The honchos of India Inc. are at it again. This time, it is S N Subrahmanyan, the chairman of Larsen & Toubro, who, in ill-advised comments last week, suggested that employees should work 90-hour workweeks, including on Sunday, because “How long can you stare at your wife?”. Subrahmanyan is by no means the first to propose such an idea. Earlier, Infosys founder Narayana Murthy first floated the idea of making employees work more and then doubled down on his suggestion, claiming that it was in the interest of nation-building.
The social media jokes and wisecracks aside, the remarks betray a deep-seated mentality of misogyny and exploitation that appears to have crept into top managerial positions that seem increasingly distant, cut off and out of tune with what the trainee and entry-level employees face.
It seems as if the nation and India Inc as a whole have very quickly forgotten the death by suicide of Anna Sebastian Peryil, a 26-year-old employee of Ernst & Young India, who succumbed to the pressure of long work hours, client pressure and insensitive leadership that her family has since said was responsible for her young life being cut short.
It is circumstances like these that gave rise to the labour rights movement in what is now the developed world after an era of rapid industrialisation and undoubtedly the pushback to Subrahmanyan’s statement suggests that the new generation could force through another much-needed revolution.
This isn’t about the old and tired arguments that employee happiness increases productivity and therefore is ultimately for the good of the organisation. Instead, employee well-being needs to be prioritised irrespective of the company’s priorities. Employee well-being needs to be prioritised for its own sake -- because employees are humans, who have rights most importantly the right to life. The right to life is about the right to liberty, the right to live with human dignity and the pursuit of happiness.
We live in times when the Indian middle class is shrinking. Young people entering the workforce are often living paycheck to paycheck, trying to pay off loans including education loans, unable to afford rent and to be able to save up for a home and the future, all at a salary that has stagnated in a manner that hasn’t even kept up with inflation. The entry-level salary of a young person entering the workforce in the IT sector is today almost the same as it was nearly 15 years ago, while at the same time, the salaries of those in managerial positions are almost ten times higher than they were 15 years ago.
Subrahmanyan’s comments, seen from that angle, appear borderline criminal. Highly placed top managers talk down -- both literally and figuratively -- on underlings whose lives they know very little about. Besides being cruelly dismissive of the working class, the management is also missing the wood for the trees. Happy employees with time to spare will use that spare time and money on recreation and entertainment that will route back to the economy thereby helping boost the overall economy at a time of falling urban demand and a slowing economy. Nothing serves to boost the economy like increasing demand which can only happen if people have both time and money to spare.
In other words, Subrahmanyan and his ilk, rather than helping build the nation, are only shooting themselves in the foot. The sooner they realise it, the better.
