The government appears resigned to the fact that it will not be able to push through labour reforms critical to generating millions of jobs in the remaining five days of the Parliament session.
“I am hopeful of tabling the child labour bill only,” labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya said. “I don’t think anything else is possible.”
Several opposition parties led by the Congress stayed away from the Lok Sabha for the third day on Thursday after their demands that a central minister and two chief ministers resign ended in the suspension of 25 Congress members on 3 August.
The logjam in Parliament has set back one of the top priorities of the government: reforming India’s archaic labour laws to create a better business environment that encourages hiring and improves employment prospects for about 12 million youngsters entering the job market every year.
“Employment generation is a priority and our government believes in boosting job creation for country’s youth,” Dattatreya said, adding though the labour reform process has slowed a bit during this session, his ministry will not backtrack. “For job creation, you have to ease the process and help industry grow while keeping in mind labour welfare,” he said.
International agencies are also keeping a keen eye on the developments. In its India outlook report titled Waiting for Reforms to Fuel Growth, Moody’s Analytics said India’s political infighting is denting business confidence and could punish growth if the government continues to over-promise and not deliver.
“Without a majority in the upper house, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) power has been nullified, and the opposition has blocked proposed reforms. Key reform such as the land acquisition bill, flexible labour laws, and the GST have failed to pass Parliament. And given the political seesaw, these are unlikely to be delivered until later this year or even 2016,” the report said.
Other than Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Bill, the labour ministry was planning to pass the Employees’ Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions (Amendment) Bill, Payment of Bonus (Amendment) Bill and Small Factories Bill.
Amid the protests, the government’s other plans to make ambitious legislative changes to foster a national common market and ease land acquisitions too have stalled. The Parliament that began the monsoon session on 21 July has been able to transact little business so far.
“Reforms will not stop, but this session has certainly slowed down the process and our plan,” said a labour ministry official, requesting not to be named.
Approving the small factories bill is key to create jobs, as it will reduce compliance hassles for small and medium factories and allow them to comply with just one law instead of 14 labour laws, according to G. Raj Narayan, managing director of Radel Group, a Karnataka-based small manufacturing company. “The MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises) sector needs government hand-holding if it wants to boost job growth,” said Narayan, whose company is a defence and aerospace ancillary firm.
Opposition political parties will object to changing labour laws when they come to the house, said D.L. Sachdeva, national secretary of the All India Trade Union Congress, a workers’ body affiliated to the Communist Party of India. He said the government has not done enough for workers’ welfare while speaking loudly for the welfare of the industry.
Although the labour ministry believes it may still be able to table the less-controversial child labour bill, ActionAid India, a non-government organization working in this area, said the bill has its own loopholes.
The proposed child labour law seeks to impose stricter punishment on those employing children below 14 but allows minors to work in non-hazardous family enterprises, a move that has been criticized by child rights activists.
“At one level, we are diluting labour laws by exempting (largely) factories with less than 40 employees from the purview of monitoring and regulation,” ActionAid said in an email. “In this context, it is important to realize that in the guise of family enterprise, a lot of children will be engaged in enterprises and all of them would remain out of the purview of regulation.”
HT Mint, New Delhi, 7th August 2015
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