India: labor law reform still in progress

With just a few more weeks to go before the April/May 2019 general elections, increasingly harsh criticism is mounting against current Indian PM, Narendra Modi, and an article by the financial publication, Business Standard, (from 01 February, here), that revealed the official Indian 2017 unemployment rate (6.1%, or the equivalent of 30 million) has provided fuel for the fire. India’s economy may well have been experiencing strong growth, but it hasn’t created the 10 million jobs promised by the PM. Business is no more impressed by the nationalist government that has failed to keep its promises as regards labor reforms, because the major labor law reform program that was initiated in 2014 still hasn’t been completed.
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Improving the business environment. The Government’s goal when it launched its labor law reform program in 2014 was to streamline labor legislation by combining 40 laws into four major legal codes (c.f. article No. 10526). In a document published in December 2018 by NITI Aayog, (the National Institution for Transforming India), the Government think tank believes three of the four codes should be urgently approved and it set 2019 as the goal-line for completing the central government’s...

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