How hard should Indians work?

Do Indians not like to work hard?

There is only one possible answer to that question: don’t be ridiculous. We are among the hardest working people in the world.

 

Often, it is not even a matter of choice. You just have to look at daily wagers, struggling farmers, roadside vendors or labourers to see how long and hard they have to work merely to survive.

 

   What about the Indian middle class? Well, look at the experience of Indians abroad. One reason why Indian employees are so unpopular in some parts of the world is because they are willing to work longer than white people, forsaking holidays if needed. It’s the same with Indian shopkeepers and small businessmen.

 

   That is as true of Indian students abroad. They are usually among the best in class, one reason being that they usually work much harder out of a need to excel.

 

   Why, then, are we embroiled in a controversy about how hard Indians should work? Who could possibly believe we don’t work hard enough? Why do people think that they have the right to tell those who work their guts out that they need to work even harder?

 

   Let’s start with Narayan Murthy‘s remarks which ignited this debate. I have known Murthy – as a journalist rather than as a friend – for over two decades and he has always been a natural leader. When he left a job in Mumbai to take a leap into the unknown and to form Infosys, such was his charisma that many of his colleagues abandoned their steady jobs, invested their meagre savings and started Infosys along with him.

 

   I have heard how tough the early days were. Murthy himself told me in an interview that if Manmohan Singh had not come along and reformed the economy, Infosys would’ve gone bust. As it turned out, the risk taking and hard work paid off and Infosys went on to become one of India’s greatest success stories.

 

   So I tend to listen closely to Murthy. He has been up and he has been down. He has stared failure in the face and has taken success in his stride. He remains a leader, a man of strong views about how the world should be run. When he talks about hard work, he’s talking about his own life and the years of slog.

 

   I get that.

 

   But here’s my question: lots of young people, some of them inspired by Infosys, have launched start-ups in the years after Murthy and his colleagues showed that it could be done. Are these people not working very hard? Are they taking fewer risks than Murthy and his colleagues?

 

   I don’t think so. Indians continue to work just as hard with the same drive. That is the reason why so many young people throw away good jobs to make something of their lives. I’m sure they agree with Murthy that all of us need to work hard. But I am as sure that they don’t need him to remind them of that. Nothing has really changed since he founded Infosys except that many more people are working even harder to try and achieve the same results.

 

"Small men who run large companies founded by much bigger men should not be allowed to believe that their positions give them the right to treat their employees like bonded labour."

   While Murthy’s comments provoked debate the uproar has faded after the much more outrageous comments made by SN Subrahmanyan the chairman of Larsen and Toubro (L & T).

 

   SN Subrahmanyan is not someone I have ever met, let alone interviewed. But I did interview Hennig Holck-Larsen who founded Larsen and Toubro and I am pretty sure he would never have talked down to his employees; he was a true gentleman, polite and proper to a fault.

 

   Unlike Holck-Larsen who was a pioneer and a visionary, Subrahmanyan is a professional manager, the latest in a series of executives to run the company but he is no pauper either. According to media reports, not denied by Larson and Toubro, he earns roughly one crore every week. This, he seems to believe, gives him the right to talk down to his employees.

 

   When asked by a member of his team why L&T needed people to work on Saturdays, Subrahmanyan could have offered many reasonable responses. For instance he could’ve said that the market was more competitive or that Larsen and Toubro needed to increase productivity. Instead, he chose to treat the question itself as unreasonable. Saturdays? Why just Saturdays? Ideally he would want employees to work on Sundays also, he announced.

 

   If he had stopped there, that may been enough but having dug himself a hole he proceeded to enthusiastically jump into it. He celebrated the virtues of a 90 day week and then, most obnoxious of all, he asked rhetorically what his employees would do if they stayed at home. All they could do at home was look at their wives. And how long could anyone do that for?

 

   Subrahmanyan seems to have decided that he likes living at the bottom of that hole. When he had an opportunity to end the controversy by apologising, his company issued a public statement doubling down on his remarks and justifying his stupidity by saying “at L&T, nation building is the core of our mandate… “

 

   So patriotism is the last refuge of the misogynist.

 

   Are you surprised that Indians are so angry about these kinds of remarks? Of course we work very hard. Even the middle class works harder than its counterpart in the west without anything like the same kind of rewards or the same level of governmental benefits or support. The last thing we need is fat cats and millionaires telling us to work harder.

 

   Perhaps Murthy genuinely feels that young people today don’t work as hard as he and his colleagues did when they set up Infosys. If so, he is wrong. And in any case, I don’t think it is wise for him to deride the efforts of people who earn less in a year then he makes in an hour.

 

   The case of Subrahmanyan is much worse. He sounds like a man trapped in the wrong century. There was a time when zamindars and old-style lalas could talk like that to their employees, urging them to keep slaving away for the benefit of the people they worked for. But the world has changed. Nobody should talk to professional managers like a feudal master.

 

   The misogyny is bad enough. But there is also the implicit assumption in his remarks that employees of L& T should have no lives outside of work; even spending time with your family is to be frowned on.

 

   The L& T chairman will survive this controversy because this is India, where we have a Chalta-hai attitude. In any western country he would’ve had to apologise profusely or he would’ve been forced out.

 

   But Subrahmanyan does have the unique distinction of turning L& T, one of India‘s most respected companies, into the subject of memes and public ridicule. In doing so, he has insulted his employees twice.

 

   First, when he told them that they should have no lives outside of work and made fun of spending time with their wives. And second, when he turned the company so many of them had given their lives to into a figure of fun.

 

   That finally is the lesson. Billionaires should think before they begin lecturing us. And small men who run large companies founded by much bigger men should not be allowed to believe that their positions give them the right to treat their employees like bonded labour.