The Centre for Labour Studies (CLS) at NLSIU is organising a day-long conference on “Addressing the Contract Labour System and Contractualisation of Workforce” as per the details below:

• Day & date: Saturday, April 11, 2026
• Time: 10:00 AM to 5:30 PM
• Venue: Conference Hall, Training Centre, NLSIU

Open to the public Register here.

The conference will bring together leading scholars, trade union representatives, lawyers, and workers to examine the rapid expansion of contract labour in India and its implications for job quality, labour rights, and social equity.

Session Details 

Session 1:  The Political Economy and Working of Contract Labour in India (10:30 to 12:30 PM)

Across the world, standard forms of employment – characterised by secure tenure, formal contracts, and access to social security – are steadily declining. In their place, non-standard forms of employment such as contractual work and gig-based work are expanding rapidly. In the Global South, including India, such forms of employment have long been widespread. However, the growing reliance on contract labour – one of the most prominent forms of non-standard employment – raises important questions about job quality and workers’ rights.

Governments and employers frequently justify the use of contract labour as essential for flexibility, productivity, and employment generation, often claiming that rigid labour laws limit firms’ ability to grow. Yet research suggests that contract employment is also used to weaken the bargaining power of permanent workers and reduce labour costs. The Economic Survey 2015–16 observed that states with more rigid labour laws actually witnessed faster growth in contract labour, challenging the claim that labour flexibility alone explains this expansion.

Evidence shows deep inequalities between regular and contract workers. A study by V.V. Giri found that contract workers in private establishments earned only 68% of the wages of regular workers, while in public employment they earned just 45%, highlighting substantial wage gaps. Contract workers also face limited access to creches, canteens, and social security, while hiring practices reflect sharp caste and gender biases, with women disproportionately employed in low-paying contractual roles such as housekeeping and sweeping.

Despite these challenges, workers and unions have resisted through strikes, protests, and legal interventions, sometimes achieving regularisation. Yet the overall trend remains concerning: the 2022-23 Enterprise Survey reports that 43% of Central Public Sector employees are contract workers, up from 19% in 2015, while the Annual Survey of Industries (2021-22) shows 40% of industrial workers are contract-based.

This panel will bring together workers, union leaders, and economists to explore the realities of contract labour in India. It will examine structural inequalities and forms of resistance, providing a critical overview that sets the stage for subsequent discussions on conditions of work, labour jurisprudence, and pathways for strengthening workers’ rights and protections.

Speakers:

• Rajesh Jospeh, Azim Premji University
• Ramadevi, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike Pourakarmika Union
• Vijayakumar,  HAL Contract Workers’ Association
• Karuna Dietrich Wielenga, Azim Premji University
• Maitreyi Krishnan, AICCTU (Moderator)

Session 2: Occupational Safety, Health, and Working Conditions Code (OSH Code) and Contract Labour (12:45PM to 1:45PM)

In 2025, the Union Government notified four labour codes, consolidating and replacing a wide range of labour laws that had governed workers’ rights for over a century. Among the laws subsumed was the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, which, despite its limitations, had provided an important framework for regulating contract labour. Under the new Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (OSH) Code, many of these protections have been significantly weakened.

The OSH Code raises the threshold for its applicability, narrows the scope of regulation, and allows the use of contract labour even in core and permanent activities. It specifically keeps out certain works from the definition of core and permanent work, and these include works performed by historically marginalized sections of society.

The OSH Code also reduces certain employer liabilities toward workers. Collectively, these changes raise serious concerns about the future of decent work, job security, and workplace protections for contract workers.

This panel will examine in detail the implications of the newly enacted OSH Code for workers, highlight its differences from the previous legal framework, and discuss its potential impact on judicial interpretations and the broader jurisprudence of labour law.

Speakers:

• Meenakshi Sundaram, CITU
• Maitreyi Krishnan, AICCTU
• Saurabh Bhattacharjee, Center for Labour Studies, NLSIU (Moderator)

Session 3: Contract Labour and the Courts: The Evolving Jurisprudence of Regularisation (2:30PM to 3: 45 PM)

For over a quarter of a century, an important part of labour’s struggle against contractualisation has unfolded in the courts, particularly before the Supreme Court and various High Courts across India. In disputes concerning both public and private employment, the judiciary has often been the final forum where workers seek recognition of their claims for regularisation.

