At the food court of many an upscale mall in India you’ll see many of the same brands you see in America. For example, Chevys, Dunkin’ Donuts and TGIF. Except this is a country where many white collar people go to work on Saturday. So Thank God Its Friday doesn’t really mean much beyond being a name.
One of the big cultural adjustments of going to America was a country where offices were shut on weekends. While I had grown up in India seeing my father not go to the office only on Sundays. But now some Indian industrialists and business leaders are complaining even that’s too much time off.
SUB1:If I can make you work on Sundays, I will be more happy, because I work on Sundays also.
S N Subrahmanyan is chairman of Larsen & Toubro, a very famous Indian company well known for major infrastructure project. Subrahmanyan was just trying to make a pitch for hard work but his comments have ignited a furore. Especially his attempt to make a joke, Of sorts.
SUB2: How long can you stare at your wife? How long can the wives stare at their husbands? Get to the office and start working.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata
Suddenly L and T aka Larsen & Toubro is a household name though not in the way it wanted. There are headlines comparing Subrahmanyan’s fat pay check to that of the average employee working in his company. He’s been accused of sexism, living in a world where husbands work and wives keep house. One meme quipped “Someone needs to tell the L&T head that if you work 90 hours & don’t stare at your wife, someone else will.”
Comedian Anil Abraham channeled his inner Mrs Subrahamanyan who in real life has not weighed in on her husband’s opinions
ANIL1: I am Mrs Subrahmanyan, I am the one he doesn’t stare at on Sundays, thank god.
Abraham took the opportunity of giving Subrahmanyan a sly lesson on sexism as well
ANIL2: His home everything just gets done on autopilot. His children grow up by themselves. The house gets cleaned, His clothes get washed and ironed and neatly put into the cupboard so he can go be CEO at L and T.
Recently another Indian tech billionaire Narayana Murthy urged younger employees to work 70-hour weeks. Subrahmanyan has just moved the needle up a little bit to 90. Meanwhile the government launched an investigation into the Ernst and Young consultancy company after a 26 year old chartered accountant committed suicide. Her mother had written a letter accusing the company of overworking her daughter leading to chest pains, sleepless nights and anxiety.
Subrahmanyan’s comments had a context. He was comparing Chinese work ethics to American. He said a Chinese colleague said they would beat America any time.
SUB3: I said, why are you saying that the Americans work 50 hours a week? We work 90 hours a week. That’s the answer for you
Indians work an average of 46.7 hours per week, compared with 38 hours for Americans, according to the International Labor Organization. This is not to say the larger message about enhancing productivity is misplaced. Except Subrahmanyan and Murthy seem stuck in a world where productivity seems to be still measured in the number of hours at the office rather than efficiency. You must be seen working, or rather you must be seen at work.
Anand Mahindra, another industrialist made exactly that point in response to Subrahmanyan.
ANAND1: Speaker2: think this debate is in the wrong direction, because this debate is about the quantity of work. My point is we have to focus on the quality of work, not on the quantity of work.
Of course what Subrahmanyan (and his critics) fail to note is millions of Indians don’t have Sundays off anyway. They work seven days a week not because they don’t want to stare at their spouses but because they cannot afford not to. The household help getting a day off is a new and relatively rare phenomenon still. In most homes which have a cook or the cleaning person, they still come every day anyway. And most Indians, including myself, have grown up used to that even as we have complained that we only got Sundays off and not the whole weekend.
Millions of freelancers can never say “Never on a Sunday.” A day you don’t work is a day you don’t get paid. But it’s a compulsion, not an aspiration. That’s what Subrahamanyan did not realize as he turned Larsen & Toubro into the subject of memes.
But the richly entitled would not understand that, not in a month of Sundays.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata for KALW