On 9 January this year, Subrahmanyan advised employees to work 90 hours per week, saying: “How long can you stare at your wife?” His suggestion that employees work on Sundays triggered a raging debate.
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Earlier, Infosys co-founder Narayan Murti proposed a 70-hour work week.
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What RSS affiliates are saying
In an article in the Organiser, C.K. Saji Narayanan wrote that a 90-hour work week “contradicts the principle of quality of life and human dignity” and idealising working in excess under the category of ‘workaholic’ is an “unhealthy mental obsession termed OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder)”.
“Some of the top business managers and CEOs may be obsessed, but the problem arises when they compel others below too to follow the abnormality. World Health Organisation (WHO) and International Labour Organisation (ILO) find long hours of work an occupational risk factor leading to diseases or early death,” Narayanan wrote. “Business leaders should consider workers human beings, not cogs in a giant machine.”
Citing a 2019 Godrej Interio survey showing that 64 percent of professionals in India cannot spend enough time with their family due to work pressure, Narayanan further wrote, “The worker toils hard to earn his livelihood, and the employer makes profits out of his labour. Workers want to sustain their life and their family. They have dreams about their children’s future.”
He argued that Japan has the highest working hours among G7 countries but lags behind the US and Europe in productivity, and that China’s 996 work hours—9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week—triggered one of largest online protests against modern slavery in 2019.
On how India “maintained the scientific idea of eight hours of working”, he said, “Dr Ambedkar declared eight hours of work for Bharat at the 7th Indian Labour Conference held in 1942.”
DTF, another RSS affiliate, condemned Subrahmanyan’s and Murti’s advocacy for longer work hours, raising concerns over workers’ welfare and work-life balance.
A DTF statement said, “It is concerning that an individual drawing a salary 500 times more than a company’s average employee would propose measures that disproportionately burden the workforce. Such disparity in income and privilege should compel greater responsibility towards ensuring equitable and humane working conditions, not the opposite.”
“Instead of extreme work week propositions, industry leaders should focus on innovations in productivity, equitable wealth distribution, and policies that promote a balanced quality of life for all stakeholders,” it added.
Speaking to ThePrint, Virjesh Upadhyay of DTF said, “If such advice is incorporated, how will workers achieve their other responsibilities of parenting and motherhood? A human is not an individual unit. He is a part of society. How will society function if a person does not have time for responsibilities other than his job?”
“An individual works for his well-being and his family’s. In our family structure of RSS, we always talk of ‘kutumb prabodhan (family entertainment). It will affect the entire well-being of family and society if such a thought of more working hours is given space,” he said.
What BJP leaders are saying
Contrary to the RSS viewpoint, Tarun Vijay, the former BJP Rajya Sabha MP and former editor of Panchajanya, has sided with the L&T chairman, calling Modi a ‘karam yogi‘ and true role model, who is leading by example, having not taken a single day off in his life.
Tarun Vijay wrote an opinion piece in The Indian Express, calling vacation “a colonial hangover”, adding that “vacation bhogis” are not ideal for the country. Modi, on the other hand, worked even when on long, tiring flights, Vijay said.
Claiming that “from the Bhagavad Gita to the Constitution, vacations have never been considered a right or an essential part of the country’s work culture”, he concluded, “Let the economy rise to a level where poverty is completely eliminated. The working hours will be adjusted according to standards of life. Till then ‘aaram haraam hai’.”
However, several leaders in the BJP do not feel that excessive working hours will help with nation-building or the country’s rapid growth.
Balbir Punj, a former Rajya Sabha MP, who headed the BJP’s Intellectual Cell for several years and charted the party’s ideological positioning, told ThePrint, “There should be work-life balance. One-size-fit formula can’t work. If you work for more hours, you will be compromising other aspects of the well-being of life. It does not produce results, rather the law of diminishing returns starts to apply.”
The BJP, however, has always projected Modi as working without taking breaks, drawing comparisons with Rahul Gandhi.
During the Lok Sabha campaign in Karnataka last year, Home Minister Amit Shah said at a rally, “PM Modi is probably the only person in the world who was chief minister and prime minister for 23 years and did not take a single day’s leave. He always worked for Bharat and did not take a single leave. Rahul baba, on the other hand, goes aboard as the summer sets in.”
The Prime Minister has also said in interviews that he only sleeps three to four hours a day and does not take leaves from work.
During Modi’s first term, the then foreign secretary S. Jaishankar is said to have installed a divan in the south block office for naps during late-night work, and the official core team of Modi, as well as the bureaucracy, is said to have started working entire weekends.
Interacting with the Indian community in Thailand in 2023, Jaishankar, while lauding Modi’s leadership, said, “Now, there is no respite on weekends too for ministers.”
This style of functioning under Modi resonates with the L&T chairman’s statement, but a party functionary said that the government’s focus is “more on productivity and smart working, not spending more time in offices”.
A minister in the Modi government said on the condition of anonymity that the PM preferred that ministers work from office, but that is not binding and did not disregard those working from home. Many senior Cabinet ministers, from Nitin Gadkari to Piyush Goel and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, work from home when required, he added.
Modi and his prominent ministers also rarely “go for vacations”, mostly engaging in sports activity, yoga, community service, and festivals or family events. Every year, Amit Shah goes to Gujarat to take part in kite-flying celebrations and Modi does regular yoga.
Old-timers, who worked during the era of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, recalled that the former was particular about work-life balance and going on vacations despite knowing that it could be considered bad optics for politics.
His aide Sudhindra Kulkarni, who was with Vajpayee during his vacation in Kumarakom, Kerala, said, “It was the beginning of a new millennium. Vajpayee spent five days in Kumarakom on the banks of the serene Vembanad lake.”
“Every summer, Vajpayee visited a Manali village for summer vacation, and he was very fond of trout fish. During his vacations, villagers could approach Vajpayee, without any hiccups,” said another former aide of Vajpayee.
Advani was also fond of leisure time. One of his former aides said, “Many new and old directors and producers screened their movies in Delhi’s Mahadev auditorium for Advani, his family, their close friends and party colleagues. Not propaganda films but commercial independent films. Advani also spent quiet time reading books.”
BJP national spokesperson Guruprakash said, ”Those who are pracharaks spend more time in organisational work, but those who are bound to family life have to balance their commitment to organisational work and family life to maintain work-life balance.”
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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