Two landmark judgments frequently cited as restricting the rights of contract workers are Steel Authority of India Ltd. v. National Union Waterfront Workers (2001) and Secretary, State of Karnataka v. Uma Devi (2006). In the first case, the Supreme Court held that contract workers do not have an automatic right to absorption into permanent employment. In the second, the Court ruled that the regularisation of ad hoc or temporary employees could amount to granting “backdoor entry” into government service, thereby significantly narrowing the scope for regularisation.

In the years since these decisions, however, courts – including the Supreme Court – have revisited and interpreted aspects of these rulings in more nuanced ways. Judgments such as Jaggo v. Union of India, Shirpal & Another v. Nagar Nigam Ghaziabad, and the recent decision in Dharam Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh have softened some of the rigid implications of earlier rulings. These decisions have carved out limited exceptions and created some space for recognising the rights of daily-wage and contractual workers.

At the same time, the legal terrain continues to evolve. A case currently pending before the Supreme Court, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation v. Krishnan Gopal, raises the important question of whether labour and industrial courts have the authority to order regularisation when there are no sanctioned posts.

This panel seeks to unpack the complex and contested jurisprudence surrounding contract labour through a discussion of key court decisions. Bringing together labour lawyers and trade union leaders, it will examine how courts currently approach demands for regularisation and what these developments mean for workers’ struggles today.

Speakers:

• Sudha Bharadwaj, Trade Unionist and Labour Lawyer, High Court of Bombay
• Muralidhara, Labour Lawyer, High Court of Karnataka
• Saurabh Bhattacharjee, Center for Labour Studies, NLSIU
• Avani Chokshi, AICCTU (Moderator)

Session 4: Contract Labour after the Labour Codes: Regulation and Path Forward (4PM to 5:30PM)

Despite the notification of the four labour codes by the Union Government, considerable ambiguity persists regarding their implementation. Many State Governments are currently in the process of formulating and notifying rules to operationalise these codes, while also considering alternative measures including passing state-specific legislation to address potential adverse impacts. This includes introducing additional legal protections for workers who may be excluded from the scope of the new framework.

Such state-level interventions are not unprecedented; under the earlier labour regime, states such as Tamil Nadu and Assam enacted laws providing for the regularization of workers after a defined period of service – protections that are not uniformly available to workers in other states across the country.

In this context, the panel aims to bring together representatives from the judiciary, trade unions, workers, and academia to reflect on the implications of the new legal framework governing contract labour and to discuss possible responses to the challenges it presents including considering the proposal to submit a bill on the regularization of employment to the Government of Karnataka. The panel will also briefly examine and deliberate on provisions in the model law on regularisation drafted for submission to the Karnataka Government.

Speakers:

• VJK Nair, CITU
• Clifton D’ Rozario, AICCTU
• Babu Mathew, AITUC (Moderator)

This week’s faculty seminar features presentation by Dr. Mayur R Suresh, University Research Fellow, NLSIU on ‘The Trial Process Becomes Very Alien: Lawyers’ Imagination of the Legal Process in Contemporary Delhi.’ The paper has been co-authored by Fariya Yesmin and Lubhyathi Rangarajan.

Abstract

How do lawyers understand legality in contemporary India? The authors examine the experiences of lawyers in Delhi, who defend people accused under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), statutes increasingly deployed to target dissent and minority groups. Drawing on in-depth interviews, these trials produce a sense of normlessness — where foundational assumptions about rules, processes, and institutional roles collapse.

Lawyers describe an “alien” legal world marked by unpredictability, an absence of established procedure, and blurred boundaries between judges, prosecutors, and police. While ordinary cases retain a sense of normality, UAPA and PMLA cases destabilise imaginations of the legal process, compelling lawyers to speculate on motives and majoritarian influences. The authors explore how lawyers respond through insistence on procedural norms and strategies to mitigate harm to clients. These narratives illuminate the transformation of legality into a contingent, shape-shifting form of power, challenging deterministic accounts of authoritarian legality.

As part of its monthly workshops, the JSW Centre for the Future of Law at NLSIU is organising a workshop on April 22, 2026, from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM (IST) with Prashant Reddy T. Prashant will discuss, “Why did a Rule on Mandatory Prescription of Generic Drugs Fail in India?”

The online workshop is open to the public. To attend, kindly register here (Microsoft Teams).

