To curb the influence of labour law inspectors, the government has established a system to allow raids on employers only to probe malpractices on the basis of source-based intelligence in the ‘rarest of rare’ cases, Labour Secretary Shankar Aggarwal has said.
The wide-ranging powers of the ‘Inspector Raj’ that led to harassment of employers must be checked, Mr. Aggarwal said at a CII conclave on employee relations here. “We are not against inspections. We will be happy to have very effective enforcement, but we don’t want to give freedom to our so-called enforcement agencies to work on their whims and wishes,” he said. The Labour Ministry created a mechanism to “throw out this Inspector Raj” and replace it with a computerised system based on available intelligence.
“If you have some credible information or source information that some employer is indulging in malpractices, surely they [the inspectors] can raid such an organisation. But that would be very, very rare and not a routine exercise,” he said.
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Recalling that most labour laws were drafted by Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, the first Labour Minister of the interim Indian government of 1942-1946, Mr. Aggarwal said the laws drafted to suit the needs of those times must be revisited to avoid their “becoming fossilised.”
Admitting that the Indian bureaucracy was considered the biggest challenge for investors, he said: “We must create a mechanism so that one can set up a business in two days, rather than six months or two years to get multiple clearances. They should channel their energy into production of goods and services, rather than getting the nod of some babu.”
“The labour reforms we are pursuing do not involve even an iota of anything that goes against the interests of workers. We are just changing with the times,” he said.
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