For the last few days, the intelligentsia of the country in the print, visual and social media has been hotly debating the desirability or otherwise of seventy hours of work a week. The point at issue is the gordian knot unleashed by Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy who, while speaking to former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai, in the first edition of the podcast “The Record | Leadership by Example, called upon youngsters of the country to work 12 hours a day so that India could compete with economies that have made tremendous progress in the last two to three decades.
The Whole Hullabaloo is Misplaced
To comprehend the full import of Mr Murthy’s conversation with Mohandas Pai, I listened to the full 52.56-minute podcast many times and concluded that the whole debate is misplaced. It is tantamount to “not seeing the forest for the trees”.
For the uninitiated, the initial 32 minutes of the conversation was about how Nehru’s love for fabian socialism and the commanding height of the public sector stymied the economy (despite creating some great institutions) and gave rise to the License Permit Raj and how India, that got political freedom in 1947, got the real economic freedom only in 1991 unleashed with the reforms, liberalisation and globalisation by the brave heart duo of P V Narasimha Rao and Dr Manmohan Singh.
Of the balance 20 minutes, for 16 minutes Mr Murthy focused on how a big chunk of Indians “both rural and urban poor” have missed out on the benefits of reforms and liberalisation, how China has assumed the pre-eminent position even ahead of the US, how technology has become a great leveller that is decimating the rich-poor divide in the country, how digitisation linked with Aadhaar has greatly reduced corruption in welfare programs, why a great part of unproductive agriculture labour has to rebooted by the job creation in the low technology area and what is needed for India to become number one country by GDP in the world.
It was one of the greatest, matter-of-fact, passionate, erudite and worth emulating discourse I have heard or read.
Blown Out of Proportion
We Indians have a fetish for blowing things out of proportion, taking it out of context. Fifty minutes of the conversation has been relegated to the background by media, opinion leaders and social media influencers and all they are debating is two sentences regarding 12 hours a day of work or a 70-hour work week, taking it totally out of context. Such dramatics eminently suit the 24×7 breaking news culture of the country.
The Context
Here is the context in which Mr Murthy exhorted the youth to go the extra mile because India’s productivity is among the lowest in the world. said-
- Unless we improve our work productivity, reduce corruption in the government at some level, and reduce the delays in our bureaucracy in making decisions, we will not be able to compete with those countries that have made tremendous progress.
- Every government is as good as the culture of the people, and “our culture has to change to that of highly determined, extremely disciplined and extremely hard-working people. We need to be disciplined and improve our work productivity. I think unless we do that, what can poor government do?”
- On asked about his message to the youth of India after 75 years of their freedom, Mr Murthy said that for the first time in the last 300 years, India has received some respect in the eyes of the committee of nations and it is the responsibility of every Indian but more so the youth to consolidate on that respect.
- He further added that to enhance that respect, as he has said many times before, the only way the world will respect anybody is through performance. That’s why he often used to say performance leads to recognition, recognition leads to respect, and respect leads to power. China is a great example. “Therefore, my request to all the wonderful youth of this country is that realise this and work 12 hours a day for the next 20 years 50 years whatever it is…so that India becomes number one or two in terms of GDP.”
- He gave two examples of how hard the Japanese and Germans worked after the devastation of World War II and made sure that every German worked extra hours for a certain number of years.
- The final message of Mr Murthy is that even if India becomes bigger than the United States, its per capita income will be much lower, therefore there is an urgent need for the country’s youth to focus on growth. “I want them to realise that all this wonderful progress that we are talking about will come to nothing if the poorest child in the remotest village in India does not have reasonable access to education, healthcare, nutrition, and shelter and most importantly hope – that its progenies will have a better future than itself and that responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of our young people.”
I cannot find any fault with his central message. Indubitably, these are the nostrums that the doctor ordered. I will return to the 70-hour workweek story in a while.
