🇳🇱 Netherlands · 🇮🇳 India
By Priya Mehta, The Global Office
In 2023, the co-founder of Infosys made international headlines calling on young Indians to work 70 hours a week. The following year, he revised that figure upward to 72 and cited China's now-illegal 996 schedule as an aspirational model. That same year, the average Dutch worker clocked 27.7 hours per week — the lowest in the European Union — and the Netherlands ranked fifth globally for work-life balance. These numbers do not represent two ends of the same spectrum. They represent two entirely different theories of what work is for.
The Dutch approach to working hours is, by global standards, an anomaly significant enough to have generated its own academic literature. Workers between the ages of 20 and 64 averaged 32.1 hours per week in 2024 — the shortest in the entire EU — while the broader population average came in at 27.7 hours (Statistics Netherlands, 2023). The OECD places Dutch annual working hours at approximately 1,445, against an OECD average of around 1,736. This is not a country of chronic absenteeism or low productivity. Measured by GDP per hour worked, the Netherlands consistently ranks in the global top tier at approximately USD 97 — well above the OECD average.
What makes the Netherlands genuinely unusual is the normalisation of part-time work across genders and career levels. Approximately half of all Dutch workers are employed part-time — not as a mark of underemployment, but as a deliberate lifestyle arrangement supported by robust employment protections. Over 50% of Dutch women work part-time, and so do roughly 25% of Dutch men (OECD, 2019). In most countries, part-time employment is associated with poor pay, limited benefits, and stunted career progression. In the Netherlands, it frequently comes with all three things intact. The 2021 InterNations Expat Insider survey found 78% of expats in the Netherlands rated their work-life balance favourably — and 37% named it as what they loved most about working there.
There is a caveat the Dutch themselves acknowledge. The part-time culture, while liberating in theory, has produced structural problems: only 27% of managerial positions are held by women, one of the lowest rates in the OECD. The option to work reduced hours remains disproportionately taken by women in ways that constrain their advancement. The right to work shorter hours has not yet become the expectation that everyone work shorter hours. But compared to the alternatives, it remains an enviable problem to have.
Narayana Murthy's 70-hour proposal landed in October 2023 and was not, as some international coverage implied, the eccentric view of one elderly billionaire. It reflected a strand of thinking that is genuinely present in Indian corporate culture, particularly in the IT sector, where the notion of grinding through long hours as a form of patriotic contribution — the nation is developing, therefore you must work harder — has deep roots and considerable institutional backing. He subsequently escalated to 72 hours, citing China's 996 schedule as a reference point without mentioning that Chinese courts had ruled it illegal, that software developers had protested it publicly, or that a counter-movement called "lying flat" had been prominent enough to attract official criticism.
The data suggests this ethic is not merely rhetorical. A survey of Indian IT professionals found that 72% regularly exceed the legal 48-hour maximum workweek, with 25% working more than 70 hours per week — figures that align more closely with China's infamous 996 schedule than with anything in Western Europe (Solsaga, 2024). A 2024 CII-MediBuddy report found that 62% of Indian employees experience burnout, against a global average of just 20%. Among IT professionals specifically, 83% report burnout symptoms and 68% show at least two clinical indicators. McKinsey estimated the economic cost of poor mental health — much of it connected to overwork — at USD 14 billion annually. The irony of working 70 hours a week to build national prosperity while generating a $14 billion drag on that same prosperity has not gone entirely unnoticed.
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The debate inside India is more nuanced than international coverage suggested. Murthy's comments generated genuine pushback — including from politicians who argued for a four-day week. Younger Indian workers, particularly those with international exposure, increasingly resist unlimited-hour expectations. Glassdoor reviews of major Indian IT companies consistently flag work-life balance as a primary point of dissatisfaction. The culture of overwork is real; so is the growing resistance to it.
The comparison between the Netherlands and India is, at one level, a comparison between two theories of how economies develop. The Dutch model argues: extract maximum value per hour, protect workers from exhaustion, and trust that sustainable productivity over decades outperforms unsustainable intensity over years. The Indian model — or at least the Murthy version — argues: the country is behind, the window is open, and the way to close the gap is to work harder than anyone else, now, while you still can.
The problem with the second argument is the data. The Netherlands produces approximately USD 97 of GDP per hour worked. India produces considerably less per hour — and asks workers to contribute far more of them. Long hours do not automatically compound into output, a fact well understood in organisational psychology and apparently not yet incorporated into co-founder keynote addresses.
IamExpat / InterNations Expat Insider 2021 — "When asked what they enjoy most about their jobs in the Netherlands, 37 percent of expats praised the work-life balance. 79 percent rated their working hours positively. The Netherlands ranked fifth out of 55 countries for the importance of 'New Work' — autonomy, self-fulfilment, flexible hours — in local business culture."
Quora — Indian IT professional who relocated to Amsterdam — "In my first week I kept refreshing my inbox after dinner waiting for something urgent to come in. Nothing did. Then I realised the Dutch colleagues had just... stopped working. Not quietly. They had simply left at five and gone home. It took about a month before I stopped feeling guilty about doing the same."
Quora — Dutch professional who took a contract in Bangalore — "The culture shock was real in both directions. My Indian colleagues were surprised I wouldn't do calls at 9pm. I was surprised the 9pm call was considered normal. Eventually we found a middle ground, but it required both sides to acknowledge that neither assumption was universal."
The Register, November 2025 — On Narayana Murthy's 72-hour proposal — "His remarks have stirred controversy because few feel that 70-hour weeks improve productivity, and many know they make it extremely difficult to achieve decent work-life balance. Murthy continued to argue he is right, praising China's 996 culture — and made no mention of the fact that Chinese courts have ruled it illegal."
r/Netherlands — expat thread on adjusting to Dutch work culture — "My manager told me on day one: if you are still here at 6pm, I will ask what is wrong. Not in a concerned way. In a 'did you fail to plan your day' way. I have never worked more efficiently in my life."
The Netherlands and India have arrived at opposite ends of the working-hours debate through entirely different historical and economic logics, and both have data to support at least part of their position. The Dutch case for working fewer hours more efficiently is backed by GDP-per-hour statistics, low burnout rates, and a workforce that ranks among the most satisfied in the world. The Indian case for working more hours is backed primarily by the conviction that it must be true, and by the willingness of one very prominent billionaire to repeat it annually at a slightly higher figure.
What expats moving between the two environments consistently report is not that one culture is lazy and the other industrious. They report that the assumptions embedded in each system — about what dedication looks like, what a career is supposed to cost you, and what you are allowed to want from a working day — are so different that the adjustment feels less like changing jobs and more like changing species. As one Dutch expat in Mumbai put it, with characteristic directness: "I'm not less committed than my colleagues here. I'm committed to different things." In the Netherlands, that sentence would end a meeting. In Bangalore, it might start one.
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Priya Mehta
Staff writer covering financial markets and corporate strategy. Has strong opinions about spreadsheets.