Karnataka’s 12-Hour Workday Proposal Sparks Alarm Across Tech Sector

As Karnataka quietly proposed legalising 12‑hour workdays, it triggered an unusually unified reaction in the country’s tech capital. Software engineers, union leaders, gig workers and even managers were suddenly saying the same thing: this is a line we cannot afford to let blur. The draft bill, which seeks to extend maximum working hours per day from nine to 12 under the Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, was couched in the language of flexibility. But its implications were structural, and likely permanent.

The state government was quick to call it optional. Companies wouldn’t be required to enforce the longer shifts. But the IT industry is a place where the line between policy and pressure is notoriously thin. When Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy had called upon India’s youth to work 70‑hour weeks in 2023, in a sombre, patriarchal tone heavy with inherited sacrifice, it had unleashed a wave of satire. Social media users had pointed out that India already has among the longest average working hours in the world (47.7 hours a week in the organised sector). Labour economists called the suggestion outmoded. Murthy was mocked as a relic of the IT boom’s ascetic era, a man whose moral code had not updated to the world his company helped globalise.

And yet, here we are. The Karnataka proposal makes Murthy’s vision bureaucratically viable. What had sounded like cultural nostalgia from an industry elder now looks like institutional precedent. The difference between the old legal cap and the new proposal may sound minor in a city where the workday already bleeds well into the night. But the Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employees Union (KITU) says that 12 hours may only be optional on paper, leaving employees with no way to opt out of prolonged workdays. Refusing a longer shift, in practice, could mark you as uncooperative, as not being “a team player”.

In the wider Indian context, this move is part of a deliberate strategy. The Centre’s 2020 Labour Codes, passed in Parliament but not yet implemented, contain similar provisions. Tamil Nadu tried to extend the workday to 12 hours last year, only to backtrack after public protests. Gujarat had floated it during the pandemic. More recently, the Andhra Pradesh government drafted a proposal to increase workdays to 10 hours, a move currently under consideration. All of this contrasts with this year’s Economic Survey, which warns that spending more than 60 hours a week could have adverse health effects and cites studies linking long hours to mental distress and higher absenteeism.

The Karnataka government has offered few specifics on which sectors this would apply to first. There has been no clarity on what safeguards, if any, would prevent abuse. Big Tech, which is never shy to speak when taxes or data rules are under discussion, has not issued any public statement about the proposed change.

The larger gamble here is not just economic but ideological. Karnataka’s leadership believes that if it can market “labour flexibility” to investors, it can beat back Hyderabad and Mumbai in the contest for global capital. But in selling this idea, the state is betting against its own workforce. Karnataka is India’s second‑largest contributor to IT exports—accounting for roughly 38 percent of the national total in 2023–24—and its state GSDP reached approximately ₹22.4 lakh crore last fiscal. Bengaluru alone accounts for over 3.5 million formal jobs across sectors. A marginal legal shift in working hours carries millions of lives in its wake.

Unions have also pointed out that this proposal will likely incentivise employers to transition from a three‑shift to a two‑shift system. With fewer shifts covering the same total hours, that means roughly one‑third fewer roles across manufacturing, logistics, security, and IT‑enabled services. Worker groups warn this could result in the displacement of 4.5 to 6.8 lakh jobs within the state, an invisible layoff masked as efficiency.

Compare this with trends elsewhere. In Europe, the idea of working fewer hours is no longer radical. The UK’s four‑day workweek pilot across 61 companies showed maintained productivity and improved mental health. Germany is in talks to normalise it. In Iceland, the model—piloted between 2015 and 2019—has been widely adopted across the public sector. Even in the United States, corporate cultures once notorious for celebrating exhaustion are beginning to reward rest. By contrast, Karnataka’s move feels less like a leap into the future and more like a regression to industrial‑age logic: more hours, more growth.

That logic is flawed. Productivity does not scale linearly with time. Numerous studies show that cognitive output begins to decline after six or seven hours of mentally intensive work. Errors creep in. Decision‑making slows. The quality of code deteriorates even if the number of lines increases.

But perhaps the most disturbing element in this policy debate is the way time itself is treated: as a raw material to be requisitioned. The eight‑hour day, hard‑won through early 20th‑century labour movements and codified in India through ILO conventions and state laws, was based on a humane arithmetic: eight hours for work, eight for rest, and eight for self. That tripartite balance is already fraying. What this amendment seeks is to formalise its collapse.

One might argue that for the informal economy—the domestic workers, the delivery riders, the factory hands—12 hours is already standard. But this argument is not levelling up. It is pushing everyone down. Equality in exhaustion is no justice at all. The government justifies the move by pointing to the need for “competitiveness”. Competitiveness against whom? Other Indian states playing the same game? Bangladesh or Vietnam, where labour costs are lower still? Against AI, which doesn’t need tea breaks or sleep?

Karnataka has spent two decades branding itself as the knowledge economy’s epicentre. It built showpiece IT corridors, wooed global VCs, trained the best engineers in the country. But now, instead of protecting the mental and physical health of the very people who put it on the map, it is offering them up as bargaining chips in a race to the bottom.

There is no doubt that some firms will adopt the 12-hour model with formal safeguards. There will be contracts, perhaps even incentives. But there will also be quiet duress, an unspoken norm that one is expected to comply with, smile through, and log out only once the manager has.

This is not just a policy issue—it’s a cultural one. India’s professional class has long been told that the path to success is through sacrifice: work hard, stay late, prove yourself. But that ethic, once rooted in scarcity, has calcified into something more dangerous. Time has become both currency and submission. The more you give, the more loyal you are assumed to be.

The question now is whether Karnataka’s young workforce, educated, global, digitally literate, will accept this erosion. Some have already begun to push back, not through protest but through quiet exit. They are turning down Bengaluru jobs in favour of remote roles abroad. They are applying to graduate programmes, taking sabbaticals, or choosing smaller companies with saner expectations. The signal is clear, even if the government isn’t listening: they are not tired of working. They are tired of proving that they are always working.

There is still time to rethink the draft and to imagine growth that isn’t built on depletion. The real question is not whether Indians are willing to work 12‑hour days. It is whether the country can afford what is lost in the other 12.

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