ON NOVEMBER 21, 2025, newspapers flashed full page advertisements sponsored by the central government, declaring proudly about labour reforms for ‘Atmbanirbhar Bharat’, and for ushering a new era for gig and online platform workers. Ironically, with that same stroke, working journalists and other workmen in newspaper establishments had lost all benefits gained since 1955, when two protective laws were first legislated to protect their service conditions and rates of wages.
In the past, two National Labour Commission have worked on reforming labour laws and recommending means to reduce labour disputes. While the first and second labour commissions, led by Justice P.B. Gajendragadkar (in 1969) and Justice Ravindra Varma (in 1982), provided several recommendations, those remained unenforced on paper. In the meantime, with no major reforms contemplated, the Indian government continued to bring in piecemeal amendments to the plethora of labour laws in the country, which remained the most comprehensive in the world.
The Ravindra Varma Commission had been the first to recommend the consolidation of the independent labour enactments and for their codification with simplification. Over the years, the advent of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation of the economy impacted the labour economy, with the restructuring of investment policy and new industrial production making many of the labour laws irrelevant. Technocrats now ran the show with outsourced labour, with judicial support justifying the outsourcing of labour with little or no protection at all.
