 Picking up from the sense that I got during the last two sessions, I want to also begin by mentioning that labor jurisprudence in India is considered to be something which was highly developed. Very few countries in the world have had the type of labor jurisprudence that India has had. And there is no doubt that the single most important reason for that has been the struggle of the trade unions. No case goes up to the Supreme Court unless there is a trade union to follow it up. It may take a decade or two before an important decision is obtained from the Supreme Court. But it is not only the judiciary, it is also the type of labor legislation framework which India had. That has already been referred to in the previous session and I completely agree with that perception that what we have enjoyed as labor jurisprudence is certainly the product of post-independent Indian economic development and the model that was adopted for the same. So it is the social democratic model. If you like the Fabian social democratic model. And so the framework of labor legislation in India is not accidental. It has been introduced in very definite planned manner. And it has gone through quite an elaborate process of conceptualization. It is not an easy task to achieve. First of all to achieve policy clarity. And so there were many committees which were appointed in order to articulate ideas at a conceptual level and then systematically followed up in order to convert it into legislation. And also adopting the tripartite method of the recommended by the ILO. The Indian Labor Conference has been an important forum through which these tasks were achieved. It is only recently that the Indian Labor Conference is on the verge of collapse. But even then I don't think we can say tripartitism is completely killed. Having said that in relation to the four labor codes, we recognize the expression labor code. But that is in a sense a misnomer in the current context. Because if you think of labor code or if you think of codes in law. It means a process by which you are trying to put together a whole lot of laws in relation to a particular sector. So it is a comprehensive method of enacting legislation. And you know we go back to the Napoleonic code. In our own country we think of the Indian penal code. It is considered to be the most exhaustive piece of legislation so far as crime is concerned. Or the criminal procedure code or the civil procedure code. I am afraid none of the four labor codes have that dimension. So in that sense the use of the word code itself is quite a misnomer. And I will try and demonstrate that especially with reference to the code in relation to wages. Initially there was the pretension that it is meant for universalization. And now I think that pretension has been given up. And what does that reflect? Why did that pretension arise and why has it been given up? Certainly it is because of the realization that you can't bluff people that we are going to universalize. When you realize that universalization is far from what is thought to be achieved. It is the intention has been populist. And that populist intention I don't think has a long life. Because by the time people come to understand, by the time we demystify these codes, there is very little left for popular appeal. And certainly the biggest divide there is going to be the way in which the unorganized sector is denied everything. The pretension has been that it is going to be covered but that is not at all so. I think even more important is that when you reduce a large number of laws into one so-called code, you are going to open up a Pandora's box of litigation. Because when you put together a large number of definitions which belong to different statutes, then there is internal contradiction. And if you want to resolve those internal contradiction, you have to go back to the judiciary. I want to give you one example. The word industry under the Industrial Disputes Act was in dispute from the time the law came into being, 1947, till 1978. And it used to be mentioned that if you plot the Supreme Court judgments relating to the word industry against a graph, you will get a zigzag curve. So that is the history of litigation in relation to a word. And many of these are jurisdictional definitions. That means whether the law applies or not depends upon what's the meaning you attach to a word. And if you put together a plethora of definitions, it's just opening up the Pandora's box. In the case of industry, it took Justice Krishnaya to sort out the battle. And in 1978, he gave a judgment and simplified it to such an extent that nobody is able to overrule the simplification that he resorted to. So it's not necessary to complicate things through such definitional processes. Now using that as background, let me say that when you're looking at the code on wages, wage determination in India is done in multiple ways. That's the history of wage determination and that is true even today. Above all, the most important ways in which wage determination has occurred in India, of course by the organized sector, has been collective bargaining. I don't think anybody has a list of how many agreements have been signed between workers and management in India. Thousands and thousands of bilateral and multilateral settlements have been signed. So collective bargaining has been a chief method. When collective bargaining has failed and there has been a strike, then the government has had the power to refer that to adjudication. And it is through these adjudicative processes that matters have gone up to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court has laid down very many excellent jurisprudential ideas in order to fit into a developmental framework of the Indian state. And that's quite advanced and that is, you know, pretension that, you know, that doesn't exist is happening when this code has been written. For example, there are two principles which are outstanding in wage determination. One is the capacity to pay and the other is the region come industry test. This is the product of Supreme Court pronouncements and they are valid and relevant even today. That's completely ignored in this wage code. The third is a method of arbitration which Gandhi ji introduced. Not many of us like it yet. It is a method which has been in existence in the cement industry. That's been the only method by which wage determination has happened in India. The fourth is by wage boards. And even that's a prevalent thing. Working journalists have always had their wages determined through wage boards. And this statute making process, the code making process is quite ignorant of it as we'll see when you. Then comes the last method and that is for minimum fixation of minimum wages for sweated industry. And here again what this code does is it distinguishes wage fixation within the sweated industry into two categories. And there