What propelled MP Rahim to move the Right to Disconnect Bill

In September 2024, Anna Sebastian Perayil, a young chartered accountant from Kerala employed with a multinational firm in Pune, allegedly found herself trapped in a cycle of relentless deadlines and constant digital engagement.

She died, and her parents would later recall how work consumed Anna’s days and spilled into nights, how calls and messages continued even on Sundays, and how she rarely seemed free of the pressure to respond. Her mother’s grief carried a quiet accusation that the workload and expectations had taken a devastating toll.

Last month, another story from India’s corporate sector began circulating widely online. A software professional described being fired after failing to respond to his manager’s messages during a holiday because his phone had no signal while travelling.

The account struck a nerve among young professionals, particularly in the IT and services sectors, where expectations of constant professional availability are often unspoken but deeply entrenched.

Extreme workload

Nikhil Somwanshi, a 25-year-old Machine Learning (ML) engineer with Ola’s AI arm Krutrim, died by suicide in Bengaluru in May 2025 amid allegations of extreme workload, isolation, and mounting work pressure. He had joined the company in August 2024, and his death triggered widespread discussion on toxic workplace culture in India’s tech sector.

These incidents, different in circumstance but similar in implication, point to a defining feature of the digital workplace. Work no longer ends when employees leave the office. Emails, messaging platforms, and collaboration apps have stretched the workday into homes, weekends, and personal spaces, often without formal recognition or compensation.

Availability itself has become a form of labour.

MP Rahim introduces Bill

It is in this context that a political intervention has begun to take shape. AA Rahim, a CPI(M) Rajya Sabha MP from Kerala and the all-India president of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), on February 6, introduced a private member’s Bill in the Upper House during the Parliament's ongoing Budget Session.

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The Bill seeks to recognise the right of employees to disconnect from work-related communication outside official working hours. It attempts to transform what is currently treated as workplace etiquette into a statutory labour right.

The Bill is significant not only for what it proposes but for where it comes from. Kerala’s political culture has long been shaped by strong labour movements and debates around social welfare.

The MP also cited the instances of the deaths of Anna and Nikhil while speaking on the matter with The Federal.

What the Bill says

“I had raised this idea earlier during a Zero Hour discussion in Parliament. Many studies, including those by the ILO (International Labour Organisation), show that work-pressure-related depression and similar issues are increasingly prevalent among Indian employees,” he said.

“We have the example of our state-mate Anna Sebastian, and there was also the suicide of Nikhil Somavanshi. Workers are often made to put in extra hours without any additional incentives, and that labour is rarely even acknowledged," he added.

Fundamentally, the proposal asserts that workers should not be penalised for refusing to respond to work-related communication during leave, weekly off days, or after duty hours. It seeks to require employers to define boundaries around after-hours communication, create internal mechanisms to address grievances, and promote workplace practices that respect mental health and personal time.

Shifting concept of labour

Politically, this represents a shift in how labour is understood. The traditional imagery of labour politics in India has centred on factory workers, industrial disputes, and trade union negotiations. But the composition of the workforce has changed.

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Today, millions work in IT parks, service industries, remote roles, and platform-based jobs where exploitation is less visible but equally real.

The pressure to remain constantly available has become one of the defining features of this new labour landscape.

Capital-labour ties

Sociologist TT Sreekumar situates the demand within a broader global trajectory. “The right to disconnect has emerged as a powerful global slogan of the working class in the digital age. It captures a shared experience across sectors and countries: the erosion of the boundary between work and non-work under conditions of permanent digital connectivity," he said in a Facebook note.

"Emails, messaging apps, remote platforms, and algorithmic monitoring have effectively extended the working day without corresponding recognition, remuneration, or consent,” he added.

Sreekumar's observation underscores that the issue is not merely technological but political, rooted in power relations between capital and labour.

New form of labour extraction

Rahim’s intervention draws from this understanding. By framing digital overwork as a labour issue, his Bill challenges the assumption that constant connectivity is simply the price of modern employment. It argues instead that the extension of work into personal time constitutes a new form of labour extraction, one that has so far remained outside the scope of regulation.

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The political relevance of such a proposal becomes sharper in the post-pandemic era, when remote and hybrid work have blurred the distinction between office and home, resulting in heightened stress for many, especially women who also end up handling a giant share of domestic responsibilities.

It is no wonder that before Rahim, a woman parliamentarian had moved a similar private members' Bill to address the challenge, which is gradually snowballing.

Last December, Supriya Sule, a Lok Sabha MP from the NCP (SP), reintroduced in the House a similar Bill, reviving her proposal from 2019. The earlier version initiated in the pre-COVID-19 pandemic era had not advanced much, but Sule’s revived focus showed the significance of such bills in the digital-first work culture that has become more prominent after the pandemic.

Not able to switch off

The right to disconnect becomes a question of class as much as technology. Corporate flexibility often benefits employers more than employees, allowing companies to extend work across time zones while leaving workers to absorb the pressures.

The ability to switch off becomes a privilege rather than a right, dependent on job security, hierarchy, and bargaining power.

Rahim’s Bill seeks to insert the state into this equation, signalling that the market cannot be left to regulate itself. It echoes earlier labour reforms that set limits on working hours and established weekly holidays, recognising that unregulated work can erode health, family life, and social cohesion.

Opposition to the idea is already visible in corporate discourse, where constant availability is framed as flexibility and efficiency. Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy has consistently advocated for increased work hours for India’s youth, sparking significant national debate.

Unequal partners on value chain

Businesses argue that global operations require round-the-clock responsiveness and that rigid boundaries could undermine competitiveness. But this argument assumes equal power between employers and employees, overlooking the reality that workers often comply out of fear rather than choice.

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For the Left, the issue provides an opportunity to reconnect labour politics with a generation of workers who do not identify with traditional trade union movements but face new forms of exploitation. For leaders from states like Kerala, where social welfare and labour protections are central political themes, the Bill reinforces a longstanding commitment to worker rights.

Whether Rahim's proposal becomes law remains uncertain. Private members' Bills rarely pass without broader political backing, and labour reform often encounters resistance from industry. Yet its introduction itself marks a shift. It may be recalled that the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18 in 1989 following momentum generated by a private member’s Bill introduced in the 1970s by the late CK Chandrappan, another Left MP from Kerala.

Call for action

The DYFI hailed Rahim’s initiative. It said in a Facebook post, “The country has recently witnessed a disturbing spike in suicide cases among IT sector employees, many of whom have been driven to severe mental stress due to excessively long and unregulated working hours. In this context, the Right to Disconnect legislation assumes critical importance.

"It is a necessary step towards restoring balance between work and personal life, safeguarding mental health, and ensuring that technological advancement does not translate into intensified exploitation.”

The stories of overwork, burnout, and punitive expectations are no longer isolated anecdotes. Rahim’s intervention attempts to push labour politics into the terrain of the digital economy. The right to disconnect, in this sense, is about more than switching off a phone and about reclaiming control over time in an era when technology has made work omnipresent.