Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee today declared there was consensus on economic reforms and "there is no going back" on labour law reform.
He urged labour unions and unorganised workers to help, not hinder a process which could be painful in the interim but ultimately would lead to more job creation for Indian labour.
"Delay and dithering in doing what is decidedly in the interest of the nation is going to harm our people's welfare... The world is not going to wait for us if we choose to be slow and half hearted in our reform march" he said about second generation economic reforms.
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Speaking at the 37th Indian Labour Conference, the Prime Minister announced that the Rs 150 crore welfare fund scheme for agriculture labour would begin from 1 July this year.
He said eventually this scheme could be expanded to cover rickshaw puller, roadside vendors, etc as well.
An element of politics entered an otherwise conciliatory speech after the RSS-affiliated Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) launched an aggressive attack on the government for embracing disinvestment without addressing issues of labour, and the Prime Minister decided to reply to this challenge.
This year's speech at the ILC was very different from the one Vajpayee made last year which demanded 'change, more change' in the attitude and mien of labour towards liberalisation.
Today, Vajpayee decided to reach out to both the Opposition and unions, by pointing out that his government had gone ahead with reforms initiated in the early 1990s, because it realised that while earlier policies might have been appropriate in their day, they were inadequate in dealing with competition today.
Vajpayee also acknowledged the need to "calibrate the pace and extent of external liberalisation to fully protect and promote our national interests".
"Trade unions perceive a threat to employment in economic reforms. Both private and PSU managements, on the other hand, think that reforms introduced so far are not yielding optimal results because they are not fully complemented by administrative, judicial and labour reforms. Similarly workers have apprehensions that changes in existing labour laws will place them at the mercy of employers. It is also strongly argued that present labour laws provide job security without any linkage to productivity. I feel there is merit in both perceptions. The challenge is to harmonise these views", he said.
Vajpayee also acknowledged the need to "calibrate the pace and extent of external liberalisation to fully protect and promote our national interests".
He added that training and retraining of PSU workers would be an important component in the programme of restructuring government-owned enterprise.
"Enterprise without empathy, commerce without compassion and development without dignity of labour have no place in our national ethose" he said.