Editorial: Gulag, a tool for ‘nation-building’

Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy ignited a firestorm on social media with his remark that youngsters should be excited about working 70-hour weeks, to improve India’s productivity. That’s 12 hours a day, six days a week, minus commute, tea/cigarette breaks.

Murthy pointed out how India is among the countries with the lowest productivity in the world and an attitudinal shift was essential in turning around the country’s fortunes. Back in May this year, our state withdrew its controversial 12-hour work week plan under the Factories (Tamil Nadu Amendment) Bill 2023.

But really, is the extended workweek the answer to our economic woes? That argument might have held water in the immediate post-Independence years when the boomers were entrusted with building the foundations of a newly liberated India. Like many people of that generation, the very idea of working was its own virtue, its own reward — an enterprise that kept the devil (idleness) at bay, and put food on the table.

The License Raj ensured there were no great private jobs to latch onto. It perpetuated the stereotype that only government jobs were secure, a ploy that we still fall for today. But if one had to quantify the productivity and accountability of government employees, that’s another story. Enter liberalisation and the arrival of MNCs, fast food, faster cars, snazzy gadgets, fancy clothes and the lifestyle economy. Now, everyone can afford an iPhone — it’s on EMI. And that government job? Why bother, there’s a start-up around the corner, an IT park in every district. And there’s the ultimate high of being a digital nomad.

But liberalisation came with a curse. We are experiencing the fever dream of peak consumerism, alongside the nightmare of poverty in our technicolor metropolises. To borrow a line from the prescient parable Fight Club, “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate, so we can buy s*** we don’t need.” Things have gotten so bad in Japan that they actually have a word called ‘Karoshi’ that describes death from over-work. India is also supposed to unseat Japan in the race for turning the third largest economy globally by 2030.

Our doctors are hard at work, making sense of office goers dropping dead in their early 30s-50s, and emphatically telling us about the pitfalls of hypertension, lifestyle diseases, stress and lack of exercise. Did we address how this extended work week impacts women? Edelweiss CEO Radhika Gupta succinctly summed it up in a tweet, “Between offices and homes, many Indian women have been working many more than seventy hour weeks to build India (through our work) and the next generation of Indians (our children).” No overtime, no representation, nada.

Such schedules could eventually compel men to wash their hands off domestic responsibilities, thereby delegating the complete onus of elderly care and child rearing to women, pushing them to the fringes, and eventually quitting the workforce.

What about gig economy workers— the taxiwallahs, delivery boys, and pretty much anyone in the unorganised sector? They remain invisible, their productivity unaccounted for, even if they subsist on two hours of sleep and scraps for dinner. At a time, when nations are debating four day work weeks and hybrid schedules, here we are mulling labour camps for the masses. Here’s looking at you, Soviet Union, and your Gulag.