Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy urged youngsters in the country to work 70 hours a week to ensure the progress of India.
During a freewheeling conversation with former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai for the first episode of 3one4 Capital’s podcast ‘The Record’, Murthy observed that youth in India has the habit of taking "not so desirable" habits from the West and then not helping the country.
"India's work productivity is one of the lowest in the world. Unless we improve our work productivity, unless we reduce corruption in the government...unless we reduce the delays in bureaucracy in taking the decisions, we will not be able to compete with those countries that have made tremendous progress," he pointed out.
“My request is that our youngsters must say, 'this is my country, I want to work 70 hours a week',” he said, adding, “This is exactly what the Germans and the Japanese did after the Second World War. The German leader sat down with corporate leaders and said 'we have to rebuild, that is your job'. And they made sure every German worked extra hours for a certain number of weeks.”
He expressed hope that corporate leaders in India too would be able to address the youngsters and ask them to work extra hard, be disciplined, and improve work productivity. “Unless we do that, what can the government do,” Murthy said and observed that every government is as good as the culture of the people.
“Our culture has to be changed to that of highly determined, extremely disciplined, and extremely hardworking people. And that transformation has to come to youngsters because youngsters are the ones who can build our country.”
