Infosys founder calls for controversial 70-hour work week
Infosys co-founder Naranyana Murthy has caused intense debate in India and around the world, after comments he made relating to the work-ethic of young people. Murthy suggested young people should be willing to work for 70 hours per week as a matter of national pride.
‘Grindset’ culture is a recent manifestation of a very old phenomenon. Since the emergence of capitalism, land, raw materials and the machinery needed to transform them into the necessities of life have underwritten their economic and political dominance with the assertion that it is all hard-earned, and that simply by working long hours for low pay, everyone else can obtain the same levels of privilege. It just so happens that that hard labour takes place in facilities owned by those same inspirational capitalists – which they may or may not have acquired thanks to inherited wealth – and is paid less than its actual value.
It might not come as a big surprise that many of the leading champions of the modern day grind are the owners of the world’s largest businesses. Among those proponents are Alibaba’s Jack Ma, who endorsed China’s controversial 996 working regime before taking a conspicuous leave of absence from public life; and Elon Musk, who allegedly once scalded an employee for missing work to attend his child’s birth, and famously claimed to work a 120-hour week – though as the value of X (formerly Twitter) continues to plummet, the social media firm’s staff might wish he would take a less hands-on approach.
The latest billionaire to join the chorus is Narayana Murthy. Perhaps most prominently known in the UK now as the father-in-law of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Murthy was one of six software professionals who co-founded Infosys in 1981. Having served as CEO of the company in the 21 years following, he then served as chair from 2002, until retiring in 2011. He remains chairman emeritus at the firm, which reported revenues of $18 billion in its latest fiscal year.
Speaking to former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai for corporate podcast The Record, Murthy argued, “India's work productivity is one of the lowest in the world… So therefore, my request is that our youngsters must say, ‘This is my country. I’d like to work 70 hours a week."
Channelling his inner Alan Sugar, he added “somehow our youth have the habit of taking not so desirable habits form the West”, relating to not wanting to spend every waking moment at work. Instead, he argued they ought to take inspiration from two particularly choice sources – West Germany and Japan after the Second World War. According to Murty, the former Axis members were only able to rebuild their economy because they made sure every citizen “worked extra hours for a certain number of years".
Compassionate capitalism
In 2020, Murthy alleged that he once spent 72 hours in a Soviet-era jail in Bulgaria, an experience he claimed convinced him only the free market could help India to thrive, and transformed him from a “confused leftist” into a “compassionate capitalist”. To what extent his most recent statements fit with that assertion is up for debate, but beyond a raging debate about morality, they have also been taken to task for their accuracy.
According to a number of posts from online commenters citing Ruth Meinert’s research for the Universität Münster from 1958, the average working week in Germany during and after the war was not close to those demanded by Murthy. Under the Nazi regime during Second World War, it had hit 50 hours. As the German economy collapsed at the close of the war, average hours then fell to a low of 39.5 in 1946, before ramping back to around 50 hours per week amid the ‘Economic Miracle’ era of the early 1950s – 20 hours short of the regimen Murthy was championing.
Of course, these figures are averages, and some workers did have even longer hours. Speaking on Reddit, one commenter who has taken a long-time interest in the German labour market noted the average 50-hour week, but added that “a few of my grandfathers' brothers worked in construction, and I've heard quite a number of anecdotes about how right after the war they used to climb into their bulldozers at 5am with a full case of beer and three unopened packs of cigarettes and climb out at 5pm, stopping at the shops on the way home for dinner to get the next day's supply.”
Assuming those individuals did not work on weekends, this would push those workers’ hours to 60 per week – and over the 70-mark if they did work a sixth day, which defenders of Murthy’s comments might point to as evidence of the schedule’s virtues. However, the commenter also added that due to this regime, it was “little wonder” most of their grandfather’s brothers “didn’t make it past their 50s”.
As he enjoys a retirement those aforementioned workers did not live to see, this might also highlight the reckless nature of Murthy’s one-size-fits-all statement – and the defence of those sentiments later offered by his wife. Speaking to News18, Sudha Murty has since issued a statement claiming her husband “worked 80 to 90 hours a week, so he doesn’t know what less than that is.” But after Murthy’s middle class upbringing, he went straight into higher education, before working a series of desk-jobs, which – even if he really did work 90 hours each week – would carry significantly less strain than something involving manual labour – the kind most commonly undertaken by India’s workforce.
While his advice might have arguably been directed at young IT workers, even beyond that, a mountain of medical research suggests that working long hours in any job exposes workers to heightened medical risks. One paper from 2015 found that people who worked 55 or more hours each week increased their chances of having a heart attack by 13%, while they were also 33% more likely to suffer a stroke than those who worked a 40-hour week. Other studies have further shown that individuals working more than 55 to 61 hours per week are more likely to face mental health issues like anxiety, depression, and stress-related disorders – a risk rising beyond a 70 hour week, which leaves little time for relaxation, family, or self-care.
Working conditions
According to the World Health Organization, depression and anxiety alone cost global economy approximately $1 trillion annually due to lost productivity, while other studies suggest mental health struggles cost the UK economy alone £92 billion to that end. That might well be one of the reasons why countries with higher productivity also have shorter working hours on average.
Looking at GDP per hour worked is a measure of labour productivity in 2019, India averaged just over $8 per hour, compared to the US, where it was over $73. Looking at average working hours, India’s working week is more than 47 hours, while the US has an average of just below 37 hours – suggesting that expecting India’s workforce to put in even more hours might actually move the nation’s economy away from the heightened productivity Murthy purportedly was championing.
Tellingly, however, India also has the worst purchasing power parity of any of the world’s 10 largest economies – while also having the largest working week. In other words, while Indian workers work the most, they see the smallest share of their productivity of any leading economy. Indeed, if Indians are to redouble their working efforts, the biggest beneficiary is likely to be people like Narayana Murthy – or the industry leaders like JSW Group CMD Sajjan Jindal and Ola Cabs co-founder Bhavish Aggarwal, who supported his call.
Much of the Indian IT sector punishes workers for taking on extra work from competitors. Infosys is among a number of firms which has been embroiled in a mounting debate about non-compete and anti-moonlighting policies, which prevent staff undertaking work with other IT firms, something unions argue stops them from easily seeking better wages elsewhere, or topping up their salaries with side-projects.
In 2022, this saw 300 staff fired by Wipro, prompting a backlash across the country’s sector. Summarising the problems they felt workers in the industry faced, and the causes of moonlighting, one engineer noted, “it's just another fact that TCS, Infosys, Wipro are still paying 3.5lakh to an engineering graduate, a salary which they used to give in 2010 and it's same in 2022”, before adding, “if employees won't work at two companies how else they'll survive?
