‘We Can Develop Without Demographic Suicide’: Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu On 70-Hour Workweek Debate

New Delhi: Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu has brought the spotlight back to the debate on a 70-hour workweek, a concept earlier proposed by Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy. He shared his perspective in a post on X (formerly Twitter) and stated, “The rationale behind the 70-hour work week is 'it is necessary for economic development.' If you look at East Asia - Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China have all developed through extreme hard work, often imposing punitive levels of work on their own people."

Vembu pointed out that these countries, despite their economic success now face low birth rates and have to encourage people to have more children. Vembu then went on to frame two questions based on this: 1) Is such hard work necessary for economic development? 2) Is such a development even worth the price of a lonely old age for a large mass of people?

The rationale behind the 70 hour work week is "it is necessary for economic development". If you look at East Asia - Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China have all developed through extreme hard work, often imposing punitive levels of work on their own people.

These very… — Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) December 27, 2024

In response to the first question, Vembu explained that only a small percentage of the population needs to push themselves hard for economic development. He emphasized, “Some percentage of the population will drive themselves hard (maybe 2-5%). I believe that is sufficient for broad-based economic development, and the rest of us can have a decent work-life balance. I believe such a balance is needed.”

Regarding the second question, he expressed that the cost of extreme work cultures is not worth it. He said, “I don't want India to replicate China's economic success if the price is China's steep demographic decline (which has already started). India is already at replacement level fertility (southern states well below that already) and further declines to East Asian levels won't be good.”

He ended his post by expressing his belief that "we can develop without needing to work ourselves to demographic suicide." This debate follows comments made by Narayana Murthy, who argued that India's workforce needs to boost productivity to compete with countries like Japan and China. He suggested that young Indians should be ready to work 70 hours a week to improve the country's competitiveness.