A 70-hour work week is nonsense but let's not mock the idea of hard work

The debate between hard work and smart work has taken a partisan turn on internet after IT billionaire Narayana Murthy's candid remarks about the work culture in India. He said that if India is to match up its better-developed peers in the world, the youth must consider working 70 hours a week. 

First, Murthy has ended up painting the entire mass of Indian youth with one singular brush: a non-productive bunch compared to their global peers.

Neither every youngster can nor most of them intend to put 70 hours of work; and the underpaid nature of many jobs even during formative years discourages the ones who are in it to put more of their energies into work. 

But then there are creatures of passion who do what they do because they love it, and that's why they often do not work by clock. 

What seems like sacrifice to the outer world — losing on dates, time with family, friends, vacations — comes across as legitimate price of their minor-to-major accomplishments in their field of interest. 

Accomplishing a task related to their passion gives them a high. 

It's for these creatures of passion who work with a sense of purpose in and out of the corporate world that the current hard work vs smart work debate on internet appears vile. 

Also read | IT billionaire Narayana Murthy suggests 70-hour work week for Indian youth, and internet has this to say

While Murthy's comments have opened the floodgates of chaotic talk over jobs that are remarkably underpaid and a kind of work culture that operates as a matter of imposition and not as a choice, the biproduct of such conversations is the description of hard work as some ridiculous attribute of the corporate world. 

That, certainly, is where the problem begins.

During the formative years of career, a fresher may not necessarily be as erudite as her senior with several years of experience. One is still learning the craft and it is during this exact phase that the sheer willingness to excel may make one put in extra hours at work. 

Also watch | More than half of Indian employees are logging off from work exhausted

Again, this should be a matter of choice driven by the interest of an individual and not necessarily a compulsion imposed by the interest of a corporate. You should have the choice to go home by completing what you're supposed to do or choose to stay back to be industrious in an attempt to master the field you have chosen.

This is what hard work during formative years of career should be. The time spent post the designated hours at work can be to hone the craft of the business. 

First you work hard, then you work smart

There is again this widespread misunderstanding that the individuals in their formative years who put in extra hours just do not know the way to work smart. That's imprecise.

My argument is, it's exactly why they put in extra hours. So that they could work smart in the immediate future post their formative times in the career.

Between privilege and nepotism: Only hard work can make one's passion stand out

In July 2021, when this author was still a student in Delhi University, the crisis posed by Covid pandemic began to die down and a semblance of normalcy started in and beyond New Delhi. Raihan Vadra, then a 21-year-old, a fifth-generation member of India's Nehru-Gandhi family, ran an exhibition at a gallery in the heart of national capital to launch a book consisting of his showpiece photography. 

To give you a brief, it's not easy to get a reservation for an exhibition at an Art Gallery in Delhi. 

You ask a director for a reservation, the response usually is that they are booked for many months if not a year or two.

I came to know about Raihan Vadra's work because it was covered in all three top Indian English-language news magazines I had subscribed to back then, off my meagre internship stipend. 

Just like back then, I still know a number of my Delhi University friends from humble backgrounds, who remain as passionate photographers but do not have the privilege to show their work at a place where Raihan's work was, partly because they do not come from the kind of background Raihan comes from.  

To Raihan Vadra's credit, the work he displayed as a 21-year-old at that exhibition was not ordinary and some of it indeed stood out. 

Yet at the onset, there is a show of flamboyant privilege which put him above and beyond  most of his artistic peers who do not have that privilege but are, at least in some cases, far more talented. 

The coverage Raihan Vadra's work got left me with a realisation. That most of this country's youth has to work doubly-triply hard to break through the glass ceiling of not just legitimate competition but also  privilege and nepotism. 

We have to read more, learn more, and work far far more to make our ambitions achievable. 

Many of us, the less fortunate ones, are already doing it, turning our work weeks into 70 hours, and perhaps even more.

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.)

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