The government must act as a model employer to demonstrate its commitment to India’s labour codes

India’s government finally announced the implementation of the four labour codes passed by Parliament about five years ago, starting 21 November 2025. These four, namely the Code on Wages of 2019, Industrial Relations Code of 2020, Code on Social Security of 2020 and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code of 2020, were meant to rationalize 29 old labour laws by replacing them with new codes, as recommended in a 2002 report by the second National Commission of Labour set up in 1999.The objective was to simplify labour laws and make them effective—for the benefit of workers as well as employers.Reforming these laws has been part of the governance agenda of every successive government since 1991, when India’s economy underwent broad reforms in various other domains.Given the multiplicity of labour laws enacted since independence, the idea of revising them was also to make them enforceable (or justiciable) and reflect the contemporary reality of changing labour relations.

The four labour codes may be a step in that direction, but their effectiveness would critically depend on their enforcement on the ground. The fact that it took the government about half a decade to even announce the codes’ implementation can be taken as a comment on its commitment to genuine reforms in this domain.

A lack of will to implement its own commitments made in the four codes has been apparent over the years.Take the Code on Wages. It promises a national floor level minimum wage (NFLMW) applicable to all workers in the country.

This is not a new measure. It was proposed in 1991 by the National Commission on Rural Labour (NCRL) and has been operational since 1996.