Narayana Murthy Wants Youth To Work 70 Hours A Week To Change Work Culture

NR Narayana Murthy wants India’s youth to put in the work and hours to lift productivity levels from among the lowest in the world.

“Somehow, our youth have the habit of taking not-so-desirable habits from the West and then not helping the country,” the co-founder of Infosys Ltd. told TV Mohandas Pai, a former chief financial officer of the IT firm, in the first episode of ‘The Record’—a podcast by Pai’s venture capital fund, 3one4 Capital.

“India’s work productivity is one of the lowest in the world. Unless we improve our work productivity, unless we reduce corruption in the government…unless we reduce the delays in bureaucratic decision-making, we will not be able to compete with those countries that have made tremendous progress.”

“So, therefore, my request is that our youngsters must say, ‘This is my country. I want to work 70 hours a week’. This is exactly what the Germans and the Japanese did after the Second World War. They made sure every citizen worked extra hours for a certain number of years.”

India, along with China and Indonesia, is on course to have one of the largest working-age populations in the world by 2030, according to a McKinsey report titled ‘Driving Sustainable and Inclusive Growth in G20 Economies’, released in August. That will only happen if the country is able to lift its populace over a so-called ‘economic empowerment line’, the report said.

As of 2020, 77% of India’s population—or 1.07 billion people—lived under the parameter. India will need to spend $5.4 trillion, or 13% of its GDP, through 2030 to bridge the empowerment gap, McKinsey said.

But the government can only do so much to change the work culture. “Every government is as good as the culture of the people. And our culture has to change to that of highly determined, extremely disciplined, and extremely hardworking people,” Murthy said.

“And that transformation has to come from youngsters, because youngsters form a significant majority of our population at this point in time. They are the ones who can build our country…with gusto.”