Work From Home Was 'Illegal' Till 2020? Economist Sanjeev Sanyal Recalls Archaic Rule | Video

New Delhi: Noted economist and historian Sanjeev Sanyal, on Tuesday, cited an archaic rule that made work from home 'illegal'. The rule, Sanyal said, made WFH - which became a buzzword in the post-COVID-19 era - 'illegal'. Speaking at the India Economic Summit 2024 at the Republic Media Network Headquarters, Sanyal said that 'we finally got rid' of the rule in 2021. 

"NASSCOM did a survey in 2021, to ask from the BPO, IT-enabled sectors how many companies had benefitted from getting rid of this… And it was discovered that 92  per cent of BPO, IT-enabled services had their compliance requirements reduced drastically... Simple change, dramatic improvement in the efficiency of the economy," Sanyal told an audience that had policy-makers, economists and corporate bigwigs in attendance.

India Economic Summit 2024: Sanjeev Sanyal explains the ‘archaic’ rule

Sanyal said the rule was called the 'Other Service Providers' in the Telecom Ministry. The said rule mandated that special permissions be obtained from the telecom ministry to tell a plan on how they planned to go about using a telecom system. "...I wrote a report and we began to unwind this... It required two efforts, one in 2020 and another in 2021… but we got rid of this," he said, adding how the removal of the rule helped several IT and IT-enabled service providers across the country.

Work from Home (WFH) became a buzzword in the post-COVID era and several companies have adopted a permanent or hybrid WFH model in the months following the pandemic.