Bolo Toh Jaane — Audi Alteram Partem: Re, Narayana Murthy’s remark — “India’s work culture must change: ‘Youngsters should work 70 hours a week’”

#BoloTohJaane — An initiative of The Sangyan and curated by Adv. Abhishek Kumar, to break the ‘spiral of silence’, based on the principle of ‘Audi Alteram Partem’ (“hear the other side”) and understanding of “let’s agree to disagree and respect each other’s ‘right to be wrong’”.

Let the śāstrārtha continue.

Audi Alteram Partem: Re, Narayana Murthy’s remark — “India’s work culture must change: ‘Youngsters should work 70 hours a week’”

Image Description [Alt Text]: On a wall-themed background with red bricks and a brownish wooden platform at the centre with The Sangyan’s logo and the following texts: #HaveYourSay and linktr.ee/sangyan (at the top), Audi Alteram Partem: Re, Narayana Murthy’s remark — “India’s work culture must change: ‘Youngsters should work 70 hours a week’” (in the centre), and #BoloTohJaane, शास्त्रार्थ/sāsträrtha, and The Point of View Wall (at the bottom).On a wall-themed background with red bricks and a brownish wooden platform at the centre with The Sangyan’s logo and the following texts: #HaveYourSay and linktr.ee/sangyan (at the top), Audi Alteram Partem: Re, Narayana Murthy’s remark — “India’s work culture must change: ‘Youngsters should work 70 hours a week’” (in the centre), and #BoloTohJaane, sāsträrtha, and The Point of View Wall (at the bottom).

Points to Ponder:

Headlines can be misleading, so you better read and listen in toto before jumping the gun, be it regarding what Narayan Murthy has to say or me. [Let’s focus on the deeper discussion rather than superficial debates and miss the forest for the trees]. The Record | Leadership by Example — Episode 1 | Narayana Murthy x T.V. Mohandas Pai.

The International Labour Organization Convention prescribes eight hours of work for six days a week with a cap of 48 hours of work in a week. India ranks 5th in the world among countries with long working hours, often stretching up to 48 hours a week, if not more. Only Gambia, Mongolia, Maldives and Qatar, where a quarter of the population is Indian, have average working hours longer than in India. [FirstPost and ILO]. Given a choice between ‘all work and no time and all time but no work’. The latter often is the better.

The higher the value chain of production, the more the quality of hours matters than merely the quantity of working hours. However, in case one is willing to work for long hours for whatever reasons (passion, financial needs, etc.), then the compensation/remuneration must be proportional to the input. If and when not, then one can only pretend to work (for money and other materialistic benefits) and not actually work with the mind in the right place. And that will backfire in the long run despite its initial benefit with multiple externalities acting together and creating a deadweight loss for society.

Indeed, work productivity is different from working hours, and India needs to put in extra hours of productive work (in terms of quality and not just quantity) to compete globally — as Japan and Germany did after World War II, given the global economic and financial realities with China [“The World’s Factory”] and other economies offering competitive returns of investment with substantively lower logistical costs, and thus having a comparative advantage over India, that is Bharat.

The ideas of Protestant Work Ethic [In sociological theory, Protestant ethic is the value attached to hard work, thrift, and efficiency] and the Spirit of Capitalism formed the basis of the ‘American Dream’. India, too, has its moral and constitutional obligation for development as a means to freedom from poverty. [Development As Freedom].

The work culture must respect and adhere in accordance with the Puruṣārtha [four proper goals or aims of human life]: Dharma (righteousness, virtue, duty, moral values), Artha (wealth, prosperity, economic values), Kama (pleasure, love, psychological values), and Moksha (freedom, liberation, spiritual values, self-actualisation). Otherwise, it’ll be futile in the long run, given the various orders of impact of any such laws and/or policies that evens out the initial benefits.

Similarly, the Japanese concept of Ikigai (‘a reason for being’) helps in the realisation of a person’s sense of purpose and a reason for living [What You Love (Passion), What You Are Good At (Profession), What You Can Be Paid For (Vocation), and What The World Needs (Mission)] which may be a useful way to explore and balance lifestyle.

In conclusion, let the śāstrārtha continue.

About The Author

Adv. Abhishek Kumar, Founder and Curator, The Sangyan

Advocate, Bar Council of Delhi (2021)

B.A., LL.B. [Batch of 2015–2020]

National Law University, Delhi