Labour market flexibility is one of the most closely debated public policy issues in India. This book provides a theoretical framework to understand the subject, and empirically examines to what extent India’s ‘jobless growth’ may be attributed to labour laws. There is a pervasive view that the country’s low manufacturing base and inability to generate jobs is primarily due to rigid labour laws. Therefore, job creation is sought to be boosted by reforming labour laws. However, the book argues that if labour laws are made flexible, then there are adverse consequences for workers: dismantled job security weakens workers’ bargaining power, incapacitates trade union movement, skews class distribution of output, dilutes workers’ rights, and renders them vulnerable. The book: identifies and critically examines the theory underlying the labour market flexibility (LMF) argument employs innovative empirical methods to test the LMF argument offers an overview of the organised labour market in India comprehensively discusses the proposed/instituted labour law reforms in the country contextualises the LMF argument in a macroeconomic setting discusses the political economy of labour law reforms in India. This book will interest scholars and researchers in economics, development studies, and public policy as well as economists, policymakers, and teachers of human resource management.

This book explores the effects of product market and labour market reforms on firms, labour institutions and labour rights in the economic and industrial relations system in India. India has over the years liberalized its economy through a broad range of reforms concerning the product market and complementing these it has also sought to reform the labour market and the industrial relations system. The book assesses the impact of these reforms on both the formal and informal labour markets in India, critically examines the labour processes and uncovers/describes precarious conditions of labour in various industries and occupations, and analyzes the dynamics involved in the making of industrial, employment and labour policies in contemporary India.

The Volume Analysis Security Policies For India Focusing On The Unorganized Sector. Highlights The Need For A Unique Social Security System Designed Specifically For India. Important Work Useful For Research Of Labour Laws And Social Security Issues.

This book revisits some of the persisting challenges of development of India, which remain unresolved even after twenty-five years of economic reforms and almost fifteen years of high growth rate. These include defining purpose of development, inequality, labour, work, unemployment, agrarian distress and migration. The book questions the overemphasis on growth to the extent of neglecting basic issues of development. With a number of contributions re-imagining development and its political economy, the book discusses above mentioned issues in light of new data and more recent conceptions of the issues. The contributors of this volume are eminent researchers in their respective field. Presenting primary as well as secondary data, the book considers the latest advances and research and also addresses new challenges like the global reorganization of production and the consequences for labour and the world of work, along with skills question. World of work has received detailed investigation in this book. This is a timely addition in existing literature especially in context of pandemic and lockdown. Informality and un/employment question is addressed in this context. Relationship among poverty, inequality and growth is examined in light of newer understanding. Agrarian distress is looked in a broader context. A number of papers are examining migration question by expanding coverage of migration and including labour mobility as apart of migration debate. The present crisis of migrant labour and absence of social security for these workers is also discussed. This book is primarily intended for those interested in recent advances on some of the basic aspects of development, like poverty, inequality, informality, word of work, migration and labour mobility. It is also useful for researchers, policy makers, journalists and civil society organizations working on these issues.

The global capitalism has entered into a new and distinct phase, wherein liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation (commonly called LPG) is a central theme. Almost every country, particularly the developing countries, are on the agenda of international monopolies and international financial capital which are controlled and regulated by the industrially developed nations. The vulnerable economies all over the world are being forced to liberalise their economies resulting in unfavourable balance of competitive forces on their side. Free trade rules are dismantling the ‘License Raj’ meant for business and industry under the dictate of global corporations. Market forces have been given once again a primacy to make the major economic decisions. “The free trade systems of small producers and poor consumers are being dismantled and being made illegal in order to create free trade systems for big business and global corporations.”1 All these have been the outcome of certain policy initiatives and developments that have taken place at the national and international level especially since the 1980s.

This book analyses the current conditions of work in the Indian factory sector, and provides a critical analysis of the wage, profit and productivity behaviour in India’s organised manufacturing sector over the last two decades. Examining the specificities of the conditions of industrial workers, it addresses three major questions:/-//-/- What has happened to the relative shares of profits and wages;/-/- How do we explain the levels and changes and;/-/- Are better labour standards antithetical to the project of industrial restructuring?/-//-/The author also examines the problem of industrial restructuring in India within the broader context of power and inequality in the workplace. He argues that even though the existing laws mandate decent labour conditions, India has been unable to implement them because of the minimalist position taken by successive governments./-//-/Providing new and fascinating insights into industrial growth, labour standards and development in the framework of globalisation, this book will interest students and scholars of economics, economic history, political science and sociology, as well as students of management and labour relations.