JOIN USReforms will bring despair to workers
Twenty five years have elapsed since structural reforms began in India. In this quarter century, the country’s GDP has grown and the economy is today the world’s largest financial system. While every other nation has been under the impact of recession, India has remained unscathed.
But the flip side is that there has been a big hiatus between the rich and the poor. In 2000, just 1% of the population had 37% of the country’s wealth whereas in 2014, this affluence has grown up to 70%. Said differently, 99% Indians today are left with just 30% of the nation’s wealth; and, the gap is widening day by day. The P V Narasimha Rao-Manmohan Singh economic model had appropriated the basic philosophy that in the liberalised era, the government’s role is inconsequential and those who control the capital are the real players. The Manmohanomics had just two ‘mantras’: ‘invest and reform’. When structural reforms were unleashed in 1991, Singh had said that the reforms were irreversible in nature. Today, every party contributes to that maxim.
In this milieu, India’s labour too has undergone a big change. Because a liberalised world demands that all hurdles be removed in order to make business better, along with structural and administrative reforms labour reforms have become obligatory. While labour reform was relatively high up during the past three governments, the Modi government is under pressure to continue and move it forward in no further loss of time. Pro-reformers believe that the present labour laws are anti-corporate and is a big hurdle in creating newer jobs.
The argument is that in order to increase investment and generate more employment, the lenient labour laws need to be tightened up. How the Modi government has been more than willing to modify the labour regulations can be seen from the fact that just within two months after assuming power, the Cabinet approved as many as 54 amendments to the labour laws. There are some 44 Acts in India and the Modi government wants to bring down this to just four and put all laws in one basket.
The proposed reforms have some sinister provisions - the most important being the ‘hire and fire’ which will be much easier now. For trade unions, strikes and bandhs will really be difficult to organise. In the last two years, trade unions have vehemently opposed the Modi government’s labour reforms.
For the unions, these reforms are like one-way traffic and gives employers unbridled power to lay off and enhance the working hours. Looking at the opposition, the BJP has found out a convenient way-out: almost all the BJP-ruled states have speeded up the process of labour reforms. If Rajasthan has become the testing laboratory for labour reforms, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharshtra have been pro-active in taking forward the reforms.
All these state governments have brought aggressive changes in their labour laws making it difficult for trade unions to fight even for their legitimate causes. One obvious reality of the reforms is that whatever the workers had achieved after long years of struggle are taken away with a vengeance without realising that the corporate and investors will only reap the benefits. There are of course attempts to reason out the changes in labour laws, the famous one being that it will bring more employment. In a sense, jobs have become a priority but not jobs which will ensure a dignified living.
Unorganised labour
Much of our labour force is unorganised. According to the National Sample Survey Organisation, in 2009-10, there were some 46.5 crore workers out of which just 2.8 crore workers were in the organised sector - a mere 6. While workers in the organised sector get decent wages accompanied by a high standard of living, those in the unorganised sector don’t even get minimum wages, leave alone social security. An NSSO report of 2011-12 says, 68% of the workforce have neither written assurance about jobs nor they enjoy paid-holidays. Today, the availability of jobs so wobbly and so little that workers are ready to do any kind of work in exchange of even very small wages. No wonder then that India is counted - and advocated - as one of the most profit-giving countries in the world.
The remaining two years of the Modi government is crucial for labour reforms. In the ‘Make in India’ programme, Prime Minister Narendra Modi sees a big opportunity. Obviously, labour reforms are high on the government’s agenda. While the current reforms are the biggest exercise since independence, for the crores of labourers, however, this isn’t going to do any good because of the inherent flaws. Liberalisation has brought more woes to the country’s workforce.