Strangely, some representatives among the many cerebral, successful leaders of India Inc. cannot fathom the difference between work and overwork. The consequence is the spouting of mantras by prominent industrialists that are recipes for disaster, both for workers’ health and productivity. The chairman and managing director of Larsen & Toubro, S.N. Subrahmanyan, has, for instance, commented that employees should put in 90 hours of work in a week and slog even on Sundays. His casual disregard for legally-mandated work hours as well as his seeming ignorance of scientific research that underlines the perils of slave labour is revealing: worse, they are also contagious. Several business titans in the country have, in recent times, demanded longer work hours for Indian workers. This despite the fact that an estimate by the International Labour Organization has found India to be on the list of countries whose workers work the most globally. Another joint report featuring the Confederation of Indian Industry as one of the contributors had underlined that work-related stress and burnout among Indian employees were triple those of the global averages. It must also be remembered that women workers in India are crippled by a dual burden: employment that often involves overwork and underpayment as well as domestic responsibilities that are formidable. It appears that Mr Subrahmanyan and his peers have forgotten that India recently lost a young employee at EY — she died on account of work exhaustion — to a toxic culture that glorifies overwork. Or that the world is seriously considering the benefits of a four-day work week.

Can this desire to swim against the tide be attributed to the proverbial head-in-the-sand syndrome? Not quite. The repeated insistence on the volume of labour of employees by some captains of industry threatens to confirm suspicions that corporate India remains unwilling to be empathetic to the cause of workers’ well-being in a meaningful way. This insensitivity goes against its voluminous entreaties committing companies to uphold the interest of their employees. Perhaps the crux of the matter lies in a paradox. Despite the evolution of modern codes on labour, there persist a residual, regressive, feudal mindset and concomitant ideas regarding work, workers and productivity. This needs to change at the earliest.