Self-care and maintenance activities such as sleeping, personal hygiene, and healthcare among others is being allotted less time in a day as other priorities like employment and leisure activities come to the fore.
As per the Time Use Survey (TUS) 2024 conducted by The National Statistics Office (NSO) released on Tuesday, the average daily time spent on self-care and maintenance dropped 2.5 per cent from 726 minutes to 708 minutes. On the other hand, daily time spent on employment and related activities increased 9.8 per cent from 164 minutes to 180 minutes, and that spent on culture, leisure, mass media and sports practices increased 12 per cent from 143 minutes to 159 minutes per day.
Further, people in rural areas have spent more time on self-care during 2024 at 711 minutes per day compared to 701 minutes for the same activity in urban areas. In both rural and urban, it has declined from 2019. Time spent on employment and related activities increased marginally in case of both rural and urban population.
Time spent on self-care and maintenance have taken a hit by almost same levels for both males (2.6 per cent decline) and females (2.4 per cent decline). While time spent on employment and related work has gone up for both men and women, women are also spending much higher (an average of 289 minutes per day) on unpaid domestic services for household members, whereas men spend only 88 minutes in this category.
The 2024 Time Use Survey also indicates that women continue to bear a larger load of unpaid caregiving for household members.
“Female participants in caregiving activities spent about 140 minutes in a day, compared to 74 minutes spent by male participants aged 15-59 years. This corroborates the Indian social fabric wherein most of the caregiving responsibilities for household members are borne by the females of the household,” the survey noted.
“The paradox of digital invasion is such that it has not only lengthened our working hours but also made us less productive,” Kamal Karanth, co-founder of staffing firm Xpheno said. Besides work, digital recreation like OTT use too have lessened sleeping hours, he added. “We are neither productive to our employers nor to ourselves in spite of giving ourselves more time for vacations,” he notes.
The NSSO, under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, collects data for TUS, which was first conducted in 1998 in six major states. However, the ministry conducted a nationwide survey in 2019 (calendar year) and the second round of the survey covered 2024. The TUS looks at how the population allocates time to various activities including both paid and unpaid work across genders and regions, covering around 1.39 lakh households, which encompasses around 4.54 lakh persons aged six and above.
