India: Billionaire demands 70-hour week for young workers

THE MIRROR India: Billionaire demands 70-hour week for young workers Article by Charlotte Lüder • 2 hours. The average weekly working hours in India is already one of the highest in the world. That's not enough for entrepreneur N. R. Narayana Murthy. One of India's best-known entrepreneurs believes that young people need to work harder if they want the country to become a global economic power, as reported by CNN, among others. N. R. Narayana Murthy, the 77-year-old co-founder of software giant Infosys, said India needs "fiercely determined, extremely disciplined and extremely hard-working" young people who should work 70 hours a week. DER SPIEGEL summarizes the most important news of the day for you: What was really important today - and what it means. Your daily newsletter update at 6 p.m. Subscribe now for free. “You know, this is exactly what the Germans and Japanese did after the Second World War,” Murthy said to Mohandas Pai, the former chief financial officer of Infosys, in a video on the talk format “The Record | Leadership by Example", which was published on YouTube last Thursday. Murthy, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes at over $4 billion, co-founded Infosys in 1981. The company grew into one of the largest outsourcing companies in the world. He is also the father-in-law of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. “Somehow our youth have a habit of adopting negative habits from the West and thus slowing down progress,” Murthy continued. "India's labor productivity is one of the lowest in the world." But people in India already work more than in most other countries. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), the average weekly working time per employed person is 47.7 hours. This puts India in seventh place in the world rankings, with only Qatar, Congo, Lesotho, Bhutan, Gambia and the United Arab Emirates having a higher average, according to the ILO. Criticism on social networks The tech tycoon further said that business leaders in India should motivate young people to "work very hard" by telling them that "India is enjoying some respect (worldwide) for the first time." Now is the time to consolidate and accelerate progress." India's economy, already one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world, is expected to grow 6.3 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. Murthy's comments were heavily criticized on social media. A woman wrote on In recent years, surveys have shown that Indians feel they are among the most overworked and underpaid people in the world.