Narayana Murthy says India’s work culture must change: ‘Youngsters should work 70 hours a week’

Narayana Murthy on an episode of 3one4 Capital's The Record

Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy has said that youngsters should work 70 hours a week if India wants to compete with economies that have made tremendous progress in the last two to three decades. Murthy appeared on the the first episode of 3one4 Capital’s podcast ‘The Record’, which was released on YouTube today, and spoke about nation building, technology, his company Infosys and several other topics – including his opinion on today’s youth.

Narayana Murthy, in conversation with former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai, said that India’s work productivity is among the lowest in the world. In order to compete with countries like China, India’s youngsters must put in extra hours of work – like Japan and Germany did after World War 2.

He also blamed other issues like corruption in the government and bureaucratic delays, saying: “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 at some level, because we have been reading I don't know the truth of it, unless we reduce the delays in our bureaucracy in taking this decision, we will not be able to compete with those countries that have made tremendous progress.”

Murthy, 77, added his request to the youngsters of today. “So therefore, my request is that our youngsters must say, ‘This is my country. I’d like to work 70 hours a week.’”

“You know, this is exactly what the Germans and Japanese did after the Second World War… they made sure that every German worked extra hours for a certain number of years.”

“We need to be disciplined and improve our work productivity. I think unless we do that, what can poor government do? And 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 hard-working people,” said Narayana Murthy. “And that transformation has to come to youngsters because youngsters form a significant majority of our population at this point of time, and they are the ones who can build our country,” he added.

Murthy had made a similar call for professionals to work long hours in 2020, when he said that Indians should work 60 hours a week for the next two to three years to revive the post-pandemic economy.