Narayan Murthy Has Walked The Talk
On October 29, I was present at the National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA) where Sudha Murthy said Narayana Murthy had walked the talk. “He has worked 80 to 90 hours a week, so he doesn’t know what less than that is. He believes in real hard work, and he lived like that.” Having followed his pathway from Patni’s computer days, I posit what Mrs Murthy says is unadulterated truth. And Mr Murthy is not alone in this tribe.
In Good Company
Mahatma Gandhi worked for 18-20 hours a day. For Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister, the office hours were 10 AM to 7 PM, seven days a week and an additional 4-5 hours at night, he replied to letters. For his successor, Lal Bahadur Shastri, “hard work was prayer”. All other prime ministers are known for long hours of working.
But they are prime ministers. It is their duty to slog. It is here that I am reminded of two famous sayings of JRD Tata, “live life a little dangerously” and “nothing worthwhile is ever achieved without deep thought and hard work.”
JRD was not merely an industrialist who took Tata Group from Rs 62 crore in 1939 to Rs 10000 crore in 1990 but he was a dreamer and nation-builder par excellence. But why an ordinary worker has to work like a Tata? Well, I will answer in subsequent paragraphs.
12 Hours A Day still Empty Stomach
50 per cent of 140 crore Indians, particularly rural and urban poor and destitute, work for more than 12 hours a day, but still remain imprisoned in the calaboose of poverty. Otherwise, there would not have been the need for Prime Minister Modi to extend the free ration scheme for eighty crore Indians.
Telling A Tale
My earliest memory of my father, an illegal clerk to district public prosecutors in Ara Civil Court in Bihar is one of his working 16-18 hours a day. Even then his income was meagre to take care of our family of nine (my parents, five of us children, and my maternal and paternal grandmothers). He lived this life for 75 years of age.
At the age of 16, my life became two shifts a day, one devoted to the study and another to the meagre earning to supplement family income, and by the age of 19, I was living the impossible life in three shifts, daytime as college student and nighttime of two shifts as telegraphist (1700 to 0000 hours one shift and 0000 hours to 0800 hours second shift) in Patna Central Telegraph to earn a salary of Rs 360 a month to supplement the dwindling income of my father. Surviving with a nap and/or a couple of hours of sleep became my destiny. Ever since I have been running, running and running.
When the task of bringing Rs 3400 crore to complete the signature Konkan Railway project fell on my tiny shoulders in the 1990s (in an era where Harshad Mehta had gobbled all the money), for four long years, even a couple of hours of sleep was luxury. Once for the road show for External Commercial Borrowing (ECB) for Konkan Railway, the manic me, made E. Sreedharan, then CMD of Konkan Railway, ran to seven countries in Asia and Europe in nine days with me.
Life became tougher as I decided to become a consultant. And now as I wear multiple hats- amongst many as an impact consultant, working to change the life of the have-nots, particularly the mentally ill of India, blogger, writer, author and independent book reviewer, I am again back to 18-20 hours a day life.
And trust me, I am a person whose memory is impeccable, and I am known for exemplary productivity.
Work Gives Me Kick, Humiliation at Work Killed Me
Whether it is working in two shifts a day or three, meaningful work puts me on high adrenal. I learnt to enjoy work in adolescence. It has always given me a kick and now I am 65 years of age. Yes, I have been extremely lucky to have worked with exemplary leaders as bosses and to have an understanding spouse who has sacrificed her life and career at the altar of my work. Work for me is not a stress creator. It is a stress buster.
Contrarily, what killed me literarily was the humiliation heaped on me at the workplace. As the story goes, at the age of 37, I was a mini hero in the financial markets of Mumbai and was dubbed “financial engineer of Konkan Railway”. Then I was snapped by a corporate house at a fat high six-digit per month salary and handsome perks with the title of Vice President (corporate finance), a rarity in the 1990s. It was a heady high-flying time. But it was an extreme humiliation at work, in a corporation whose values were not aligned with mine, that sent me reeling down the abyss with two mental breakdowns in quick succession and I turned a vegetable for the next five years.
