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| - Fact Check: Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy did not advocate for limited interaction between young girls and boys for success
A purported viral screenshot of a news report by Hindustan Times is widely being shared on social media claiming Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy advocated for limited interaction between young boys and girls for the nation's success while it turned out to be fake.
Claim :Narayana Murthy calls for limited interaction between young boys and girls for the nation’s success
Fact :The purported viral screenshot of news report by Hindustan Times is edited
Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy climbed down on the rhetoric of 70-hour a week which has become a topic of intense debate among the industry players. On January 20, 2025, Murthy clarified that the 70-hour a week should not be unilaterally imposed by the companies on their employees, however, the individual workers should consider this work schedule for the nation to progress.
Recently, Murthy spoke at the Kilachand Memorial Lecture on ‘Compassionate Capitalism,’ organised by the IMC Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Mumbai. Sharing his own experience at Infosys and throughout his career, he said, “used to get to the office at 6.30 am and leave at 8.30 pm. That’s a fact. I have done it for 40-odd years.”
Meanwhile, a few social media users are circulating a purported screenshot of a news report, claiming Narayana Murthy has called for “limited interaction between young boys and girls.” The viral screenshot shows a purported news report by an English news website ‘Hindustan Times’.
The headline reads: “Narayana Murthy advocates limited interaction between young girls and boys for success” while the subtext says, “Narayana Murthy emphasised that GenZ is shooting itself in its foot by getting into relationships, situationships, dating and other drama. They must instead focus on hustling and building the nation.”
The viral post link is available here. The screenshot of the viral post is below.
Fact Check:
During the investigation, the Telugupost Fact Check team found this claim to be false as it is a photoshopped screenshot of a news report.
To debunk the claim, we turned to Google Search with a customised keywords search query but it did not yield any news reports which carried the viral claim.
We further customised our search query to see if Hindustan Times did carry the story but no such report was found. However, we bumped into a December 16, 2024 news article whose headline was “Narayana Murthy defends 70-hour workweek idea' Indians have a lot to do'
The subtext for this article is: “Narayana Murthy emphasises the need for a strong work ethic among young Indians, advocating for a 70-hour workweek to improve the nation's status.”
The news report stated that the Infosys founder defended his stance on a 70-hour work week and emphasized that the young people should work hard “towards making India number one.”
Here’s the comparison of a viral spoofed post (left) and original HT article (right). You can notice these discrepancies here - the timestamp and the caption below the image have been redacted, the headline and subtext are replaced.
We then started digging through the tweets on the official X handle of Hindustan Times (@htTweets) and found a tweet posted by the news publication refuting the claim made in the viral post as “fake news”.
“A screenshot of a purported HT story claiming “Narayana Murthy advocates limited interaction between young girls and boys for success” is circulating online. We confirm that the screenshot is photoshopped and the story is fake,” HT tweeted.
Hindustan Times also stated that their legal team will initiate “appropriate legal action against those responsible for creating and spreading this misinformation.”
In the light of the above investigation, it can be concluded that the viral screenshot was edited and Narayana Murthy did not advocate for limited interaction between young girls and boys for success.
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