The interface between authoritarian innovations and labour: implications for the Indian workforce

Abstract

On assuming office in 2014, India's BJP-led government initiated an ambitious plan to facilitate the ease of doing business, aiming to make India an attractive investment destination. Interview data from 20 trade union leaders and an expert and published data from ILO, government and trade union documents and newspaper archives reveal that, to advance this neoliberal agenda, the government did not use direct and obvious repressive tactics as was the case during the 1976 Emergency, but rather, a combination of discourse, manipulation of democratic institutions like the Parliament and a strategy for disengaging and disempowering the unions that oppose reforms. The new Labour Codes provide a facade for tackling the perennial problem of union recognition and collective bargaining that has plagued Indian industrial relations, but in their implementation, these Codes are likely to weaken unions and erode working conditions. The government's practices attempt to obscure precariousness and silence civil society organisations by imposing unprecedented restrictions on them and disengaging with them. Today, more than ever before, employment in India tends towards informality. Rather than strengthening unions, the government has created fissures in the labour movement by using the unions affiliated with it to manufacture a democratic debate on various pertinent issues, like the Labour Codes.