Is Labour Law a Hindrance in India’s Public Enterprises Reforms?

Abstract

With a growing dependency on the private participation across the globe, India also implemented the economic reforms process but these reforms have not been supported by any major amendments in the labour Laws though privatization of public enterprises, is one of the key issues in the ongoing economic reforms and India has a major workforce employed in the PEs. Global experiences in privatization appear to suggest that there should be a clear-cut privatization law, which will sustain the logic of what to privatize, how to privatize and for whom to privatize, but till today India has not even considered enacting such a law. The presence of old labour laws and the absence of a privatization law present a complex situation at the time of the second generation of economic reforms undertaken by India. This paper tries to investigate how the Indian Labour law is helpless in helping the labour and in protecting the larger interest of the PE’s reforms.