Narayana Murthy’s latest take on long working hours: ‘Nobody can say you should do it’ | Trending

After his pitch for a 70-hour workweek sparked a massive debate over work-life balance, Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy has now said that no one should impose long work hours on another person, adding that such issues should be introspected upon. Previously, Narayana Murthy had pushed for India’s young workforce to spend more hours at work.(PTI) Speaking at the Kilachand Memorial Lecture in Mumbai, Murthy said that nobody should be able to dictate long work hours. “I can say that I used to get to the office at 6.20 am and I used to leave at 8.30 pm. That’s a fact, I have done it. Nobody can say no, that’s wrong. I have done it for 40-odd years. I think these are not issues that should be discussed and debated. These are issues that one can introspect on, one can ingest and one can come to some conclusion and do whatever they want. That’s all to it. There’s nobody who can say, you should do it, you should not do it, no,” he said 70-hour workweek pitchDuring a podcast in October 2023, the 78-year-old former tech boss had pushed for India’s young workforce to spend more hours at work to help the country realise its full potential globally. “India’s work productivity is one of the lowest in the world. 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. So therefore, my request is that our youngsters must say ‘this is my country. I’d like to work 70 hours a week,” he had said. The remarks had sparked a massive row as both employees and corporate leaders stressed on the need to maintain work-life balance, especially for entry level employees with low wages. L&T chairman’s remarksRecently, Larsen and Toubro chairman SN Subrahmanyan called for a 90-hour workweek and claimed that he regretted not being able to make his employees work even on Sundays. “What do you do sitting at home? How long can you stare at your wife? How long can the wives stare at their husbands? Get to the office and start working,” he said, during an internal employee interaction. The statement received backlash from social media as well as industry leaders like Anand Mahindra, Adar Poonawalla, Harsh Goenka as well as Bollywood actor Deepika Padukone who stressed on the effects of long working hours on one’s mental health. (Also read: ‘Narayana Murthy fan?’: Man who goes to office 7 days a week called red flag)