New Delhi: The governments of Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh and Shivraj Singh Chauhan in Madhya Pradesh are carrying out major labour reforms. They have made sure they don’t let a crisis as big as Covid-19 get wasted.
Governments should use crises to carry out reforms like former UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill had suggested, and reforms like those in 1991 when India was facing a balance of payments crisis.
Today we see so many migrants walking back from various states to the Hindi heartland, but not the other way around. This is because there are no white and blue-collar jobs in the Hindi heartland.
Most of the Hindi heartland is rural and while only 15 per cent of India’s GDP comes from agriculture.
Kanpur used to be an industrial hub, but today the city’s image is completely different. All you see in Kanpur today is shells of factories. Once a booming industrial hub, it collapsed when too many laws were put in place to protect workers.
Also read: Key labour laws scrapped in UP for 3 yrs as Yogi govt brings major reform to restart economy
Problem with the law
Laws meant to help labourers turned out to be counterproductive.
In 1976, Indira Gandhi amended the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, in a way such that firms employing 300 or more workers needed to obtain government permission for layoffs, retrenchments and closures. She later amended the Act again to reduce the threshold to 100.
Such an act only prevents scaling of industries. These laws indirectly prevented job creation. So when there were no jobs, who are these laws protecting? Hopefully, UP’s initiative will start a virtuous cycle.
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Productivity and Quality are lacking and highly suspect in industry in India. In today’s highly advanced manufacturing that is taking place in Countries like S.Korea, Vietnam, China, Malaysia, focus is on Productivity, Relevance (nimble switch to new products) and Quality, with NO environment and labour issues whatsoever.
The industries, without environmental protection, will pollute Ganga again and manufacture third grade items, which Indians are not used to anymore ( having tasted Chinese products).
Manufacturing should be thought through irrespective of Locations and Labour issues, if it is to compete with rest of the world. Factories in the west, and even China are remote, robotically operated, automated and with minimum labour.
Is it “Kapur” or “Kanpur”?
The leftist political gangs with miniscule political presence but but mostly running the “alleged” media has opposed the labour laws suspension, with the classic argument of “oppression & exploitation”. They destroyed WB and Kerala with their foreign inspired socialism and labour militancy and now want the whole nation to be like that. A sum total of less than 10 people with only mythical presence are obstructing job creation.