Unlike the former president, Murthy has not ignited minds with his ‘request’. Instead, he has lit a bonfire at every water-cooler corner, open-plan office, conference room meeting, and peeved Sunday column. To back her man up, in case we are accusing him of being a slacker while shouting at the galley slaves to ‘KEEP PULLING!’ (no one is making the accusation, though), Mrs Murthy was vocal about hub having worked ’80 to 90 hours a week, so, he doesn’t know what less than that is.’
Let’s give him a clue: less than 90, 80 or 70 hours is anywhere between not working at all and working 69 hours. In Murthyworld, burnouts are for toasts that need to get off butter.
But the problem with Third World countries brimming with manpower (read: people) that have started wearing First World Halloween costumes is that they think of everything in terms of ‘labour’ (‘workers’, as opposed to ’employees’, self-employed or otherwise) and quantity. Whether it’s ‘demographic dividend’ – the Hallelujah belief that by simply being multitudinous we shall inherit the Earth – or working longer hours regardless of quality, we give away our labour-fetishism.
Many compatriots of Narayana Murthy wearing a mental handlebar moustache and bearing an Indiana Jones bullwhip must be grumbling: ‘I say, when did Murthy get so soft, not asking fully-limbed Indians to work for quinoa and country the whole 168 hours a week?’
But the great Infosysgender’s Baden-Powelly ‘suggestion’ makes no mention of working more to make more money. This reminds me of not just the Mrs G-era Big Sister mantra of ‘Talk Less, Work More’, but also the ‘Pledge’ in my old Radiant Reader school textbook: ‘India is my country, all Indians are my brothers and sisters…’ (Not true, since my parents, both Indian, are certainly not my brother and sister.) Then there’s the other national kink of hitching cheap work with national pride – that of being the world’s factory. (China has been there, has done that and has hurriedly moved on.) Which developed or aspiring developed country’s USP is having a cheap workforce? Not the US, Luxembourg, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium and France – the top 10 countries with the highest disposable income in 2023. I know, I know, being ‘cheap’ gives a global competitive edge the same way hiring a domestic help in Kolkata is significantly less than in Mumbai. But working longer has even less to do with wealth creation or better living standards than working for cheap.
And yet, we have the likes of Murthy playing up the old Soviet-Disney credo, ‘Just whistle while you work/ And cheerfully, together we can tidy up the place/ So hum a merry tune/ It won’t take long when there’s a song to help you set the pace./ And as you sweep the room/ Imagine that the broom is someone that you love/
And soon you’ll find you’re dancing to the tune.’
These gentlemen may get their rocks off whistling while working ‘all the time’. But that’s like those folks bragging about happily living in polluted cities, instead of whining like First Worlders about breathing dirty air. Upping productivity, quality and income through better management, technology, innovation, should be the goal of any aspiring developed country. Not working longer hours ‘for country’ and for the heck of it.
Because of this fetish for work, rather than work being means to an end, we continue to value the show of working over the work itself. See the Solitaire window in computers minimising when the floor manager passes by.
In other words, if you can do a good job in 5 hours, why oh why, chil-dren, would you want to work for 15?
