India’s notoriously intense workplace culture is under renewed scrutiny after the death of a young woman at a leading accounting firm.
Anna Sebastian Perayil, a 26-year-old accountant, died four months after joining the India offices of Ernst & Young (EY). Her mother wrote to the EY India chairman blaming her daughter’s death on the “overwhelming work pressure”, in a letter that went viral.
Relentless demands
Anita Augustine alleged that her daughter had experienced “anxiety and sleeplessness” soon after joining EY, struggling with the “workload, new environment and long hours”.
“She was trying to prove herself in a new environment, and in doing so, she pushed herself beyond her limits,” the email said. Augustine added that her daughter’s experience “sheds light on a work culture” that “seems to glorify overwork while neglecting the very human beings behind the roles”.
The “relentless demands and the pressure to meet unrealistic expectations” are “not sustainable, and they cost us the life of a young woman with so much potential”, added Augustine.
The official cause of Perayil’s death is still unclear. But Perayil’s father believes his daughter died of a combination of conditions including work stress and insomnia.
“Anna was unable to sleep on most days and couldn’t eat on time,” he told The News Minute. “After a whole night of work, she would have to wake up at 7.30 the next morning and repeat the same cycle.”
EY told Business Insider that it was “taking the family’s correspondence with utmost seriousness and humility”, and called Perayil’s death an “irreparable loss”.
High pressure
Fourteen-hour work days, meetings during holidays, and no overtime. To some, this may sound like a job from hell. But for many employees in India, it’s standard office life.
India has one of the toughest work cultures in the world. In 2022, according to the most recently available data from the International Labour Organization, the average employee in India worked 46.7 hours a week, compared to about 36 in the UK.
Not only are employees in India working long hours, but many are also doing it under intense pressure. “The pressure is very, very high,” Jennifer Hephzibah, a senior HR professional in India, told Business Insider, because “if you don’t deliver”, you “either lose your bonus, or you lose your job” and “it doesn’t matter what you’re going through otherwise”.
A Boston Consulting Group survey of 11,000 workers in eight countries in October 2023 found that 58% of Indian respondents reported feeling burned out – the highest share of any of the countries, including the US (50%), the UK (47%), and Japan (37%).
Last autumn the co-founder of Infosys, Narayana Murthy, suggested that young Indians should work 70-hour weeks to boost the economy, telling The Record that India’s work productivity is “one of the lowest in the world”.
But Chandrasekhar Sripada, a professor at the Indian School of Business, said that things should move in the other direction, telling the BBC that Scandinavian countries “have already created much gentler working environments, so there are models for India to follow” and “all it needs is willpower”.