Is Narayana Murthy right?

The founder of Infosys' comment about working 70-hour weeks says productivity should be at the heart of a national debate

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In a recent interview, N Narayana Murthy advocated a 70-hour work-week. Our TV channels ment programmes labelled as news. Then, as usual, with no conclusion, other items replaced it in the nightly lineup. That is unfortunate. Mr Murthy has raised a vital question about national productivity. It demands wide debate supported by data and deep thought.

What Mr Murthy said: "India's work productivity is one of the lowest in the world. Unless we improve our work productivity ... we will not be able to compete with these 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'. You know, this is exactly what Germans and Japanese did after the Second World War." These comments triggered much reaction, ranging from praise to aspersions on how Japan suffered from social problems from overwork, the need for smart work more than long work, and so on. I would argue that Mr Murthy's starting point of productivity is where we, too, must focus. Reacting to his comments, a nice article in The Hindu by Jasmin Nihalani and Vignesh Radhakrishnan did just that. They pointed out that the average number of hours a typical Indian spends in employment is today significantly higher than in Germany or Japan (they used to work longer). They also say that the right comparison for national productivity is gross domestic product (GDP) per hour worked. On this metric, the average Japanese is over four times (and German seven times) as productive as the average Indian, and increasing working hours per worker changes nothing. So what must we do? Three things in sequence: Get more people working, get more people working in modern manufacturing and services in our cities, and get people working better and longer.