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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Kaleidoscope

Buddhist monks participate in the 37th Nyingma Monlam Chenmo (World Peace Prayers) at the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya, Bihar on Monday. A worker sorts rain-damaged rice grain at a storage centre amid reports of irregularities in procurement and storage operations in Bastar district, Chhattisgarh, on Monday. A woman performs rituals during the ongoing Magh Mela 2026 at Sangam in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh on Monday. Police personnel during rehearsals for the upcoming Republic Day parade in...

Kaleidoscope

Buddhist monks participate in the 37th Nyingma Monlam Chenmo (World Peace Prayers) at the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya, Bihar on Monday. A worker sorts rain-damaged rice grain at a storage centre amid reports of irregularities in procurement and storage operations in Bastar district, Chhattisgarh, on Monday. A woman performs rituals during the ongoing Magh Mela 2026 at Sangam in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh on Monday. Police personnel during rehearsals for the upcoming Republic Day parade in Bhopal on Monday. A seagull perches on a woman's hand near the causeway of the Tapi river in Surat on Monday.

India dares, glares at L&T C-MD

90-hrs work-week

S. N. Subrahmanyan

Mumbai: An innocuous ‘progressive’ remark by Larsen & Toubro group Chairman-Managing Director S. N. Subrahmanyan (SNS) - mooting a 90-hour-week or deterring his 4-lakh plus employees from ‘staring’ at their wives on Sundays - triggered a massive backlash engulfing India Inc, trade unions, celebs and commoners alike besides acidic outpour or lampooning on the social media.


The comment – coming at a time when India almost scraped the bottom (126 out of 143) in the World Happiness Report-2024 – saw SNS mostly getting frowned upon by the likes of Gautam Adani, Anand Mahindra, Harsh Goenka, Adar Poonawalla, Rajiv Bajaj, Harsh Mariwala, CITU, AITUC and Deepika Padukone and other women, plus many more.


Apparently avoiding a direct attack, Adani – the second richest Indian in the world – told an interviewer that nobody should ‘impose’ their individual work-life balance on others.


The Adani Group chief also advocated employees to find their own ‘work-life’ balance while exhorting that they spend at least four hours with the family, and if both sides were happy, then it would be well.


Flaying SNS, the All India Trade Union Congress General Secretary Amarjeet Kaur said though India has the need for all the work hours possible, “what about the raging unemployment” with a lot of youthful energy going waste.


Hitting hard, she (Kaur) said that the wealth created by the existing workforce at an (average) 48 hours a week is siphoned off by “leeches like Adanis, Ambanis, Choksis, Modis and others” increasing the rich-poor divide in India to a level where it was 80 years ago.


Terming SNS’ statement as ‘satanic’, the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) General Secretary Tapan Kumar Sen suspected a ‘rogue competition among corporate messiahs” to rinse the blood and sweat of Indian workers in connivance with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government.

The AITUC’s All India Working Women’s Forum Convenor Vahidha Nizam condemned the objectification, dehumanization and disrespect shown to the womenfolk by SNS’ remarks.


“Wives are not to be adorned or be ‘stared at’… Subrahmanyan should know that a woman is an independent entity and her identity is not defined by her relationships,” she added sternly.

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