'No Compulsion for a 90-Hour Workweek': Market Veteran Ajay Bagga On L&T Chairman Clip

The comments from the L&T Chairman need to be seen in the context of India . There is no compulsion for anyone to work for 90 hours a week. Very few people actually do. Nor is it a cynical way of whiling away time and then spending "face time" to pretend to be working long hours. 

The entire discourse has been made a very black-and-white debate for work life balance versus drudgery. This statement was neither . If India has to raise the living standards of the population at large from the present levels to a Viksit Bharat level, there has to be a huge increase in the economic output and the earning opportunities , as well as productivity. 

We cannot compare India to the developed nations which are talking of 5 hour work days for 5 days a week or thereabouts. The populations in those nations are already enjoying a very high level of development, a very high per capita income and a lot of safety nets . Those economies are at a different level of development.

For India, we have made great progress to reach an absolute economic level of the 5th biggest economy in the world. But, the per capita Income is still too low and a large portion of the population is still at subsistence level. For Indians to reach a mid income level, a lot of economic expansion has to happen. 

We are building infrastructure to scale up but we need to build this at warp speed because we have a lot of ground to cover . For growing at a nominal rate of 14%- 15% per annum, we need to either have a very high level of automation which leads to massive productivity or we need to have a large pool of skilled workers working for long hours. 

This is not pushing a 90 hour vision. But we need productivity, we need well paying jobs and we need outcomes of our efforts that lead to a high per capita income for our population at large. A country where 65% of the population is engaged in agriculture but produces just 16% of the national GDP cannot be called productive or rich. 

We have a very serious task at hand, as there is intense global competition for every job and every production opportunity. We have seen how China+1 or textile opportunities largely went to more nimble and perhaps more prepared nations . We cannot continue to miss opportunities. 

The debate should be rather: 

1. How to inspire the workforce to work on a mission of Viksit Bharat 

2. How to distribute the fruits of that labour more equitably

3. How to Skill a workforce that is largely unskilled and not linked into global supply chains 

4. How to create more opportunities, so 20% of the populations is dependent on agriculture and the rest depend on manufacturing and services.  We need to rapidly industrialise, rapidly skill our population and rapidly generate opportunities for our young population. 

That is the goal. 90 or 70 or 45 hours of working are to be left to the individual to decide . And that must be gender neutral with vast capacities created for child care and elderly care so that women can equally participate in the journey towards Viksit Bharat. 

No one will give us an easy passage to that vision, it will be built on the hard work and mental acumen of millions of empowered young Indians. This 90 hour drama is not worth debating on . Give choices to people and let them choose what they want to do with their lives in a free market that has a strong safety net as well.