IndiaCorpLaw

Labour Market Reforms

The Government has
donned the mantle of reforming labour laws, with this being one of several
measures to ease the doing of business in India. Recent news reports indicate
concrete proposals for reform in various labour legislation (here
and here).

On the academic
front, a new paper “How Should India
Reform Its Labour Laws?
” by Simon Deakin and Antara Haldar explores the
issue from a law and economics perspective. The abstract of the paper is as
follows:

We examine the current policy debate around the reform of labour
laws in India, which has been stimulated in part by the success of the Gujarat
model of economic development. Gujarat’s deregulatory reforms have included
changes to the legal regime governing employment terminations, which could form
a basis for a change in national-level labour laws. Evidence linking labour law
deregulation to growth, however, is weak, whether the focus is on India or the
experience of other countries. Building labour market institutions is a
long-term process which requires investment in state capacity for the
management of risks associated with the transition to a formal economy.