My rise from the cul-de-sac of the abyss of the abyssal is the story of rising from the ashes, ala Phoenix, a true story stranger than fiction that one reads in books or watches in movies.
Work-Life Balance
Today, I work in a consulting company which truly believes in work-life balance. Management not only preaches but practices it. To tell the truth, I am one sad case today who in the evening of life rues not having maintained a work-life balance. I rue not having spent enough time with my spouse (who was eminently employable but perforce became a homemaker to adjust to my long uncertain hours at work and irregular career shifts). And I lament today not being available to my two sons in their formative years. My sons grew up in a single-parent home and my mental illness forced them to prematurely learn to play dad to their dad. I have paid a heavy price for trying to be somebody. I have not yet learnt the art of being “nobody”, not even at home. If I had the option to relive my life today, I would opt for work-life balance.
I complete this part of the story with what the International Labour Organization (ILO) said in a report released last year, citing a study of 45 companies in the US- “Companies that implement work-life balance policies benefit from increased retention of current employees, improved recruitment, lower rates of absenteeism and higher productivity.”
It is the Productivity, Stupid
In four decades of professional life, I have worked in all types of setups including the largest commercial bank of India (State Bank) and the largest employer of the country (Indian Railways). I have also worked in two most admired PSUs. I have worked in the worst of corporations as an employee and best of corporations including Fortune 500 multinationals and multilateral agencies including ADB and World Bank as a consultant.
In an eight-hour workday, I have seldom seen someone working for more than four hours in all the offices where I have either worked or consulted unless we include the time spent at coffee makers and useless unproductive meetings as work. The sole example which I know of eight hours a day working with minute-to-minute accounted for is that of Metro Man E Sreedharan. The only other person whom I would like to add to this category of eight-hour diligent working is Ratan N. Tata.
I have followed the motto of Mr Murthy of working 80-90 hours a day. My wife says I have been chasing mirage to be “somebody”. Contrarily my friends and colleagues dub me a failure and they have valid reasons.
I would like to urge India’s youngsters differently than what Murthy says – Start working 8 hours a day diligently without wasting a nanosecond. Work hard, no doubt, but work smart. And find ten hours a week, more the better, to do something good for society and the nation. Choose your own passion area but do it. By the time you reach 60, it will be too late. For an ordinary worker, ten hours a week of nation-building has a compounding multiplier effect. But in principle, I agree with Mr Murthy that work as much as you can and not as little. The caveat is enjoying your work, improving your productivity manifold and “ not killing yourself working” as there is no posthumous Bharat Ratna or Nobel Prize for the “richest man in the grave.”
No One Size Fits All
The golden rule of the 70-hour workweek cannot and must not be sacrosanct and a battle cry. My manic-depressive circadian clock allows me to work 80-90 hours a day. An average worker will collapse working if he regularly works for 70 hours a week, which means 14 hours a day for a five-day workweek or 10 hours a week for a seven-day week.
In this regard, the article ‘Work Life Balance Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek’ by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luc (Harvard Business Review, December 2009) is an eye-opener. The paragraph ‘Cultures of Midnight Oil’ says: “Of all the high earners and 70 we surveyed (not just the extreme-job subset), 44% feel that the pace of their work is extreme. Professionals these days are putting in longer hours, taking on more responsibility, and facing more pressure than ever before. Their intensity and investment may serve companies well in the short run but will pose risks in the long run. The extreme-work model threatens to cull real talent, particularly female talent, that otherwise could have reached the top.”
A One-Day Survey
To test the mood of white-collar Indian professionals (for the cohort of self-employed, gig workers and the poor numbers of long hours of work is an existential compulsion), I ran a one-day survey on my WhatsApp groups on November 4, 2022, and I was flooded by nearly 1000 responses. My friend Malini Shankar, a highly educated and feted civil servant, rightly says the response in just one group of alumni of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), Manila is good enough for me to write a series of articles. And I do intend to write another piece soon to do justice to the responses I have received.
