It’s time for Modi to realize that authoritarian governance won’t work in India – and never has

After announcing the withdrawal of three agricultural laws, Prime Minister Narendra Modi now reportedly intends to postpone the implementation of another controversial “reform” – the four labor codes, until next year.

The Union government missed several deadlines to officially promulgate the codes, even though Parliament passed them in 2019 and 2020. Labor codes would make it easier for companies to hire and fire workers.

Much like the controversial agricultural laws, labor codes have also been submitted to parliament without any rigorous pre-legislative deliberation, neither with workers nor with trade unionists. More than 10 large unions have demanded the abolition of labor codes, as well as the repeal of agricultural laws.

It has been argued that India’s labor laws have been a major obstacle to business expansion. The Herculean task of their legislative overhaul would receive much applause, only if the process of doing so involved considerable deliberation and reasonable consideration of workers’ concerns. Instead, the codes are seen to put pressure on corporate interests.

Anti-union amendments

Although India has ratified International Labor Organization Convention No. 144 of 1976 on Tripartite Consultation between Governments, Employers’ and Workers’ Organizations, workers’ groups have not been consulted on the codes. And this despite the fact that the government has constantly asserted that the attempt to codify the various labor laws would lead to simplification and universalization.

In fact, each of the four codes contains critical anti-union changes. The governmentality applied behind the modification of these seems to resonate more closely with the British colonial state.

Take the Social Security Code, 2020. The Code has nearly a hundred definitions. Understanding who is covered by what type of social security is difficult, even with the help of experts.

Social security, available in the form of provident funds, state employee insurance, and employee allowances and gratuities, is provided to less than 7% of the workforce in the formal and organized sector. The informal space, where more than 90% of Indian workers work, is not covered by this form of social security.

Instead, those working in the informal, unorganized workspace are left at the mercy of the government through social assistance programs, with no details mentioned or confirmed resources made available. Along with the much-talked-about inclusion of “concert” and “platform” workers comes the declaration that they are not workers.

The Industrial Relations Code, 2020 has three parts. As Babu Mathew, professor at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, explains in Economic and political weekly:

“The union party [in the code] introduced a long-standing welcome reform providing for compulsory recognition of union (s), but it is unclear whether implementation will be by secret ballot or other methods. When it comes to dispute settlement, the new law breaks the backbone of collective bargaining by making all strikes and lockouts de facto illegal. There is even a provision for deregistering a union in the event of a violation of the code. And, with regard to standing orders, it is not applicable to any industry employing less than 300 workers, thus leaving the conditions of service of these establishments to the arbitrary will of the management.

A closer reading of the Wages Code, 2019 and the Code on Occupational Health, Safety and Working Conditions, 2019 also shows that there is an effort to codify concentrated control in the hands of the employer – then the state. For example, when it comes to setting minimum wages, overtime and bonuses, the Wages Code, 2019, does not provide any space for workers or for contributions from a collective group (unions).

The Code replaces four statutes (The Payment of Wages Act, 1936, The Minimum Wages Act, 1948, The Payment of Bonus Act, 1965 and The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976), giving the government supreme authority in establishing the structure. wages for companies. to follow.

A serious concern here is the abdication of the legislative function when the law leaves the criteria for quantifying the minimum wage to the regulator. Even the mechanics or the actual wage setting rules are not specified by the government, which casts doubt on how a progressive wage structure will be achieved for the working classes organized in all sectors.

Top to bottom control style

Whether it is citizenship, land acquisition, agricultural reform, labor law reforms or even capital market regulation, the monolithic top-down and ad hoc style of command observed in the Modi-Shah government has created constant problems for all stakeholders, including the government itself.

A law is first submitted to Parliament, often adopted by voice vote, without debate or pre-legislative deliberation. The opposition revolts then, those who are likely to be affected by the law (farmers, workers and trade unionists) demonstrate in the streets until the laws are withdrawn or repealed.

Meanwhile, the government, instead of listening to voices of dissent, is spending (or wasting) all of its political capital to dismantle the protests, often labeling participants anti-national, or worse.

The mainstream media follow the government’s rhetoric throughout. TV studio presenters call any new announcement by the Prime Minister of a law a “masterstroke” – and use the same word to congratulate him if she withdraws a law.

Whether it’s workers, farmers, or land, the issues that concern them, the Constitution put them on the list of states and competitors for a reason. Those elected to form state governments or those that are part of a decentralized political ecosystem, alongside members of civil society, need to be empowered when issues regarding factor market reforms are deliberated or set in motion. .

What we unfortunately see is a blatant disregard for basic constitutional values ​​and principles of federalism, in the thirst to promote an authoritarian style of governance with “Chinese style” characteristics. It won’t work in India – and it never has.

Anyone with a reasonable understanding, or careful reading of the political economy of the reforms in India in the 1970s-1990s, their failures, their successes, will say this (see the work of Atul Kohli discussed here).

A historian, too, familiar with the British colonial state’s attempt to create a centralized “imperial umbrella” (law, language and knowledge) in India, will say the same (see the work of Tirthankar Roy discussed here).

Deepanshu Mohan is Associate Professor and Director, Center for New Economics Studies, Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities, OP Jindal Global University.