The entire controversy began when the Infosys founder, Narayanamurthy, had raised the need to work 70-hour weeks if India had to come up to Asian levels of income. The debate assumed a sharper tone when S N Subramanyan of L&T had suggested that he wanted all people in L&T to work 90-hour week. If you look at the social media, the entire debate was distorted to working hard versus working smart. Remember, Murthy created an IT multinational and SNB rose from a small village in Palghat in Kerala to head the largest capital goods company in India.  

Obviously, these are not ordinary people but persons of extraordinary merit and enviable achievements. The point that both were trying to make is that the culture of working hard is just missing in India. Actually, one has to only look at how people in China and Japan work and then you understand how they attained such levels of growth and income. Like India, both countries almost started from scratch; Japan in 1945 and China 1979. The difference is that people worked hard and they worked long and they also worked smart. In India, you still find a lot of young people sitting and doing nothing but you hardly see that in Japan or China. 

More than working hours, the reference was perhaps about the passion for being productive on a continuous basis. Abdul Kalam best answered this question on work-life balance, when he said that for him work was life and life was work; so, there was no dichotomy at all. Of course, not everyone can be a Kalam, but the point to note is that it is not just about long hours or working hard or working smart. It is about being passionate about getting the right results. It is about not giving up on efforts till the goal. These are not measured in hours. Today, no successful businessman or top executive reached the position without putting in long hours and living and breathing work each moment of her life. The message was actually a positive message to all.  

In the case of SNB, more than the 90-hour story, it was about the statement that he made about women. In most of the other countries, this would have been just dismissed as casual locker room talk. It is only in India that people are taking out that one sentence and making into a national pastime. What would have been the case if it was the other way round? If a women top executive had said that she cannot sit on Sundays and watch her own husband? I am sure the press and social media would have gone berserk about how Indian women had arrived. SNB just learnt a tough lesson this weekend!