Just when you thought that the discourse around “work-life balance” could not get any more clamorous, the Chairman of Lansen & Turbo (L&T) SN Subrahmanyan stirred the pot further with his calls for a 90-hour work week, inviting equal parts backlash and sarcasm from all corners.
It all started when comments made by Subhramanyan in an internal meeting on his employees’ productivity went viral. Urging his employees to work harder, he reportedly expressed regret for not being able to make them work on Sundays as well.
“What do you do sitting at home? How long can you stare at your wife? How long can wives stare at their husbands? Go to the office and start working,” Subhramanyan said, in the now viral video.
Defending his statements, the multi-million dollar conglomerate issued a statement today, Friday, January 10 saying that India demanded a “collective dedication and effort to drive progress and realise our shared vision of becoming a developed nation.”
“The Chairman's remarks reflect this larger ambition, emphasising that extraordinary outcomes require extraordinary effort,” L&T’s statement went on to read.
In the meanwhile, Subhramanyan’s comments sparked memes, sarcasm, and criticism alike, with social media users, celebrities, and corporate leaders reacting strongly to them.
Some users compared his statements with those of Infosys Co-founder Narayana Murthy, who infamously advocated for a 70-hour work week and denounced the concept of work-life balance.
Business tycoons like Harsh Goenka, Chairman of RPG Enterprises and Rajiv Bajaj, Managing Director of Bajaj Auto criticised Subhramanyan’s statements, with the former calling a 90-hour work week a “recipe for burnout” on his X account.
In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Bajaj countered Subhramanyan’s comments by saying, “Number of hours of work doesn’t matter, quality of work does.”
Even politicians like All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Mahua Moitra and Shiva Sena-UBT leader Priyanka Chaturvedi joined in on the criticism of his remarks.
Some even pointed at the wage disparities between Subhramanyan and his employees at L&T, alleging that his revenue is several hundred times more than the average salaries at the company.
As India Inc grapples with the discourse around work-life balance, it is also important to consider the following statistics — the latest International Labour Organization (ILO) statistics claim that over 51 per cent of Indian employees work more than 49 hours a week, far more than global averages. In addition, a 2023 Deloitte survey found that 70 per cent of employees experience burnout in India.