is a whole lot of confusion in relation to that to which I'll come in a moment. But suffice to say you cannot talk of a code and yet leave out so many methods of wage determination. The word code is most inappropriate and God knows what's the reason why that has been invoked. The minimum wage act is in 1948 and it was meant primarily for sweated labor. And this means that the segments of the unorganized sector were incrementally covered by the minimum wage act. That's been the mechanism. That's the design. Government has the power to notify that a particular sector is now covered by the minimum wage act. And that's what we call as scheduled employment. And there are almost 2000 scheduled employment in India. And that is the major intervention of the state under the minimum wages act. This legislation seeks to do away with scheduled employment. And so at the outset I want to point out that within the minimum wage determination mechanism what the code does is it eliminates wage determination through scheduled employment. Nearly 2000 in the country. So that whole section has disappeared from the code. And in its place it brings in what initially was called the national minimum wage. In the previous drafts that was explicitly introduced. The expression national minimum wage. And when the matter went to the parliamentary committee the biggest controversy in the parliamentary committee was what do you mean by this national minimum wage? There was continuous discussion about it and there was question are you going to have one national minimum wage for the whole country? How will you do it? There are those states in India which are economically backward and those that are advanced. Are you planning to introduce a national minimum wage for everybody? There's no very clear cut answer about it. And it is for this reason and the lack of clarity in relation to the idea of a national minimum wage that the expression national minimum wage has been dropped in the latest, it's no longer dropped, it's become law. So that's interesting. The biggest controversy which came up before the parliamentary committee is simply dropped. And of course in order to tackle that the Labour Ministry appointed an expert committee. And the expert committee went into this question and the expert committee obviously could not answer all the complications related to the creation of a national minimum wage. I suppose all of us understand that if you actually notify a national minimum wage in India then nobody can work, there can be no wage employment in India below that national wage level. The expert committee finds it difficult and so they drop the expression national minimum wage and this now say floor wage. So floor wage is a new language which has been brought in. If you still analyse the code and that is because of the lack of clarity in the process of drafting you find there are two methods that is being referred to. One method is the continuation of what ought to follow from the method of having scheduled employment. And therefore all those sections which are necessary if at all there were scheduled employment that is retained. So what is that? For a scheduled employment the old law said you have two ways of going about it. One is called a committee method that you appoint a committee and the committee recommends what should be the minimum wage for a particular sector. The other is called a notification method. The government notifies something on the condition that if it is the second method of notification it must go back to an expert committee take their opinion and then only finalize that. So interestingly this method is retained and that is the method by which maximum amount of minimum wage notifications happened at the state level. The expression in the legislation is appropriate government. And the appropriate government in the majority of cases is the state government. Of course there is similar opportunity for the central government. So that method is retained. I would therefore canvas for the position that you now introduce two types of minimum wage through the proposed code. One is minimum wage of the old type for the scheduled employment. And your confusion is so high that you have dropped schedule employment. And the other is the floor wage method. And so that is going to be a wage which will be applicable for all. And that wage is going to be determined by the central government. And when in the parliamentary committee there is questions about it then they begin to say alright we will also consult the state government. But consult in a manner which is going to be prescribed. Even that is reluctant. So the notion is that the government of India would like to notify a wage for the whole country that however will not be a national minimum wage it will now be a floor wage. Expert committee pointed out perhaps there is going to be difficulty. So why not have regional floor level wages. And that idea has also not been accepted nor rejected. But the language enables a kind of floor wage to be fixed even at a state level. So in other words the plurality of economic development is recognized. What did the expert committee do? The expert committee went into an attempt to calculate what should be the floor level. And if you index it, if you neutralize it for price rise as of date it comes to approximately 375 rupees. The labor minister on the day on which this law became final he declared that the floor level will be 178 rupees. Their own expert committee says 375. At the same time there is the Rangarajan committee which was concerned with trying to fix what should be the poverty line wage. And that calculation if you neutralize that also comes to 375 rupees. So I am tentatively of the opinion that we should welcome the floor level wage subject to the condition that it cannot be less than what their own expert committee has recommended. So then in other words we should have two types of minimum wages. One the floor level wage nobody should get below that. There are states in India including Pondicherry and many states in the northeast where the equivalent of the floor wage is about 50 rupees. So in that context I think it is interesting to examine that proposition coupled with another proposition that you must bring back scheduled employments. The government sees the problem and therefore it goes to the extent of saying even if there is a floor level wage that floor level cannot bring down the minimum wage notified in the state. So there is a pretension to protect existing minimum wage but that protection is done in a manner in which it will amount to a wage freeze for the future in the scheduled employment. And so that is the question which remains unanswered. Interestingly the parliamentary committee took note of it and pointed out explicitly that if you are going to do that their capacity to revise those minimum wages in the scheduled employment must continue.