I must have been in school when I first heard the slogan. I was passing a trade union meeting, and the workers were chanting, “Aath ghante kaam, aath ghante aaraam, aath ghante manoranjan.” Eight hours of work, eight hours of rest and eight hours of recreation. I remember it because it sounded almost mathematical. A day divided into three equal parts, with work occupying precisely one of them.
That memory returned when commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal, addressing the India-Netherlands Business Forum in The Hague on 26 October, told prospective investors that Indians wanted to work hard. “Nobody in India will tell you it’s five o’clock. And certainly no Indian will ever remind you it’s the weekend,” he remarked.
His comments attracted considerable criticism, much of it centred on long working hours and work-life balance. I suspect the intended message was less provocative than the subsequent debate made it appear. Goyal was making a case for India’s work ethic, adaptability and willingness to accommodate business requirements. These are genuine strengths, and there is little reason to be embarrassed about them. But the remarks also raise a question about how India wishes to present the value of its workforce to the world.
“The extraordinary effort of one generation can become the ordinary obligation of the next.”
The trade union slogan I heard as a schoolboy belonged to a different economic era. India’s industrial economy was struggling with restrictive policies, inefficiencies, labour disputes and limited opportunities. Industrial relations were frequently adversarial, and there was a perception, sometimes unfairly generalised, that Indian workers were more concerned with protecting their working hours than improving productivity. Many industries eventually became financially unviable, although their decline had far more complicated causes than labour practices alone. For much of the working population, employment offered security but limited prosperity. Career progression was slow, and the possibility of dramatically improving one’s standard of living through employment was relatively limited.
Then India’s services revolution changed the equation.
The emergence of IT services, business-process outsourcing, financial services and multinational operations introduced an entirely different employment culture. Young Indians began working with clients thousands of miles away, learning unfamiliar technologies, adjusting to different time zones and taking on responsibilities that earlier generations could scarcely have imagined. The working day was no longer necessarily eight hours, nor did it always end at five. There were late-night calls, demanding deadlines and weekends when work took precedence over everything else.
But there was something important about that period that today’s discussion about working hours sometimes overlooks. For many employees, the additional effort came with additional opportunity. Salaries increased. Promotions could arrive faster. International assignments became possible. A generation of professionals discovered that working harder, learning faster and making themselves available when the business required it could substantially change their economic circumstances. The relationship between effort and reward was not always fair, nor was every employer generous. But the possibility of upward mobility was real. India’s expanding services economy helped create a large professional middle class and transformed the aspirations of millions of families.
Hard work was not merely an obligation. It was a route to a better life.
This history matters because India is still a developing economy, competing with countries that accumulated capital, technology and industrial capabilities over much longer periods. Catching up requires effort, and often extraordinary effort. Think of two students preparing for the same examination. One has a stronger academic foundation and learns quickly. The other is equally ambitious but has more ground to cover. The second student may need to study longer to achieve comparable results. There is nothing inherently unfair or undesirable about that additional effort. It may be precisely what allows the student to catch up.
The same principle applies to economies. A country seeking to close a development gap cannot always expect to progress at the same pace, or with the same effort, as countries that have already established themselves. But there is an important difference between working harder to catch up and making the willingness to work longer a permanent competitive identity.
“There is an important difference between working harder to catch up and making the willingness to work longer a permanent competitive identity.”
When our services industry was establishing itself internationally, availability was an important advantage. Global clients needed reliable partners who could respond quickly, accommodate different schedules and deliver work at competitive costs. Indian companies and professionals demonstrated that they could do precisely that. Today, however, India occupies a very different position in the global economy. Indian professionals are not merely processing transactions, writing code to specifications or executing instructions from overseas headquarters. They are designing products, leading global teams, managing complex operations, developing technologies and participating in strategic decisions.
The nature of the contribution has changed considerably. Yet the expectations surrounding availability have not always changed with it.
