Long working hours in India: debate rages over the impact on wellbeing

Public debate about the danger to worker wellbeing from long working hours and the need for adequate work-life balance to support employee health has again come to the fore in India, after leading business figures made widely-reported comments arguing in favour of 70-hour and 60-hour working weeks. Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy claimed young people working 70-hour weeks is vital to grow the Indian economy and lift people out of poverty, while Google co-founder Sergey Brin argued the company’s staff working on its AI models should try to work 60 hours a week to support its efforts to develop AI capabilities, amidst competition from other AI tools like ChatGPT.

In December 2024, Narayana Murthy brought renewed attention to the topic of India’s long hours culture by suggesting the country’s young professionals should commit to working 70-hour weeks.

Speaking at the Indian Chamber of Commerce in Kolkata, Murthy said a stronger work ethic was necessary to boost India’s productivity and reduce poverty. He said young people have to realise that “we have to work hard and work towards making India number one”.
“Once we compare ourselves with the best global companies, I can tell you we Indians have a lot to do.” reported media channel NDTV.

“We have to set our aspirations high because 800 million Indians get free rations. That means 800 million Indians are in poverty. If we are not in a position to work hard, then who will work hard?”

Murthy also argued that India has a productivity gap, citing comments from another conference attendee alleging Chinese workers are three-and-a-half times more productive than their Indian counterparts, reported NDTV.

The comments follow several earlier statements by Murthy on why he feels Indian workers should work longer hours to make the country an economic powerhouse and in turn lift tens of millions out of poverty.

In October 2023, in an interview published on YouTube by Indian venture capital firm 3one4 Capital, Murthy urged young Indians to voluntarily work 70 hour weeks “for the next 20 years, 50 years, whatever it is”, to help boost productivity and “propel India to become one of the world’s top two economies in coming decades”.

“I hope our corporate leaders will be able to address our youngsters and say ‘For the first time India has received certain respect,” he added in the interview hosted by 3one4 Capital. “This is the time for us to consolidate and accelerate the progress and for doing that we need to work very hard; we need to be disciplined and improve our work productivity.”

In January 2024, he repeated his call for India’s youth to voluntarily work 70-hour weeks, stating “it means is that you are productive, work very hard like the Germans did after World War II, like Japanese did. We owe it to the poor people to work hard and make the quality of their life a little bit better.” And in November 2024, he told television channel CNBC-TV18 that India’s decision to move from a six to a five-day working week in 1986 was “bad for the country”.

However, in January 2025, he softened his stance, arguing workers must be free to make their own decisions about the number of hours they work and what constitutes a good work-life balance for them personally, based on their circumstances.

According to The Hindu newspaper, speaking at the Kilachand Memorial Lecture in Mumbai, Murthy said: “These are not issues that should be discussed and debated. These are issues that one can introspect on, one can ingest and one can come to some conclusion.”

“There is nobody who can say ‘you should do it, you should not do it’.”

Divisive public debate
Murthy’s most recent remarks sparked a huge and divisive public debate, with some commentators supporting the notion that hard work is a catalyst for progress, while others condemned it as promoting an unrealistic and detrimental work environment, that threatens to harm employee mental and physical wellbeing.

“Murthy’s perspective underscores the importance of commitment and sacrifice for the betterment of the nation, yet it also prompts concerns regarding the sustainability of such rigorous work schedules,” said a 28-year-old IT professional at a major Indian IT company. The worker added that commuting times, especially in overcrowded cities like Delhi and Mumbai, make it impossible for office goers to realistically clock 70-hour work weeks without severely impacting their wellbeing.

Although some prominent business leaders like Ola Cabs co-founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal and Sajjan Jindal, chairman of Indian multinational conglomerate JSW Group, praised Murthy’s vision for an India where young people work long hours for the betterment of the nation and its economic growth, Ashneer Grover, former managing director and co-founder of Indian financial technology company BharatPe, offered a more thoughtful critique of Murthy’s advice. “I think junta got offended here because work is still being measured in ‘hours’ rather than ‘outcomes,” Grover said on X, formerly Twitter. “The other thing is people feeling as if youngsters’ laziness is only thing keeping India from becoming developed.”

Meanwhile, according to a report by The New York Times, Brin told Google employees the company could create the world’s first Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) systems if staff working on its Gemini AI technology adopt 60-hour work weeks. AGI is a type of AI that has been predicted to match or even surpasses human cognitive abilities, and has been predicted to form the next stage of development of existing generative AI. Commentators say that, once created, AGI will be capable of understanding and applying knowledge across a wide range of tasks like a human, rather than across a limited set of use cases.

In an internal memo shared with employees working on its Gemini AI project, Brin allegedly wrote: “In my experience about 60 hours a week is the sweet spot of productivity. Some folks put in a lot more but can burn out or lose creativity. A number of folks [at Google] work less than 60 hours and a small number put in the bare minimum to get by. This last group is not only unproductive but also can be highly demoralising to everyone else.”

‘Limits of human endurance’
However, social media users were quick to criticise Brin’s viewpoint.

“Brin’s vision for AGI through 60-hour work weeks is not just ironic but overlooks the ethical imperative of employee wellbeing,” stated a cardiologist and health policy critic on X. “As a healthcare professional, I find the proposition that workers should toil for the advancement of AI that may replace them deeply troubling. It’s a paradox that innovation should demand such human cost.

“We must advocate for a sustainable approach to productivity that respects the limits of human endurance and the value of rest.

“The path to true innovation lies not in the quantity of hours spent but in the quality of work produced within a balanced and humane work environment.”

