EDITORIAL AUGUST 11

1] The shaky foundation of the labour law reforms (GS 3 economy)

Context –

The Code on Wages was enacted by the National Democratic Alliance government in August 2019, followed by the Industrial Relations Code, the Occupational Safety, Health, and Working Conditions Code, and the Code on Social Security (CSS) in September 2020.
Later, it had framed the draught rules under all the codes, albeit incompletely — incompletely because the rules did not cover some aspects of the Codes, such as rules regarding central trade union recognition, which had yet to be framed.

A Rushed Exercise –

Even during the COVID-19 period, the Government’s frantic pace in implementing reforms gave employers and potential investors a lot of hope.
Even though state governments were completely unprepared for the rules, it announced its intention to implement the Codes on April 1, 2021.
Furthermore, instead of focusing on the implementation of codes, the major political parties shifted their focus to regional elections.
Labor law reforms have been effected symbolically, and the government can brag about it.
Because the government has shown no serious intent to implement the codes, the NDA government enacted reforms in order to brag that it had completed long-awaited reforms; simply put, it is a symbolic rather than a meaningful act.

Court Directives –

The central government has tentatively pushed back the implementation date to October 1, 2021. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of India has pressed both the central and state governments to implement the ONOR (one nation, one ration card) scheme and register all unorganised workers in the National Database for Unorganized Workers (NDUW), which was supposed to be completed by July 31, 2021.
Following the hesitancy in early 2020 to provide relief to suffering migrant workers following the national lockdown, the Supreme Court may have passed such an extraordinary, perhaps impracticable order. Workers who are not organised, such as migrant workers, will continue to be denied their promised and extended benefits.

Government’s line vs reality –

The codes, according to the government, will increase universal minimum wages and social security, improve industrial safety, and provide social security to gig workers, among other things.
The Industrial Relations Code allows employers to recognise trade unions, a labour right that has eluded workers for over seven decades.
Employers, on the other hand, praised the government’s willingness to provide them with unprecedented flexibility, even when it wasn’t requested, such as the elimination of standing orders for most businesses. Do they, however, benefit from these advantages?

Poor safety records –

Even during the COVID-19 period, the number of major industrial accidents has not decreased.
According to IndustriAll, 32 major industrial accidents occurred in India between May and June, killing 75 workers. During the year 2020, four accidents were reported in Vizag by the media.
CRUSHED, Safe in India’s annual reports for 2019 and 2020, paint a disturbing picture of industrial accidents in the Gurgaon region’s automobile industry.
Even after the Occupational Safety, Health, and Working Conditions Code was enacted, industrial safety remains a major concern. COVID-19, according to several research reports, exacerbated informality, caused workers to leave the labour market, reduced earnings, increased unemployment, and widened inequality.
The government’s relief measures for workers, particularly unorganised and migrant workers, as well as workers in the so-called organised sector, are insufficient to make a significant difference. It did not, at least for low-income families, implement the widely endorsed measure of direct benefit transfer.

In Perspective –

In India, we see two aspects of labour market governance. One, despite direction from the highest court in the land, the government has failed to provide legal visibility to millions of unorganised and migrant workers.
Two, despite the publication of four Codes, old laws continue to apply. As a result, they reflect poorly not only on governments’ governance abilities, but also on the Opposition’s countervailing power.
Were the labour law reforms rushed through with little or no debate or consultation, only to languish in the archives? The so-called benefits provided by the codes are not available to employers or employees.

Conclusion –

Given the aforementioned facts, the legislative impasse persists; no one knows how long it will last.
However, India would score highly on any agency’s ease of doing business survey, including the World Bank’s, simply by enacting labour reforms without implementing them: what else is needed?

Context –

The IPCC has issued arguably its most dire warning yet about the impending disaster of unabated global warming caused by human activity, lending scientific credence to the argument that recent wildfires, heatwaves, extreme rainfall, and floods are all influenced by a changing climate.
The IPCC’s Working Group I has called for deep cuts in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, as well as a move to net zero emissions, in a stark report on the physical science basis of climate change contributed to a broader UN Assessment Report, because the world would otherwise warm by 1.5°C to 2°C during the twenty-first century, with permanent consequences.

What report says –

The latest report is likely to add to the growing chorus of criticism that many leaders have refused to move away from coal and other fossil fuels, while even those who promised to do so have failed to influence the multilateral system.
The frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine heatwaves, heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological droughts, the proportion of intense tropical cyclones, and reductions in Arctic Sea ice, snow cover, and permafrost are all linked to sustained global warming, according to the new report.
In a world warmer by 1.5°C, a phenomenon like heavy rainfall over land, for example, could be 10.5 percent wetter and occur 1.5 times more frequently than it did between 1850 and 1900.

An analysis of the contemporary scenario –

More than five years after the Paris Agreement was signed, there is still no agreement on increasing emissions reduction ambition, making low-carbon technology more accessible, or adequately funding mitigation and adaptation. COVID-19 had the unanticipated effect of temporarily and marginally lowering emissions.
The IPCC’s analysis depicts large-scale climate system collapse scenarios that future leaders will find nearly impossible to manage.
Heatwaves and heavy rainfall events are just two of them, with the frequency and intensity of both increasing, while global water cycle disruptions are a more unpredictable threat.
Furthermore, if emissions continue to rise, oceans and land, both important sinks, and the latter a key component of India’s climate action plan, will be severely harmed in their ability to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Conclusion –

The new report lays the groundwork for the CoP26 meeting in November. The only option is for developed countries with legacy emissions to implement deep cuts, transfer technology to emerging economies without strings attached, and heavily fund mitigation and adaptation.
Developing countries should then have no qualms about committing to even greater reductions in emissions.