India’s problem isn’t restrictive labour laws but a failure to innovate—Making workers work harder won’t help

While the rest of the world frets over artificial intelligence and how it could hollow out demand for human effort, a zeitgeist-defying idea is taking hold in India. Several corporate bosses have publicly said that at India’s stage of development, a 70- or even 90-hour workweek is a national imperative.

It’s a relief that the four new labour laws that New Delhi has brought in—after delaying them for five years for fear of political backlash—haven’t gone that far. But they’re still helping legitimize the view that an eight-hour day is too lax.

While sticking for now to the century-old global consensus that a workweek shouldn’t stretch beyond 48 hours, the revised regulations have allowed the option of four 12-hour shifts alongside the standard schedule of six eight-hour days.It isn’t just the federal government that’s moving in this direction. Gujarat, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, states where the bulk of large factories are located, have made similar changes recently, according to labour researcher Bhargav Oza.

Political parties of all hues seem to agree that a pro-employer tilt would bring in investments and usher in a Chinese-style manufacturing revolution. Restrictive labour laws aren’t the reason why the share of manufacturing in gross domestic product fell from 18% in 1995 to 12.5% last year, the lowest since at least 1960.

A better explanation for why the most-populous nation, with its vast army of mostly young workers, is failing to industrialize has come from Ha-Joon Chang, a London-based South Korean economist at the School of Oriental and African Studies. “Your business elites do not want serious industrialization,” he told the Indian magazine Frontline.That’s because the elites are