Many social media users also stated that glorifying long working hours can, in some cases, lead to tragic outcomes like the case of Anna Sebastian Perayil. Anna passed away on 20 July 2024, just four months after starting a job as a chartered accountant at Ernst & Young’s (EY) India Pune office. She reportedly died of a heart attack, amid allegations of intense work pressure and long working hours.

In a heartfelt letter addressed to Rajiv Memani, the chairman of EY India, Anita Augustine, Anna’s mother, attributed her 26-year-old daughter’s passing to the “overwhelming” work pressure at the consulting firm.

However, EY India strongly refuted the allegations, saying Perayil had been allocated work like any other employee and it didn’t believe that work pressure could have claimed her life. 

Wave of reaction
Nevertheless, Anna’s passing ignited a wave of reaction on social media, with thousands of users sharing their horror stories of long working hours in India’s corporate world, and demanding accountability within corporate settings that frequently normalise and glorify extended working hours.

In general, a 70-hour work week involves working an average of 10 hours a day, while a 60-hour week involves daily shifts of around 9.5 hours, seven days a week or something similar, depending on how an employee’s work time is structured. However, both a 60- and 70-hour week are much longer than the 40-hour work week typically associated with the majority of jobs.

At the same time, working long hours has been recognised as the risk factor with the highest occupational disease burden, according to research from the World Health Organization (WHO) and International Labour Organization (ILO). In what they described as the first global analysis of the loss of life and health associated with working long hours, the ILO and WHO study published in 2021 found that “working long hours is now known to be responsible for about one-third of the total estimated work-related burden of disease”.

The report concluded that long working hours led to 745,000 deaths from stroke and ischemic heart disease globally in 2016, adding that working 55 or more hours per week is associated with an estimated 35 per cent higher risk of a stroke and a 17 per cent higher risk of dying from ischemic heart disease, compared to working 35-40 hours a week.

Negative effects on work-life balance
Meanwhile, a separate report published by the ILO in 2023 highlighted the negative effects of long working hours, concluding that requiring people to work longer hours than they desire has negative effects on their reported work-life balance. The report also found that India ranks among the nations experiencing “excessive hours of work”.

The report, Working Time and Work-Life Balance Around the World, defined “long hours of work” as regularly working more than 48 hours per week, stating that this definition is consistent with the relevant international labour standards, Convention No. 1 and the Hours of Work (Commerce and Offices) Convention, 1930 (No. 30), which limit normal working hours to 48 per week.

The report found that approximately one third of the global workforce (35.4 per cent) worked more than 48 hours per week in 2019, prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Additionally, it highlighted “substantial gender difference in the incidence of long hours of paid work”.

Meanwhile, the World Population Review indicates that the weekly or annual working hours of full-time employees differ across various countries. In certain nations, the average full-time working week is less than 40 hours, whereas in others, it exceeds 50 hours.

Indian employees ‘work some of the longest hours on average’
Another ILO report, Wages and Working Time Statistics (COND) Database, ILOSTAT, found that India is ranked 13th worldwide in terms of ‘overwork’. This suggests that Indian employees tend to work some of the longest hours on average when compared to their counterparts in other countries.

According to the ILO data, which was updated in January 2024, the “average hours per week per employed person” in India is 46.7. Additionally, it found that 51 per cent of those employed in India work 49 hours or more each week.

According to the United Nations, long working hours can have severe consequences for people’s physical and mental health. In fact, a 2021 report by the UN, WHO/ILO Joint Estimates of the Work-related Burden of Disease and Injury, 2000-2016: Global Monitoring Report, found that long working hours are a contributory factor in early deaths.

“It’s shocking to see so many people literally being killed by their jobs,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a press statement in 2021. “Our report is a wake-up call to countries and businesses to improve and protect the health and safety of workers.”

Musculoskeletal problems
Meanwhile, Dr Anurag Agarwal, clinical professor at Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Institute of Medical Sciences in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, noted that IT professionals between the ages of 25 and 35 often complain of experiencing pain in the neck, shoulders, back and upper arms. “They are seated in a slouched position for 10 to 12 hours each day, and as a result of insufficient sunlight exposure, they experience deficiencies in Vitamin D, which contributes to the weakening of bones and joints.”

Dr. Jaiben George, an orthopaedic surgeon at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi (AIIMS), warns that maintaining the same posture for hours can lead to problems in the lower back and neck. He adds that a sedentary lifestyle may contribute to metabolic syndrome, which is marked by excessive body fat, heightened blood lipid levels and increased blood sugar, thereby increasing the risk of cardiovascular diseases. Furthermore, Dr. Jaiben states that engaging in repetitive tasks can cause wear-and-tear injuries in frequently used body parts, commonly referred to as “occupational hazards”.

Experts say that although some people may be able to cope with the physical and mental demands of a 70-hour working week for a short period, sustained 70-hour weeks can lead to burnout, health issues such as cardiovascular problems, anxiety and depression. They also argue that prolonged periods of long working hours lead to poor work-life balance, as workers have much less time for socialising and relaxation, which are essential for maintaining overall wellbeing.

Meanwhile, Ashwin Yardi, CEO of the Indian division of multinational information technology services and consulting company Capgemini, dismissed the idea of encouraging people to work extended 70 to 90-hour weeks and instead called for corporate India to take a more balanced approach to working hours.

He suggested that a 47-hour working week was a suitable maximum, and called for a ban on work emails being sent to employees out of their contracted hours and at the weekends.

Speaking at the Nasscom Technology and Leadership Forum in Mumbai, Yardi said: “My guiding principle for the last four years is don’t send an e-mail on a weekend even if it is an escalation unless you know you can solve it on a weekend,” according to a report by news agency PTI.