Reforming the Labour Market

Reforms are perpetually debated. If there are two areas of reform, which figure prominently in the liberalisation discourse, with strong views on both sides, those are privatisation (or disinvestments) of public sector enterprises and labour market reforms. The argument is that organised labour markets are unnecessarily rigid and thereby, artificially drive up capital intensity and make it difficult for India to exploit the comparative advantage in labour. This volume is about labour markets, but there are also papers in it about the unorganised labour market, accounting for 92 per cent of the labour force. Within the organised segment, flexibility in labour markets is usually interpreted as changes in the Industrial Disputes Act, requiring what is sometimes called, an automatic hire and fire policy. That labour market reform is much more than this narrow interpretation, comes out clearly from this collection of papers. As such, this volume should be of interest to all those interested in policy formulation in India, and researchers and students.