Consider the ordinary working arrangements of a global team. An Indian professional collaborating with colleagues in Europe or the United States frequently adjusts their schedule to accommodate meetings outside conventional Indian working hours. Calls late in the evening become routine. Employees working with Australian teams may find their mornings beginning unusually early. Some of this is unavoidable. Global business cannot function without flexibility, and professionals everywhere occasionally need to accommodate colleagues in other time zones.
The question is whether that flexibility is reciprocal.
How frequently does a European or American colleague adjust their working day to accommodate an Indian team’s schedule? It certainly happens, particularly where Indian teams hold substantial decision-making authority. But in many organisations, the assumption remains that the Indian employee will make the adjustment. This is not simply a question of convenience. It reflects how work, authority and value are distributed across global organisations. When one geography is consistently expected to accommodate another, flexibility gradually stops being a shared professional responsibility and becomes an implicit condition attached to where an employee works.
“The willingness of employees to extend their working hours can sometimes conceal weaknesses in management. Additional employee time becomes a convenient substitute for better organisational design.”
And that brings us to the larger problem with celebrating availability as a competitive advantage.
Availability and productivity are not the same thing. An employee who works twelve hours may produce more in total than someone who works eight. But that does not necessarily mean the employee is more productive. Productivity depends on the value created relative to the resources used, including time. A highly capable professional who solves a complex problem in six hours may contribute considerably more than someone who remains at work for twelve. A well-managed organisation that completes a project efficiently may create greater value than one that repeatedly relies on employees working late to meet deadlines.
Indeed, the willingness of employees to extend their working hours can sometimes conceal weaknesses in management. If teams are routinely available beyond normal hours, organisations have less immediate pressure to improve planning, eliminate unnecessary meetings, simplify approval processes or address inefficient workflows. Additional employee time becomes a convenient substitute for better organisational design.
That is a dangerous bargain for a country aspiring to compete on innovation, expertise and intellectual capability.
There is also an economic distinction worth considering. During the early growth of India’s services sector, additional effort frequently translated into faster career progression and substantially improved earnings. Employees could see the connection between what they contributed and what they gained. Today, that relationship cannot simply be assumed. Being continuously available does not automatically mean receiving higher compensation, greater responsibility or better career opportunities. In some workplaces, what once demonstrated exceptional commitment has gradually become the minimum expected behaviour.
“Our competitive proposition should increasingly rest on capability rather than accommodation.”
The extraordinary effort of one generation can become the ordinary obligation of the next.
None of this means India should abandon its work ethic or begin treating working hours as an inflexible boundary. There will always be periods when businesses require exceptional effort. Professionals who aspire to build something significant will sometimes choose to work longer than their formal schedules demand. Ambition rarely follows a clock. But flexibility has value precisely because it allows people and organisations to respond intelligently to circumstances. When it becomes a permanent expectation, it loses much of that meaning.
A professional who occasionally works late to resolve an urgent problem is demonstrating commitment. An organisation that routinely requires employees to work late may be demonstrating something quite different about its own ability to manage work.
India’s next stage of economic development should therefore involve a change in what we emphasise when presenting our workforce to the world. We should be talking about the complexity of problems Indian professionals can solve, the quality of their engineering, the depth of their managerial expertise, the intellectual property they create and the value they add to global businesses. Our competitive proposition should increasingly rest on capability rather than accommodation. But making that transition requires investment in skills, technology, research, infrastructure and management quality. It also requires Indian organisations to become more sophisticated in how they measure performance and reward contribution.
The eight-hour movement and the long working days of India’s services boom were products of very different economic circumstances. The former sought to establish that workers were entitled to a life beyond the factory. The latter reflected a period when extraordinary professional effort could open doors to opportunities and prosperity that had previously seemed out of reach. Both tell us something about how the expectations of Indian workers have evolved alongside the economy.
We still have considerable ground to cover as an economy. We will need to work hard, perhaps harder than many of our global competitors, to get there. But the purpose of that effort must be to build capabilities that make our work more valuable, not merely to establish that our time is more readily available. We should aspire to compete because of what we can accomplish, not simply because of how long we are prepared to work.