Narayana Murthy, the founder of Infosys, has stressed the need for a change in India’s work culture. He believes that young people in the country should be prepared to work 70 hours a week to enhance India’s global competitiveness.
In a podcast interview with Infosys CEO Mohandas Pai, Murthy also emphasized the importance of boosting productivity and reducing government delays in India.
“Unless we improve our work productivity, unless we reduce corruption in the government at some level, because we have been reading, I don’t know the truth of it unless we reduce the delays in our bureaucracy in taking this decision, we will not be able to compete with those countries that have made tremendous progress,” he said.
“So, therefore, my request is that our youngsters must say ‘This is my country. I would like to work 70 hours a week’,” he added.
He drew comparisons to post-World War II work conditions in Germany and Japan.
“This is exactly what the Germans and Japanese did after the Second World War…they made sure that every German worked extra hours for a certain number of years,” he said.
“We need to be disciplined and improve our work productivity. I think unless we do that, what can poor government do? And 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,” Murthy added.
Ola’s Bhavish Aggarwal supports Murthy
Following Murthy’s comments, there were differing opinions on social media. Ola’s co-founder and CEO, Bhavish Aggarwal, expressed his support for Murthy’s views. “Totally agree with Mr Murthy’s views. It’s not our moment to work less and entertain ourselves. Rather it’s our moment to go all in and build in 1 generation what other countries have built over many generations!”
upGrad founder Ronnie Screwvala, however, disagreed. In a separate post, he said, “Boosting productivity isn’t just about working longer hours. It’s about getting better at what you do – Upskilling, having a positive work environment, and fair pay for the work done. Quality of work done > clocking in more hours.”
