6 months ago
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In July, portion probing instances of forced labour successful the seafood manufacture connected India’s eastbound coast, this writer met hundreds of women driven to desperation, peeling food heads connected acold tables without gloves, each for meagre wages arsenic farming failed their families. Promised Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) and Provident Fund benefits astatine the clip of recruitment, they were reclassified arsenic “daily wagers” a period earlier my visit. There was a humble wage hike, but they mislaid some benefits arsenic the institution stopped contributions. Vulnerable, they toil agelong hours —trapped successful exploitation that has travel to specify forced labour — exposing the fragility of their ineligible safeguards successful India’s labour landscape.
Against this grim backdrop — wherever 11 cardinal radical endure modern slavery successful India, the world’s highest — the Bharatiya Janata Party-led authorities unveiled the draught Shram Shakti Niti 2025, which is claimed to beryllium a “future-ready” argumentation cloaked successful “ancient Indian ethos” from texts specified arsenic Manusmriti, but is unsighted to the brutal realities that workers face.
A lawsuit of ‘employer ease’
Since precocious 2021, this writer has interviewed thousands of workers successful alloy factories, sandstone quarries, seafood plants, and textile mills (across west, northwest, eastbound and southbound India) hired done middlemen connected regular wages, without contracts and stripped of their rights. Paid disconnected the payroll done contractors, these workers are denied ineligible benefits, languishing arsenic portion of the 90% informally employed workforce successful India, arsenic successful a 2024 International Labour Organization (ILO) report.
This argumentation flouts labour laws, enables wage theft and erodes idiosyncratic dignity, defying law protections nether Articles 14, 16, and 23. It is simply a cynical rebrand favouring taste nostalgia and leader easiness implicit justness for workers.
The argumentation introduces a portable Universal Social Security Account, merging Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation, Employees’ State Insurance Corporation, Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, e-SHRAM, and State boards for lifelong health, pension, maternity, accident, and beingness security crossed sectors — invoking Article 41 (right to work, education, and nationalist assistance).
Yet, it dodges backing — nary gig leader mandates oregon authorities matches — risking the e-SHRAM’s paltry payouts. Digital IDs, successful a concern of lone 38% household literacy, effect successful the exclusion of women, elder citizens and low-literates, violating Article 15. Further, the lack of national safeguards affects bargaining. The archetypal signifier indispensable enforce offline entree and tripartite funds, other this is simply a lawsuit of exploitation.
On the occupational information front, the argumentation pledges strict enforcement of the 2020 Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, with hazard audits and gender-sensitive standards, honouring Directive 42 (state tin marque proviso to unafraid conscionable and humane conditions of enactment and for maternity relief) and ILO Convention 155 (women’s care-role risks).
But the extremity of “near-zero fatalities” by 2047 appears fanciful without penalties and fixed the world of inspector shortages. Digital tools exclude informal workers, undermining equality; ignoring gig intelligence health, portion national audits weaken Article 19.
Areas of concern
The hints that the Ministry of Labour and Employment (MoLE) volition go an employment facilitator, by utilizing the Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven National Career Service (NCS) for occupation matching, credential checks, and accomplishment alignment successful Tier-II/III cities and micro and tiny mean enterprises, merging Skill India to tackle 91.75% postgraduate mismatches. Yet, absent AI bias safeguards hazard caste- and gender-based Article 15 violations.
Ignoring the Wages Code minima for 12 cardinal gig workers — wherever “flexibility” is simply a screen for maltreatment — and unclear modulation benefits request morals audits and union-vetted algorithms to curb tech-driven inequality.
The argumentation targets 35% pistillate labour information by 2030 (from 33.7%) done affordable childcare, flexible gigs, adjacent wage and apprenticeships — aligning with Article 15’s sex equity and the ILO Convention 195’s mobility goals. However, without quotas, penalties oregon capable maternity enactment for informal workers, determination tin hardly beryllium success. Overlooking younker intelligence wellness and caste-gender information gaps hides the unsocial challenges that Dalit women face, making union-led audits indispensable for existent dignity and progress.
The policy’s green-tech imaginativeness promotes AI-enhanced information measures and reskilling opportunities for ember workers, aligning with the clime goals of Sustainable Development Goal 13 and the livelihood rights of Article 21. However, “just transitions” deficiency substance without income enactment oregon national involvement, risking violations of ILO Convention 29. Widening rural-AI gaps and urban-centric greenish jobs marginalise 400 cardinal informal workers. Tripartite backing and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) safeguards are indispensable to avert an exploitative eco-trap that undermines dignity.
The policy, which hints astatine convergence done Labour and Employment Policy Evaluation Index (LEPEI) dashboards, aims to realise Article 12’s imaginativeness — of conscionable governance — by linking the National Education Policy with Digital India. However, anemic enforcement of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act risks enabling surveillance and undermining Article 19’s freedoms.
Amid exploitation and integer optimism, the Shram Shakti Niti 2025 projects a “rights-driven, future-ready” imaginativeness for Viksit Bharat. But determination are gaps beneath its ambitious rhetoric specified arsenic anemic regulatory oversight, integer exclusion, unenforced penalties and a fragile adherence to ILO conventions. All these would lone accelerate the diminution of unions successful an expanding gig economy.
It is astir dignity, rights and justice
Without factual backing and organization safeguards, the committedness of cosmopolitan societal extortion whitethorn illness nether its ain weight. For millions trapped successful informal and forced labour, the policy’s occurrence volition yet beryllium measured not by its integer dashboards, but by its powerfulness to reconstruct dignity, rights, and justness to India’s moving poor.
The 2025-47 rollout needs urgent pilots, with rights audits for accountability. There needs to beryllium tripartite enforcement, offline entree for digitally excluded workers, and transparent grievance redressal. Without these, determination is the hazard of symbolic rhetoric implicit justness for India’s labouring millions.
Rejimon Kuttappan is simply a forced labour investigator
