It is a truth now universally acknowledged that a young man in possession of the misfortune of having a 50-hour work week must be in want of staring at his wife on Sundays. A leaked video group chat recently showed a CEO addressing his lesser humans, saying that they should work every day, even Sundays. Gen Zs and millennials, being the “snowflakes” they are, have obviously misunderstood his comment. The humble CEO only regretted that he couldn’t exploit his employees on weekends and that hampered their nation-building dreams. 

Everyone should want to have 90-hour work weeks (roughly 12.5 hours per day, if working seven days a week) for the nation. It’s absolutely not as if these CEOs are looking to increase their own profits. CEOs are so massively underpaid anyway. That’s another universally acknowledged truth. There isn’t an ounce of selfish interest here. 

So, here are seven ways to utilise your Sundays to be your best productive self. Before we begin, remember, the kids will try to misguide you into believing that humans deserve rest and relaxation. They will cite four-day workweeks in Japan or the ‘right to disconnect’ in France, where employers legally cannot trouble employees after work hours. But, don’t get swayed. The goal is to be productive every second of your life, till the day you die. You’re letting down humanity every moment you spend on rest, relaxation, family, hobbies, or (gasp) staring at your husband/wife.

1. Productive Visual Activities

Our film and TV industry works ceaselessly. No Sundays or Diwali or New Year for them. Writers write day and night, crews shoot for months, singers, actors, stunt artists, editors, and set staff, all slave it out for months. To support their hard work, you must, as a responsible citizen, binge-watch something on Sundays. Important: involve your husband/wife as well, so they are not doing any unproductive staring at you. Do it for the country. 

2. Productive Social Work

Man is a social animal. Sorry, that was too gendered. Humans are social animals. So, it is our responsibility as productive humans to give back to our fellow humans. Take your friends to a local watering hole, indulge in local drinks and food, ensure local businesses thrive, and play your role in improving our economy. After a fun evening of rest, relaxation and inebriation, most people will forget about all their problems at work and return to work on Monday for a 14-hour shift voluntarily. Take your husband/wife along as well but ensure they’re not staring at you.

3. Productive Physical Activity

This one is obvious; unless you are in the pink of your health, how will you live up to the 14-hour shift expectations? It is important to move, get those steps in, before Monday. And what faster way to get those steps in than walking around the malls or flea markets in your area? Additionally, what better way to spend a Sunday productively than shopping at local markets and helping the economy flourish? 

Ensure that your partner is with you so they can stare at the shopkeepers and their wares instead of lovingly staring at you (ew).

4. Productive Upskilling

It’s the age of hustle. We shouldn’t be wasting any waking moment being unproductive. What better way to be productive than to upskill and get a Sunday job on top of your regular job? 

Watch a medical drama to start a hospital side business or a cooking show to become a hotelier! 

Whatever you do as your side hustle, make sure both you and your spouse are sitting on a cold, marble floor without any back support because comfort is anathema to success. And don’t forget to gloat on LinkedIn about it. 

5. Productive Self-Education 

You are never too old to educate yourself. Perhaps we can go a bit old school for this one and utilise some ancient instruments, called books. To learn about ancient cultures and lost civilisations, I suggest A Song Of Ice And Fire and Lord Of The Rings. For Physics and science, Dark Matter, The Martian, Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy and anything by Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke or Michael Crichton. For world politics, try Ian Fleming or Graham Greene. The world is your oyster if only you stop being so unproductive by spending 24 hours staring at your wife. Seriously, why do you even want to look at her? Spouses are not meant to spend time together. That’s the enemy of nation-building. 

6. Get Influenced By CEOs

The CEO clan is extremely focused on creativity and productivity. The reason why a plebian like myself or you is not sitting in a bathtub full of cash is because we are unmoved, unmotivated, and lazy. We spend our free time doing needless things like laundry, cleaning the house, washing the dishes. Learn from the CEOs. Like that one Indian-origin man who understands that his time—valued at $5,000 an hour, by himself—is too precious to do dishes.

Now, now. There will be some kids from these snowflake generations who may point out that the wealthy can obviously afford help of all kinds. They will also tell you that not everyone gets 24 hours a day to themselves. A CEO, for example, can afford to work 90 hours a week because he doesn’t have to suffer household chores. He effectively gets more work hours than the average Jane and Joe. In any case, an average Joe is also getting more time to himself than an average Jane. Let’s not get into that though. Ignore the ‘woke’ mobs. Instead of staring at your spouse, make sure they are doing unpaid labour for 32 hours a day, handling the house, doing laundry, cleaning, cooking, feeding and raising the children—all of it without a break or appreciation. 

