Fri. Mar 29th, 2024
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KOLKATA: In light of the severe impact due to coronavirus pandemic, the Indian government has been sanctioning a bevy of drastic measures to stabilise the economy. But, industry leader and Infosys co-founder, NR Narayana Murthy is claiming that above all else, Indians would have to work 60 hours a week for the next 2 to 3 years, to be able to revive the plummeting economy.

For context, India has been going through a 40-day nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus. This led to the halt in all economic activities that the government has deemed “non-essential”. Even though, the centre is trying to lift up a few restrictions alongside extending the lockdown, 2 times, since March 25, questions about what lies next in terms of reviving the economy, remain. In an interview with Chandra Ranganathan of ET Now.

“We should take a pledge that we will work ten hours a day, six days a week – as against 40 hours a week – for the next 2-3 years so that we can fast-track and grow the economy much faster. On the side of the government, they should appoint a committee of well-respected and accomplished people to advise them on how to remove hassles for these businesses, like during the economic reforms of 1991. If we did these two, by and large, we will come out of this much stronger,” Murthy said.

Furthermore, he said that Indians would have to learn to live with coronavirus for the next 12-18 months. On the subject of opening up factories, he stated that he would consider factors based on data on who is more vulnerable to the virus.

He talked about how companies will need to take adequate precautions to protect their employees as well.

“We could operate three shifts in a one or two shift company to improve social distancing. We could use gowns, masks, gloves, goggles for low risk employees to attend factories. I would have made an analysis and said, let the less vulnerable work with protective gear and let elderly people work from home or from their own offices,” he said.

Talking about supporting MSMEs and startups, he said that the government could introduce a policy that offers credit guarantee to the bank which loan these small-scale enterprises. “This will help them to have certain working capital for the next 3-6 months. These things should have been done pretty early, but it’s still not too late,” he said.

Murthy pointed out that overall, Indians are not the most disciplined bunch. So, he tried to explicate upon the productivity standards that should be set in the work from home domain.

“The need of the hour is to improve productivity. While it is a great idea to say that we’ll all work from home, unless there is a clear productivity standard that we have defined, unless every one of us is asked to achieve that productivity standard, [work from home] won’t work. First let every industry – finance, information technology, etc. – define productivity standards for work from home. Once this is defined for each designation, then you can work from anywhere you want,” he said.

Commenting on the testing capacity in India, Murthy estimated that even if India tests one lakh people a day, it would take 37 years to test everyone. He added that there is no vaccine in sight, and pointed out that even if there was one in the near future, we do not know how or if it will work on Indian genes.

“In such a complex situation, we should assume that the new normal is to live with coronavirus. We should start doing whatever we were doing before the coronavirus came… in other words, protect the most vulnerable i.e. old people like me,” he said in conclusion. “People like you,” he told Chandra, “can use gowns, goggles etc. We can find out how much this will cost; every company can make efforts. Companies can show all this data to the government, say we are taking precautions, and work towards opening up factories again.”

 

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