Work Longer, Live Less: Maharashtra’s New Labor Law Is an Insult to Mumbai’s Workforce (and Common Sense)

Let’s get one thing straight: what we’ve just witnessed in Maharashtra isn’t “labor reform,” it’s thinly veiled exploitation repackaged as progress. The state government and its corporate buddies want us to believe that increasing the “legal” workday to 10, even 12 hours is somehow a win; for whom? Certainly not for the lakhs who grind it out in Mumbai’s impossible traffic just to scrape by.

When the state announced this change, the jargon flowed thick and fast: “pro-worker,” “pro-business,” “flexible,” “investment-friendly.” Interesting how the architects of these policies are never the ones battling for a seat on the Virar fast or coughing up half their salary in Uber fares just to reach a desk by 9:00 a.m. Here’s the brutal reality: in Mumbai, commutes alone can eat up two, even three hours of your day, often each way. That’s not a pessimistic outlier, it’s normal. The rest of the country may joke, but only Mumbai’s working class weeps as days are swallowed whole by trains and buses, leaving workers with little to nothing for family, friends, or themselves.

And now, with an official extension of working hours, what exactly do you think will happen? Here’s my prediction and it’s not a wild guess, because this is already the ground reality: “Lala” companies, the ones run as private fiefdoms where rules are bent, broken, and ignored unless they help the boss, will squeeze every last drop out of employees. The legal change will be weaponised. If 9 hours plus 1 for lunch and snack time already means 10 hours in the office today, tomorrow it’ll quietly slide up to 11 or 12. These places were never paying overtime anyway, because overtime is just a suggestion and of course “we’re all family.” Try demanding your rights, they’ll laugh you out the door, or worse, fire you under some pretext of “cultural misfit.”

Let’s pause here to consider just how outdated this entire framework is. The 8-hour workday was born in a different era, for a different kind of labor. If your “productivity” can be measured by how many boxes you carry or widgets you assemble, sure, track time by the hour. But what about today, in the age of computers and AI? Productivity isn’t about sitting in one spot until your back breaks, it’s about what gets done: ideas, solutions, creations. Cyril Northcote Parkinson nailed it back in the 1950s: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” This isn’t just philosophical banter, it’s daily life for anyone who’s ever killed an afternoon pretending to be busy because “leaving early looks bad.”

And about that AI revolution? The official stories say work will get easier; we’ll have more time. In reality, as studies show, average work hours have actually increased, by around 3 hours a week in AI-heavy fields since ChatGPT and similar tools took off. Why? Because bosses see faster output and raise the bar. “Oh, you finished your task early? Here’s a dozen more.” The time saved doesn’t go back to the worker, it goes straight into their boss’s bonus. “Expectation inflation” means the more efficient we become, the more is dumped on our plates until burnout sets in. Family time, hobbies, genuine rest? Forget it. AI made you faster, but your manager just made you busier.

Let’s talk honestly about health and well-being here. You don’t need a medical diploma to see what happens when people’s lives are consumed by endless work and commute. Stress, fatigue, and a growing sense of isolation are already rampant; more hours perform one magic trick: multiplying problems. And for people taking care of families, especially women and lower-wage workers, these demands are devastating: physically, mentally, emotionally.

So, who benefits from all this? Is it the HR executive? The software developer coding through dinner? The sales lead who needs three hours just to reach office on time? No. The only winners are the CEOs and cronies whose profits grow while workers are wrung dry. The government’s line that this is about “creating jobs” or “attracting investment” is just hot air. If cranking up legal working hours actually made life better, why is the rest of the world experimenting with shorter workweeks and succeeding?

What we actually need isn’t more so-called flexibility for employers but more enforcement of the few rights workers are supposed to have. Cut the hours, don’t increase them, especially when technology lets us do more in less time. The science is clear: happier workers are better workers; less time in the office doesn’t mean less gets done, it means less busywork and burnout. In fact, it’s time for India to catch up with countries running successful four-day weeks, not regress further into industrial-age misery.

If you’re a Mumbai worker or anyone anywhere who feels the noose tightening every time a “reform” like this rolls out, you’re not alone, and your exhaustion is not imaginary. The people at the top will keep clapping each other on the back and counting their bonuses, but that doesn’t have to be the whole story. Work should serve life, not the other way around. And I, for one, refuse to swallow the lie that this is progress. Let’s call it what it is: legalized overwork for profit, and a slap in the face to the people whose sweat and time actually keep this city running.

If you’re as fed up as I am, speak up, share your story, and demand better. Because if we don’t draw the line now, “just one more hour” will become a life sentence.