The Evolution of Labour Law in India: An Overview and Commentary on Regulatory Objectives and Development

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1.

Introduction

In a recent account of the trends in the regulation of working conditions in Asia and the Pacific region it was suggested that there was a lack of in-depth historical research on the evolution of labour law in many developing countries.¹India, it seems, may well be a case in point. Although there is a great amount of written material on Indian labour law and associated topics, much of it is of a highly fragmented nature, comprising very short articles and notes on the very wide range of matters covered in India's voluminous array of employment, social security, and labour laws. ²There are also a number of conventional labour law texts and commentaries which are descriptive of the labour laws and institutions.³But a search of English language sources on Indian labour law reveals little by way of what might be regarded as a unified historical account of its evolution covering both central and provincial sources, and its relation to its political, social, and economic contexts. ⁴And, strangely for a country whose Constitution guarantees certain labour rights and whose laws include upwards of 150 separate pieces of labour legislation arising from central and state government authorities, there is no specialist labour law journal⁵promoting scholarly engagement in the field, notwithstanding the law's obvious relevance in political and industrial terms.⁶

In this paper we are aiming to provide a broad overview of the development of labour law in India. Two notes of caution are due. First, the Indian system of labour laws is very extensive and dauntingly complex. Our descriptions of the laws (mainly legislation) are very general, and are intended only to sketch out the broad parameters of Indian government policy in the regulation of employment relationships and labour markets. Second, we are drawing basically from secondary sources, and attempting to put the development of the law into a broader sociopolitical context. In particular, we intend to examine the evolution of Indian labour law from two perspectives. The first of these deals with the important time periods through which the law has progressed since the earliest regulation of the nineteenth century. The second deals with the quality, purpose, and impact...