Here are a few selected responses randomly-
My dear friend Ajit Issac, who has been both an employee and an employer in a three-decade career, and is the founder chairman of Quess Corp, a company with 500000 employees in India (probably the biggest private sector one company in India), has the following wisdom to impart – “A 70-hour work culture has more downsides. Increasing workforce productivity, deepening tech intensity, developing calibrated variable structures will deliver better outcomes than making workforces slog 70-hour weeks”.
A young Bengaluru-based Harvard Business School alumni entrepreneur has a one-line wisdom – “No one size fits all”.
My friend Sudhanshu Mani the creator par excellence and who gave two world-class indigenous Vande Bharat trains to the nation in a mere 18 months, is at his poetic best when he says – “All this talk of 70 hours of work seems like slave driving…At the same time, if one is engaged to work with passion and excitement, it can melt away the confines of time, 35 hours or 70 hours is immaterial”.
Another employer friend Blaise Costabir adds – “I have never believed in these 70 craps. Once in a way, a person works 10, 12 or 24 is ok. In fact, in my setup, I insist people leave in time else like city bankers who used to sit till 9 pm will do work after 5 and Pfaff the whole day. I also used to have an incentive for teams to take leave, especially PL. I believe if the employee is rested, he is more efficient @ 70 hrs. a week he will be jaded and worse suffer nagging at home”.
Another friend says, “These comments usually come from owners or CEOs who are earning 30-40 times more than what an average working folks makes”.
My friend Sudeep, an experienced professional who has survived in the corporate menagerie for 33 years, is still alive and kicking, has an interesting take – “A relaxed Ramu is a bad optics in the workplace. Ramu should be seen sweating, late lunching hurriedly and always gasping for breath. An asymmetric relationship between the employer and the employee must be played as per the rules of engagement”.
Navin, my Delhi-based busy advocate friend adds – “It depends upon the nature of the work. Many of our friends, particularly those who have held senior positions, must have worked 16-18 hours a day for days together. Even for some lawyers it is 24×7. Our Labour Laws prescribe a different standard and I think that is very rational. 70 hours a week sounds too much for any work in industries. If you take 5 working days in a week, it comes to 14 hours a day. This may prove counterproductive.”
And my highly educated and equally feted civil servant friend Malini Shankar gives the final punch – “No way! Diminishing returns beyond a certain number of hours. And will tend to push women out of the workforce even more.”
My Final Take
It is not a question of working 40 hours, 70 hours or 90 hours. The key is working with full integrity and dedication and having Zen-like calm at work. Give all you can and enjoy your work. I always give the example of Gopal, a guard in my previous organisation. He mostly worked 14 hours a day and many days 24×7. He was not only a guard. He was our Man Friday. No point sitting for 70 hours without working at the fullest productivity. As my friends from the Asian Institute of Management just told me “It depends”.
Work to earn a salary and uplift the nation. But at the end of the day, come home hail, hearty and healthy. There is nothing like quality time with the family. Your near and dear ones need your time and not your quality time. My wife says she does not need “marnoparant paramvir chakra” for my extra dedication to the job. And trust me, I hate myself in the evening of life. I was not there to hold the hands of my father and mai when they went to another world.
I end the piece with the latest survey result dated November 2, 2023, by McKinsey Health Institute titled “Reframing employee health: Moving beyond burnout to holistic health” based on a survey across 30 countries that offers insights into how organisations can help create a workplace that prioritises physical, mental, social, and spiritual health of the employees. Lastly, I say emphatically what my State Bank friend just wrote to me – “Do not count the hours but instead make the hours count”.
Akhileshwar Sahay is a Multidisciplinary Thought Leader with Action Bias and an India Based International Impact Consultant. He works as President Advisory Services of Consulting Company BARSYL. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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