Sanjeev Sanyal, member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM), said on Sunday that corporate leaders have “gone into silliness" with their long working hour calls.

In a post on social media platform X, the EAC-PM member said that “looks like the 80-hour work week thing has caught on”.

“American investment banks want this as norm. As someone who has lived in that universe, let me say that that corporate leaders have gone into silliness. There are indeed spikes in work where such hours are needed, and well-paid professionals should be willing to do this. However, making this 'norm' suggests that this is some kind of target,” he elaborated.

Sanyal further stated that the reality is that enforcing this and maintaining quality suffers a moral hazard monitoring problems.

“In investment banks with such culture, professionals just begging doing their personal stuff in office hours - go to gym in office-hours, long lunches, meeting friends dubbed as ‘meetings’ and so on. City of London and Wall Street runs like this,” the leading economist posted.

“A few sincere souls actually do the 80-hour norm and burn out. Only very senior managers can sustain 80-hour work weeks because systems are built to sustain them (not just the pay but secretaries, assistants etc). The rest need a life,” he added.

The debate on work-life balance was first ignited by Infosys founder Narayana Murthy and more recently triggered by Larsen & Toubro (L&T) Chairman, SN Subrahmanyan.

While Murthy has been advocating 70-hours a week, Subrahmanyan suggested employees work 90-hour per week, even on Sundays, to remain competitive, which has triggered a wave of criticism.

Subrahmanyan’s remarks were condemned by Bollywood superstar Deepika Padukone, Harsh Goenka, Chairperson of the RPG Group, and former Indian badminton star, Jwala Gutta.

After facing backlash, the company said the Chairman’s remarks reflect the larger ambition of nation-building, “emphasising that extraordinary outcomes require extraordinary effort”.