Anand Mahindra: I Love To Stare At My Wife
The Chairman of the Mahindra group, Anand Mahindra, was posed a question about work-life balance at a recent media interaction. He was asked about how many hours a week he worked. To this, Mr. Mahindra answered that ‘This is what I want to avoid. I don’t want it to be about the time. Ask me what’s the quality of my work. Don’t ask me how many hours I work’. Mr. Mahindra was then asked about his Social Media game, and how he managed to ace that despite having a busy schedule. Here’s what he said, take a listen.
He then talked about why he’s on X – a social media platform that was previously known as Twitter. He said that he’s on X not because he’s lonely, and adds that his wife’s wonderful and he loves staring at her. He also notes that X is an amazing business tool, and that he gets feedback from 11 million platform through a single platform (X).
Where’s the wife comment coming from?
Well, as a tongue-in-cheek response to the Chairman of Larsen and Toubro (L&T), an engineering and infrastructure company. In response to a query from an employee, the Chairman of L&T Mr. SN Subrahmanyan said that he wants employees to work even on Sundays. He went a step further and asked a rhetorical question about how long could a husband stare at the wife or for the matter the wife at the husband.
Mr. Subrahmanyan’s comments have stirred a hornet’s nest with most Social Media users, politicians, media personnel and business titans coming out strongly against the ‘toxic’ work culture that expects employees to work even on Sundays. The L&T Chairman’s comments have also ignited a debate on work-life balance in India, and have also led to a flurry of memes, which castigate the chairman for his ‘insensitive’ and ‘misogynistic’ response to the employee question.
Ms. Mahua Moitra, a Member of Parliament from the Trinamool Congress, came out heavily against Mr. Subrahmanyan, calling him a ‘Muppet’ in her tweet on X,
Another Member of Parliament, Karti Chidambaram, of the Indian National Congress, asked Mr. Subrahmanyan to get a life,
Industry titan Rajiv Bajaj weighed in on the matter with a lengthy discourse of sorts. Mr. Bajaj said that it’s the quality of work that matters and not the number of hours worked. He also added that his organization wants more people to make use of their wellness facility even during work hours.
Another industrialist, Mr. Harsh Goenka, chairman of the RPG group, and well known for his wit on Social Media, had this to say,
Former Infosys Chairman NR Narayanamurthy, who was recently criticized by many for his 70 hour work week proposal, was also dragged into the controversy, with a funny Tweet that suggested L&T employees and Infosys employees marrying, working until retirement, and then meeting each other.
Clearly, Mr SN Subrahmanyan’s statements on work life balance have just not gone down well with most people.