7. Productive 

We spoke about physical health, improving the economy, and nation-building. But let’s be honest, only a sound and healthy mind can shoulder these humongous responsibilities. The 90-hour workweek will tire out those little grey cells in little people. Here’s how to ‘Think Big’.

Stop caring. Empathy and compassion are draining for you mentally. Hunger and poverty makes you sad? Climate change killing your hopes for the future? A family member is sick? A coworker died (learn from the Amazon warehouse in Colorado that simply ignored the dead body on the floor)? Who cares. Focus on that spreadsheet, PPT, charts and graphics on your screen that will make your boss millions of buckaroos instead.

Pay no attention to those ‘relaxing weekend ideas’ to try out with your partner. This is not some utopian civilisation built on humans and culture. Here, we remove the human from humanity to ensure only money matters in the end. 

(The author is Assistant Producer, NDTV)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

“It’s true that hard work never killed anybody, but I figure why take the chance.” The origin of this cheeky quote, often found on teenagers’ T-shirts, is at a Washington dinner in 1987. The self-deprecating quip came mid-speech from then-US President Ronald Reagan who was often targeted for being “lazy and lethargic” and loving his afternoon naps. It is not ageing well in a world where the toxic productivity treadmill is gathering speed. 

Unending work hours, the current default for hard work, are indeed killing people. Very young people. A 26-year-old chartered accountant employed with EY in Pune reportedly died from her workload earlier this week. Anna Augustine was just four months into her first job at the audit and consulting firm, one of the global Big Four.

‘She Kept Pushing Herself’

“She worked tirelessly at EY, giving her all to meet the demands placed on her. However, the workload, new environment, and long hours took a toll on her physically, emotionally, and mentally. She began experiencing anxiety, sleeplessness, and stress soon after joining, but she kept pushing herself, believing that hard work and perseverance were the keys to success,” Anna’s grieving mother Anita wrote in a letter to EY chief Rajiv Memani. She wrote how Anna’s managers dumped work on her at odd hours because they wanted to watch cricket matches. When she raised concerns about being unable to rest, she was told working nights was normal and that is what she should do. 

The modern rat race has ensured that working long hours is seen as a badge of honour. It is often normalised by leaders people look up to. Prime Minister Narendra Modi takes pride in barely sleeping because he works almost round the clock. Although the PM allows that such punishing workaholism is not for everyone, it inspires many to egg others on with his example at the peril of their health. Business tycoon Narayana Murthy believes young people should raise productivity and work harder, at least 70 hours a week. 

The argument here is not against hard, productive work. It is a cavill against the yardstick, which routinely is the number of hours and not the content of the job done. Never in human history have young white-collar workers toiled so relentlessly in service of corporate goals (read profits).

The Inescapable White-Collar Grind

Slave-driving employees was a managerial trait confined once upon a time to sweatshops and informal shop floors. But now white-collar grind is particularly overdone, especially in the finance and consulting sectors. Others such as law firms and even some non-profit foundations aren’t far behind. 

Outrage engulfed Wall Street in May when a 35-year-old Bank of America associate died after logging multiple 100-hour weeks. The banking industry already had work-hour restrictions, which were put in place a decade ago after a sleep-deprived intern died of a seizure. A Wall Street Journal investigation showed that “long hours and deference to bosses’ commands, no matter how unreasonable, are the norm industrywide”. Novice workers were always at the receiving end. 

Overwork and burnout risk have spread to unexpected fields. Elite footballers in Europe are contemplating a strike after more matches were added to their annual schedule. The warning came from Manchester City midfielder Rodri, who is expected to play as many as 75 games for club and country in the 2024-25 season. “It is too much,” Rodri was quoted as saying on Tuesday. “Not everything is about money or marketing. It is about the quality on show.”

Backbreaking Work, Everywhere

Club owners, regulators and broadcasters are naturally happy to add matches in pursuit of revenues and profits. That even superstar sportspersons feel the heat of organised greed says something. Financiers would see it as elevating productivity and sweating assets. But as Rodri quipped, “When I am not tired I perform better.” 

Back-breaking work in other areas that was hardly visible in public discourse is now in focus. Rising demand for maternity leave and benefits has put the spotlight on unpaid household work done by pregnant women, especially in tradition-bound villages. The setting may be different, but the work afflicted on household novices (read young brides) is similar to what Anna went through at EY.  

