How India's toxic work culture is killing young professionals

In addition to the long hours, he complains about demanding, unsympathetic bosses who laugh at vacation requests and weekends spent away from the family with no hope of additional pay or time off.

Dev's wife often asks him to quit, but he knows this is the norm in all Indian companies, as a spate of deaths in recent months has shown.

Last week alone, a Mumbai banker jumped off a bridge citing pressure at work, and a Bajaj Finance area manager in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh hanged himself. In his closing remarks, Tarun Saxena blamed his superiors at Bajaj for setting unimaginably high debt collection targets. “I didn’t sleep for 45 days. I hardly ate. I am under a lot of stress,” he wrote. Police added that he was recently humiliated in a video call in front of his peers.

Bajaj said they were “deeply saddened” by his death.

As India's economy booms, questions are being raised about the quality of white-collar jobs being created in the country's emerging services sector.

For decades, union activists have worried about factory workers or the large segments of the population who earn their living in informal industries. These days, however, they are equally shocked by the stories they hear from people who work in consulting, technology and financial companies.

“Our contacts might say nine to five Monday to Friday, but we all know it's 10 hours a day, six or seven days a week,” says a Delhi-based chartered accountant.

Of course, this has all been bubbling under the surface for years, but the death of Anna Sebastian Perayil, an auditor at EY, in the western city of Pune in July sparked a major outburst of discontent. Using hashtags like “justiceforAnna” and “toxicworkculture,” young Indians have detailed how they are bullied and made to feel inadequate, even when they miss family events or skip doctor's appointments.

As Anna's mother, Anita Augustine, wrote in a now-viral letter to EY India Chairman Rajiv Memani: “This is not just about my daughter – this is about every young professional who comes to EY full of hopes and dreams, just to be crushed under the weight of unrealistic expectations.”

Anna joined EY in March this year after recently passing her accounting exams with distinction. According to her mother, she was a happy woman with a can-do attitude. But just a few weeks after joining the company, her confidence collapsed and she began suffering from chest pain and insomnia.

“The managers were relentless. My daughter worked late at night, even on weekends… Her assistant manager once called her at night with a task that needed to be completed by the next morning,” her mother wrote.

Anna died of an apparent cardiac arrest in July, aged just 26, and no one from EY attended her funeral.

Saurabh Kumar Laddha committed suicide in Mumbai in February. As a McKinsey employee, he told his girlfriend that he was under pressure at work

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“We accept the family’s correspondence with the utmost seriousness and humility,” EY said in a statement. “We value the well-being of all employees and will continue to find ways to improve and provide a healthy workplace for our 100,000 employees across EY member firms in India.”

India's labor ministry has launched an investigation into Anna's death and state authorities have taken legal action against her office for operating without a work license. Opposition politicians have also promised to raise the issue of congestion in parliament. Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi told Anna's parents that he would “ensure that this tragedy sparks a movement for safer and fairer workplaces.”

But few who work at her level in Anna's industry are surprised by her death or that of Saurabh Kumar Laddha, a McKinsey employee who died by suicide in Mumbai in February after telling his girlfriend that he was at the Work is under pressure.

Many have described these tragedies as events waiting to happen – and likely to repeat themselves if companies do not take action to protect their workers.

“I have seen young people being called out in front of clients just to make the manager look good, and I know from experience that HR is no help,” says a consultant who works for a large company in Delhi.

Others recall having to be available during a family funeral or being dismissive by management when they asked questions about overtime and burnout.

The landscape is changing: a demanding work ethic in commercial hotspots like Mumbai has spread to India's services sector

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“These companies in the West walk their talk when it comes to the well-being of their employees, but when they get here everything is thrown out the window in favor of the bottom line,” says another consultant at one of the big four companies.

Doctors and psychologists warn that companies in India need to be extremely careful about overworking their employees, as many are already under enormous stress due to family pressures, crowded living conditions and difficult commutes. Additionally, many young workers are living away from home for the first time. “Friends with supportive family are more resilient,” observes a former employee at professional services firm KPMG.

Part of the problem is that consultants' working hours in India are already long – an average of 47 hours per week – and their clients are demanding and can have short-term requirements. They also know that if they quit, they can easily be replaced due to the oversupply of graduates in the Indian job market.

Narayana Murthy, the software billionaire and father-in-law of Rishi Sunak, last year called on young Indians to work 70 hours a week

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Many join the company because they know they can only last a year or two, but will at least have a “big” name on their resume. But some find the culture too toxic and quit their jobs sooner. “The sensible people leave. They don’t care what it looks like,” says a Big Four employee whose contract has only been running for months but who is already prepared to terminate.

However, few consulting workers sue their employers—even when the company's work requirements clearly violate the terms of an employment contract—because doing so could label the employee as a “troublemaker” and show up in background searches when applying for a new job.

It is also the case that practices are largely the same everywhere. Last year, software billionaire Narayana Murthy, Rishi Sunak's father-in-law, urged young Indians to work 70 hours a week to contribute to their country's development. And this year, the government of Karnataka state – home to the tech hub of Bangalore – briefly considered changing the law to allow IT workers to work 14-hour days.

“This is the new economy and it is completely unregulated,” says Delhi-based lawyer Avi Singh.