Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy wants youngsters to work 12 hours a day so that India can compete with economies that have made tremendous progress in the last two to three decades. Murthy said India’s work productivity is among the lowest in the world and that in order to compete with countries like China, the country’s youngsters must put in extra hours of work as Japan and Germany did after World War II. “India’s work productivity is one of the lowest in the world,” Murthy said while speaking to former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai for a podcast, The Record.
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“Unless we improve our work productivity, unless we reduce corruption in the government at some level, because we have been reading I don’t know the truth of it, unless we reduce the delays in our bureaucracy in taking this decision, we will not be able to compete with those countries that have made tremendous progress.”
“So therefore, my request is that our youngsters must say, ‘This is my country. I’d like to work 70 hours a week,” Murthy said, adding that this is exactly what the Germans and Japanese did after the Second World War. “They made sure that every German worked extra hours for a certain number of years.”
Murthy, who founded Infosys in pre-liberalised India but made it the country’s second-largest software exporter, further said that every government is as good as the culture of the people, and “our culture has to change to that of highly determined, extremely disciplined and extremely hard-working people”. “We need to be disciplined and improve our work productivity. I think unless we do that, what can poor government do?”
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When asked about his message to the youth of India in the 75th year of their freedom, the Infosys co-founder said that for the first time in the last 300 years, India has received some respect in the eyes of the committee of nations and it is the responsibility of every Indian but more so the youth to consolidate on that respect.
“And to enhance that respect, as I have said many times before, the only way the world will respect anybody is performance. That’s where I often used to say performance leads to recognition, recognition leads to respect, and respect leads to power. China is a great example. Therefore, my request to all the wonderful youth of this country is that realise this and work 12 hours a day for the next 20 years 50 years whatever it is…so that India becomes number one or two in terms of GDP.”
The tech titan, however, underlined that even if India becomes bigger than the United States, its per capita income will be much lower therefore there is an urgent need for the country’s youth to focus on growth. “I want them to realize that all this wonderful progress that we are talking about will come to nothing if the poorest child in the remotest village in India does not have reasonable access to education, healthcare, nutrition, and shelter and most importantly hope – that its progenies will have a better future than itself and that responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of our young people.”
