India's New Labor Codes A Critical Analysis of Promise, Peril, and the Path Forward

Abstract

One of the most important reforms in terms of labor market since independence was the consolidation of 29 colonial-era labor legislations into four simplified codes. It has a direct influence on 610 million workers. This paper provides an in depth commentary on the Code on Wages, the Industrial Relations Code, the Code on Social Security and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code. The study explores positive aspects like increased protections to workers in the gig-economy, the requirement to formalize employment relations, and shorter eligibility periods to gratuities, and concerning ones, including jettisoning collective bargaining and raising the threshold to layoffs and cutting instant take-home funds via restructured salary packages. By means of calculations, international comparisons, and analysis of the stakeholders, the study demonstrates the fact that the codes are neither unquestionably progressive nor retrogressive. Instead, they produce controversial land it is the quality of implementation that will determine whether modernization will help workers or their capital only. This article also provides practical measures to workers, employers, policymakers and advocates and argues that the results of protection depend more on the political goodwill to implement protections rather than the codes.