pathetic is the appeal to work longer hours ‘for the country’, when it comes from a for-profit, private enterprise. Normally it is the political demagogues that resort to demands of such ‘sacrifice of the individual’ in the name of a ‘higher ideal’ such as nation of religion. It shows that our corporate leadership is not only hopelessly ignorant and arrogant, but is also stooping to levels that were hitherto exclusive realm of politicians.
The Western world achieved prosperity through the Industrial Revolution, built on the foundations of the Scientific Revolution. However, true transformation came from the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries, which reshaped philosophical and cultural attitudes toward work, innovation, and individual rights. While India has adopted Western technology, its corporate and political culture still bears the marks of feudalism.
A genuine shift in work culture will not come from forced long hours but from a broader intellectual and cultural renaissance. Productivity is not about exhausting workers—it is about smarter work, better policies, and a more forward-thinking leadership mindset.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.