Abstract:

For a long time now, India has been known as the ‘pharmacy of the world’ for its expertise in manufacturing affordable generic drugs. Yet when the National Medical Commission in 2023, made it mandatory for all doctors in India to prescribe drugs only by their generic names instead of their brand names, Indian doctors vehemently protested against the rule, leading to its rollback in a matter of few weeks. In particular, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) claimed that its doctors lacked confidence in the quality of generic drugs being sold in India. What explains this sharp contrast in the global perception of the Indian pharmaceutical industry as a manufacturer of quality generic drugs and the refusal of Indian doctors to prescribe all generic drugs? The answer probably lies in the fact that the Indian industry is regulated by two different legal systems – one in the developed world which has evolved rigorous quality norms over decades and the other is the Indian regulatory framework under the Drugs & Cosmetics Act, 1940 which has failed to keep up with global standards. In this talk, the speaker, Prashant Reddy Thikkavarapu, Co-author of The Truth Pill: The Myth of Drug Regulation in India (2022), will discuss why Indian law has failed to instil confidence amongst Indian doctors in the quality of generic drugs sold in India.

About the Speaker

Prashant Reddy T. holds degrees in law at undergraduate and postgraduate levels from the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru (BA LLB 2008) and Stanford Law School, Stanford respectively. He has experience working in litigation, academia, and think-tank spaces in India and Singapore. His larger oeuvre spans drug regulation, intellectual property, judicial reforms and transparency law. He is the co-author of The Truth Pill: The Myth of Drug Regulation in India (2022), a widely noted examination of India’s pharmaceutical regulatory system. He has also co-authored Create, Copy, Disrupt: India’s Intellectual Property Dilemmas (2017) and Tareekh Pe Justice: Reforms for India’s District Courts (2025), and writes extensively in the public fora on questions of law, policy, and institutional accountability.

This week’s faculty seminar featured presentation by Dr. Shiuli Vanaja, Assistant Professor, Social Science, NLSIU on ‘Colonial Legacies, Institutions, and Conservation: Forest Rights among the Gonds and Korkus in Madhya Pradesh, India.’ The paper has been co-authored by Deep Jyoti Francis, Science Policy Expert and Independent Researcher.

Abstract

India’s tribal (indigenous) communities have lived in and cared for its forests for generations. For them, forests are not just resources; they are home, livelihood, culture, and faith. Yet, these very communities are often displaced and labelled as threats to conservation because of formal institutional structure consisting of laws and policies rooted in colonial model of fortress conservation.

Within these communities, there also exists an informal institutional structure consisting of social norms and customary cultural practices that govern the interaction of tribals with forests.

Using qualitative data collected from 23 villages in Narmadapuram (old name Hoshangabad) and Betul districts of Madhya Pradesh, the authors study the relationship between forests and two tribal groups of this region, Gonds and Korkus. They explore the interplay between formal institutional structure which puts forests as state property under control of forest department with informal structure in which accessing forests is a fundamental part of life for tribals irrespective of who owns it legally.

They examine the linkages between the colonial era property rights to forests and conservation policy with the current injustices faced by tribals along with non-recognition of their forest rights. Their findings show that even after years of displacement and exclusion by the state, tribal communities continue to care for and protect their forests. But formal laws and weak implementation of community rights under the Forest Rights Act 2006 leave them insecure, forcing them to navigate fines, bribes, and alienation from their own lands. This paper argues for a shift away from top-down, exclusionary conservation model toward a more just, community-led model that respects Indigenous knowledge and rights, strengthens their role as custodians of the forest, and works with them rather than against them to protect forests.

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This week’s faculty seminar featured presentation by Dr. Anviksha Drall, Assistant Professor, Social Science, NLSIU on ‘Do Efficient Farmers Always Move to Non-Agricultural Sectors? Exploring Efficiency and Rural Transformation in India.’

Abstract

To ensure income smoothening due to various agro-climatic and price fluctuations, farmers often engage in activities other than farming. The impact of participation in non-farm work on labour efficiency is vastly explored. However, how labour-specific efficiency of agricultural activities influence decisions on whether to participate in non-farm activities is less known.

In the context of structural rural transformation, the current study investigates if efficient farmers move towards the non-agricultural sector or stick to farming activities only. This study attempts to answer this question based on empirical analysis. The empirical estimation utilises Village Dynamics of South Asia panel data on eight Indian semi-arid and eastern states for a panel of five years (2010-2014).

Anviksha’s empirical results show that farmers highly efficient in agricultural activities decrease their labour supplied to non-agricultural sectors. Further, results based on sub-samples indicate that the result holds true for only medium sized farmers owning 2-10 hectares of land. The mechanism analysis shows that technology adoption influences non-farm labour supply via increased labour efficiency, rendering vital policy implications on structural transformation and role of farming technology.

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