Sridhar Vembu Joins The 70-Hour Workweek Conversation, Says 'Demographic Suicide' Not Necessary For Growth

The debate around the issue intensified recently when Infosys founder Narayana Murthy again suggested the need for individuals to work hard and have long working hours

Vembu said that East Asian countries like China, Japan, and South Korea have achieved great economic growth but it has come at a major human cost of relentless work schedules.

Source : X/@svembu

Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu joined the conversation around a 70-hour workweek on Friday. The debate around the issue intensified recently when Infosys founder Narayana Murthy again suggested the need for individuals to work hard and have long working weeks.

Meanwhile, Vembu added to the debate with a different perspective. Sharing his views on social media platform X, formely known as Twitter, the executive said that East Asian countries like China, Japan, and South Korea have achieved great economic growth but it has come at a major human cost of relentless work schedules.

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

The businessman said, "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 countries also have such low birth rates now that their governments have to beg people to make babies."

He went to state that the issue raises two prominent questions about the consequences of this culture. He asked if such hard work remained necessary for economic development and if such development was worth the ‘price of a lonely old age for a large mass of people’.

He argued that only a small portion of the population 'drive themselves hard' and it is a philosophy which cannot be pushed onto anyone. "Some percentage of the population will drive themselves hard (may be 2-5%). I believe that is sufficient for broad based economic development, and the rest of us can have decent work life balance. I believe such a balance is needed. On the second question, no it is not worth it. 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 noted.

He concluded that development can happen without the people needing to work themselves to 'demographic suicide'. The post resonated with Netizens and many expressed their agreement with Vembu's logic. One of the users said, "In this evolving world of mechanization and other technologies, no point in driving people crazy with 70 hours of work. There are so many people without any useful employment. We have to create opportunities for youngsters to get into small, medium and big businesses as promoters and partners."