Greed At All Levels

There is no end to greed and it is stacked up from the supervisors at the lowest level, whose job it is to extract the most from their workers, all the way to the top of the food chain, the fat return-seekers who put up the dough. As Arun Maira, former chairman of BCG, argues here,” the social and business culture of greed for more wealth, in which they are all locked, will not be easy to change. But it must be changed to make the world better for everyone”. At the moment, it feels like wishful thinking. The pandemic-inspired introspection and debate around work, supervision, management, automation, lay-offs and living has fizzled out. Amazon, which cut 27,000 jobs in 2023, reverting to a five-day work-week perhaps is the tail end of pandemic-induced corporate forbearance. 

The pressure will only increase as artificial intelligence proliferates in the workplace. Human beings, whose productivity and quality of work depend on their physical and psychological state, will not be able to match always – on AI’s evenness and steady state. For companies, it eliminates the need to spend on maintaining the physical and psychological health of their workers. It’s cost-effective, productive, and more often than not, anti-human. So are certain managerial practices.

(Dinesh Narayanan is a Delhi-based journalist and author of ‘The RSS And The Making Of The Deep Nation’.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author 

The BJP floundered in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The floundering continued on the floor of both Houses where Members of Parliament from the INDIA parties delivered multiple speeches that were well-structured, well-executed, and rich in content. A recurring theme in many of these powerful interventions on the Budget was a 12-letter word giving Modi and his coalition sleepless Delhi nights: unemployment.

Article 41 of the Constitution states, “The State shall, within the limits of its economic capacity and development, make effective provision for securing the right to work, to education, and to public assistance in cases of unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement, and in other cases of undeserved want.”

Employment And Food Insecurity

Many MPs in the Opposition quoted CMIE data about the employment rate – which is the ‘proportion of employed persons in the working age population’ – recorded at 37% in June 2024. The Global Hunger Index 2023 was often referred to last week in Parliament – India ranked 111th out of 125 countries. Despite improvements in food production and distribution, food insecurity persists, particularly in marginalised communities. 

Impact On Personal Freedoms

A citizen cannot truly enjoy any liberty when perpetually anxious about her family’s unmet needs. This becomes even more important when the Budget skirts around the issues of health, nutrition, social security, and education. It is difficult to think about personal liberties on an empty stomach. 

MGNREGA

MGNREGA addresses the issue of Right to Work. However, it ensures it as a statutory right, instead of being a Fundamental Right. The latter cannot be taken away by an amendment of the MGNREGA Act. It bears repetition that states have been constantly deprived of MGNREGA funds. The Union owes the West Bengal government alone Rs 7,000 Crores for the scheme. 

In a labour-surplus society, why then is the Union government often selling the family silver to private entities? Two dozen large Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) have been privatised. This is not the solution. Should it not be the duty of the state to offer the labour force multiple opportunities for employment? There are 30 lakh vacancies in the Union government and government-controlled organisations. What is the road map and timelines for these vacancies to be filled? Parliament is in session. The government must provide answers. 

Education And Skill Development

The Union has an obligation to provide quality education and skill development to improve employability, and guarantee livelihood. But Budget 2024 has allocated only Rs 1.20 lakh crore to education, which is a 2% decline from Actuals (Rs 1.23 lakh crores) in 2023-24. 

Right To Livelihood As A Fundamental Right 

Through judicial interpretation, the Right to Livelihood has been read into the Right to Life, even though it is not explicitly listed among the Fundamental Rights in Part III of the Constitution. The Supreme Court emphasised, “An equally important facet of the right to life is the right to livelihood because no person can live without the means of living, that is, the means of livelihood. If the right to livelihood is not treated as a part of the constitutional right to life, the easiest way of depriving a person of his right to life would be to deprive him of his means of livelihood to the point of abrogation. Such deprivation would not only strip life of its effective content and meaningfulness but also make life impossible to live.”

The Right to Work, outlined in the directive principles, has been interpreted alongside the Rights to Livelihood and Life, evolving into a Fundamental Right through judicial pronouncements. Integrating the Right to Work into Fundamental Rights, and ensuring that policies are designed to create sustainable job opportunities, is paramount to ensuring employment. Even after a tepid performance in the elections, where they were punished by young people, this government refuses to prioritise investment in education and vocational training. 

Only talk about cooperative federalism will not do. States politically opposed to the ruling dispensation are deprived on flimsy grounds for years of their MGNREGA funds. These are funds due to people who have completed their work, and have still not been paid.

Additionally, fostering a more inclusive job market by supporting small businesses and encouraging entrepreneurship can play a critical role in generating employment. By taking these steps, India can better align its economic policies with its constitutional commitments and provide more meaningful support to its citizens.

The Right to Work still requires the state to take responsibility, and appropriate legislative actions, to fully provide citizens with the Right to Life, Livelihood, and Dignity.

Research Credit: Chahat Mangtani

(Derek O’Brien, MP, leads the Trinamool Congress in the Rajya Sabha)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author