As an Indian who has worked in America, that's kind of not true.

When you live in India, you get a fuckton of religious holidays and national holidays. Then there's two weeks paid vacation in addition to that. That's government mandated.

If you live close to your family, which you will mostly, you take days off for family engagements. And then there's government mandated sick leave.

Apart from this, if you work in government, you do get overtime for a lot of positions. Not sure ISRO scientist jobs fall into that, but they mostly might.

So overall, there's a balance in lifestyle thanks to how society and social events are structured. Also we have very strong labor laws and unions because of a strong Russian influence after independence. We also have mandated provident fund, dearness allowance, and other savings for retirement etc. Government also ensures we get maternity leave.

It's however different in companies staffed by people who are new in town and have no family close by. This is also similar to the culture of young immigrant employees in America. They have nothing to go home to, and loans to pay back, so they throw themselves into work because that's all they have.

If you work for ISRO you won't see such a culture. It isn't the norm at the very least. The pay is peanuts, but the benefits are great, and you have job security. People work regular hours, can be home for dinner, and the workplace is chilled as promotion is seniority based. No one works themselves to death at ISRO. People do work hard, but not as hard as you think.

For perspective, a large number of the scientists on the Mars mission were middle aged women with families. Also, the person who headed the latest Agni missile project was also a middle aged woman called Tessy Thomas. You can't have women like that come up in the organization if there wasn't any work life balance.