Anger over Indian corporate leader’s call for 7-day work week: ‘more dangerous than Covid’

Indian corporate titan S.N. Subrahmanyan has provoked outrage by championing a seven-day work week and holding up Chinese professionals’ gruelling schedules as a benchmark, reigniting fierce debates about India’s culture of overwork and the future of productivity. Subrahmanyan, chairman of the conglomerate Larsen & Toubro, was filmed in an undated video that surfaced on January 10 asking employees, “How long can you stare at your wife?” as part of a call for professionals to spend less time at home. He went on to praise Chinese workers for their commitment, claiming they “work 90 hours a week”, while contrasting them with Americans, who he said “work only 50 hours a week”. “If you have got to be on top of the world, you have to work 90 hours a week,” he added. Subrahmanyan’s remarks come about a year after tech titan Narayana Murthy ignited a debate about the country’s work culture by calling on young people to work for 70 hours a week to advance the country’s industrial development. An International Labour Organization report in 2024 ranked India among the top 10 countries with the longest work hours at an average of 46.7 hours per week, but anecdotal evidence shows that many people end up working beyond their regular duty hours. Domestic helpers, for example, rarely get any days off in a week unless they fall sick, while junior and middle-level workers in law firms and management consultancies say they routinely put in late hours and return home only in time for supper. The video of Subrahmanyan’s stern advice drew mockery and exasperation from netizens who posted memes on social media comparing him with Murthy, including one in which Murthy appears to be touching Subrahmanyan’s feet in a show of obeisance. “More dangerous than Covid,” wrote one user. “Somebody invent a vaccine. A booster dose,” another added. One user wrote the only way people would work 90 hours was “if they are paid two salaries”. Subrahmanyan’s comments have also divided India’s corporate chieftains. Anand Mahindra, chairman of Mahindra and Mahindra group, weighed in with a quip: “My wife is wonderful. I love staring at her.” He also urged professionals to save time for family, reading and reflection. In a post on LinkedIn, Larsen & Toubro’s human resource chief Sonica Muraleedharan defended Subrahmanyan’s remarks, saying they were “casual in nature” and had been taken out of context. Experts said the comments, even if they were casual, betrayed a traditional mindset that equated productivity with long hours of work. “I think these are irresponsible and unfortunate statements. They come from a place of high privilege where they have no understanding of what goes on in a common life,” said Aparna Mittal, a corporate lawyer and founder of anti-discriminatory consultancy Samana Centre. Mittal noted that while different laws applied to various types of workers, most were regulated by laws on the number of work hours per day or week. “If employers have that much work, then they might as well hire more workers,” she added. Companies should also stop “parroting” words such as ESG and diversity equity and inclusion as “it is clear they don’t understand much about these subjects, and the disproportionately high burden this puts on women and the already high unpaid domestic work load borne by them”, Mittal said. Prabir Jha, founder and CEO of Prabhir Jha People Advisory, told This Week in Asia that Subrahmanyan’s comments were typical of the mindset of senior corporate leaders who were “removed from reality”. He said people whose children had grown up and settled tended to think younger employees too could afford to spend less time at home. “You need to have time to just rest and recuperate or meet your children. It’s bizarre when people don’t understand that,” he said. Companies that pushed people to work long hours risked losing their top talent who would have plenty of job choices, he added. “You have to think about where value gets created. You can do much better with imagination and creativity,” Jha said, noting that the rapid development of artificial intelligence promised to take away the drudgery of jobs functions that could largely be automated in the near future. According to a Deloitte report in December, many Asia-Pacific organisations are faltering in their AI adoption even as the technology holds the power to automate routine tasks. Employers are also contending with the shift towards hybrid work, accelerated by the pandemic, which means more professionals prioritise flexibility and work-life balance. “Many people have started refusing a job offer if the organisation does not have a hybrid work culture,” said Amogh Deshmukh, head of leadership practice at SHRM East (India-Asia Pacific-Middle East and North Africa). “Sometimes when work pressure is there, people may put more hours at work, but that is [a] once in a blue moon scenario.” Deshmukh warned that 90-hour weeks could lead to dangerous burnout, compromised safety and a litany of errors. “If you do not have time for your family, why are you even working? All human-centric organisations will say family comes first. That does not take away your accountability at work,” he said. He expressed hope AI would help employees accomplish more in a standard 40-to-50-hour schedule. “People are scared that AI will take away jobs, [which] in some contexts is true. But, today’s day, if my productivity is X and AI can enable me to achieve 1.5X to 2.5X, I think it will drive more meaningful work,” he said.

Anger over Indian corporate leader’s call for 7-day work week: ‘more dangerous than Covid’

The comments betray a traditional mindset that equates productivity with long hours of work and are ‘removed from reality’, experts say