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Infosys founder says young Indians should work 70-hour weeks


www.personneltoday.com | Rob Moss

The former CEO and co-founder of the Indian software giant Infosys has prompted a backlash after calling on India’s youth to work 70 hours a week to increase productivity.

Narayana Murthy, the billionaire father-in-law of UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, said during a YouTube interview with a venture capital company that government is only as good as the culture of its people.

“Our culture has to change to that of highly determined, extremely disciplined and extremely hardworking people and that transformation has to come to youngsters.”

He added: “My request is that our youngsters must say, ‘This is my country, I want to work 70 hours a week’. This is exactly what Germans and Japanese did after the Second World War.”

He urged India’s corporate leaders to tell their youngsters that now was the time to consolidate and accelerate progress. “We need to work very hard, we need to be disciplined and improve our work productivity,” he said.

People working in many sectors in India already work six days a week and Murthy’s comments echo recent debates in China around its “996” culture, where people are encouraged to work from 9am to 9pm, six days a week. This led to online “lying flat” protests over recent years, where China’s youth rejected the long-hours culture.

In 2020, India’s Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code was passed into law, limiting working days to eight hours.

Murthy co-founded Infosys in 1981 creating what is…


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