This refers to Y G Chouksey's letter "Don't reject labour laws" (October 29) on Shyamal Majumdar's column "Can Modi sweep out inspectors?" (Human Factor, October 24). There is certainly a need for laws providing for safety and cleanliness at the workplace, but not for an army of inspectors to ensure compliance. Not only is it necessary to simplify the plethora of existing laws, scrapping ridiculous provisions (such as delivering at the office of the inspector advance notice of the management's intention to ask a worker to work on a Sunday), but the entire system of inspection must be done away with. Self-certification of compliance with the laws, as visualised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is the way to go. An efficient grievance redressal system will, of course, need to be kept in place as a safeguard.
Further, when corporate offices can be trusted to work on their own without the oversight of inspection, why this obsession with factory labour? An overhang of the socialist era? In all this discussion, labour is equated with the workforce in the organised sector - but that is another story.
Parthasarathy Chaganty Mumbai
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