 The startup sector in India is facing a crisis. This year alone, nearly 12,000 employees have been laid off from their jobs by different startups. Many of these startups are unicorns, that is, they are valued at above 1 billion dollars. Some of these layoffs have been attributed to the funding winter which is being observed in the sector. Investors are no longer writing checks as easily as they were before and as a result, there has been a sharp decline in the amount of funds startups have raised. But another important aspect of this story is the changes in the labour laws in India which have made these mass retrenchments possible. The earlier labour laws had offered protection to employees and workers from wrongful terminations. They had also offered remedies to workers to fight for their rights when they were being exploited. The four new labour codes that were enacted into law which replaced the earlier labour laws in the beginning of this month have done away with many of these protections. Kiran Chandra, president at forum of IT professionals and general secretary of the free software movement of India, talks about this worrying trend of layoffs in the Indian startup sector and the reasons behind it. The fundamental issue is why and how is it that they have been able to do it is because of the change in the labour laws of the country. We all very well know that despite the earlier labour laws which are protective of the employment, which are productive of the people's rights have been in place. Now all of them have been subverted and people have been retrenched for quite for some time. At this point of time while the industry itself is in a boom at the moment, till now there have been even the recruitment sort of in an all-time high. The reason why they have been able to do it is just because of the change in labour laws which is the primary reason and the people have got literally zero protection to fight them or challenge them in the courts. The new normal is going to be a higher end fire is going to be the norm in the industry now because the new labour laws facilitated and even the labour rules that are here to basically implement the law will only look at it, will be only legalizing all the stuff that all the IT companies have been doing and the other important change which is going to be is there is a number restriction that existed but earlier even if any company which has 100 plus employees there was certain restrictions on how they can fire the employees etc. Now the number has increased to 300. So it means any small companies which have got less than 300 employees, there would be no loss even the minimum laws that are applicable or what you could say maybe the minimal remedies that are existing even they might not be applicable for most of the IT companies in the country. Maybe when you speak about the question the earlier question that you asked what would happen to the startup ecosystem? The startup ecosystem any even be it a startup company or be it any company which has less than 300 employees the people would be really vulnerable who are working in those industries and I think this is a stupid part of the legislation itself where the number has been increased to 300 it should be reverted back. We have been always demanding saying that any institution or any industry that is there because the change in nature of work also is in place. We see the change in nature of work where a huge amount of mental labour is actually being put into with the production process. When you see all these changes even the law should be applicable even to the firms which are lesser than 300 in number. So I think this is something which should be in place. The question is IT industry has never been immune to labour laws but the perception has been that people did not really think about it because there was the whole bargaining capacity in the IT industry has been very different when compared to the other conventional industry. Since the Y2K period there have been barring every small durations where the IT industry did not have the kind of a boom that it had but by and large there was a boom period for a prolonged period and when there was a boom period people did not continue or think of fighting the employment order or you could say the employers or the employers associations because they found it easy to find a job with a better pay pack and that is why it prevented from going for a collective bargaining because when I as an individual still have got an opportunity to get a hike of 30% or 20% or 25% which is more than the conventional wage revision that happens in any industry where the conventional trade union movement happens. So this situation is the reason why people did not organize themselves into unions or go for collective bargaining in the IT sector. So the why the people in the IT industry have not unionized is because they figured out new ways of bargaining or more than going for collective bargaining they went ahead with individual bargaining when their individual bargaining capacity was higher but the post 2016 was when there was a thinking that the consciousness among the IT professionals relatively increased when there was a sudden realization among them that labor laws are applicable to the workforce and that is when they started challenging it also. In recent times there have been many attempts to build solidarity among Indian IT sector workers and build collectives in order to create spaces for collective bargaining. What has been the process of building unions in the IT sector and what have been the challenges in this process? The most important challenge was for us to basically go to the people and explain to them that labor laws are applicable to the IT industry and I think the biggest challenge was that making people known to making it known to the people. We have been doing it for more than a decade but the response has been was very significant more than one and a half decades we have been trying to do it but the response or you could say the mass consciousness of the people just exponentially increased particularly in the period post 2016 when we could demonstratively go back and even the labor department also helped in counseling the IT industry saying that labor laws are applicable because of course there are people from the HR department who finish their MBAs and come and sit in the IT industry and live in their own make-believe world who thought that labor laws really do not apply per the IT industry. So there was a friction between friction for a short period but the toughest part was to basically make people aware of it and the change situation actually paved the way for it and I think that was the game changer where we have actually moved on from conciliation meetings to negotiations with the company where we could basically put back people into the IT industry. Very significant I would say that most of the including MNCs also we had many places where we have got employees reinstated back into the companies because it was not an easy experience also because we had to expose a certain industry which were really a crooked or cruel in the way in which they retrained the employees it is not that we just wanted to blame or blame or mud slinging over all the enterprises but there have been certain enterprises for instance like Verizon. Verizon basically retrained employees with the people whom they employed to retrench employees was one is paramedical staff, the employed bouncers and also psychiatrists who were there to basically psychologists or psychiatrists who were there. This was the team of people who along with the IT professionals who along with the HR managers or HR team started firing the IT professionals in Verizon it was a huge number of people close to 8 to 900 people were fired in the span of two days and when people just said I'm not going to sign here it was the bouncers who were flexing their muscles and ensuring that people sign and these kinds of bullying we have even gone to the extent of putting up criminal cases with all the video recordings being submitted in the court. I think when companies retorted to such cruelty such cruelty had to be exposed and once such cruelty was exposed there was solidarity built within the workforce also I think these are a certain changes challenges that actually helped us and now which we had to face that helped us in mobilizing the folks to stand in solidarity with each other. So what is happening is these labour courts more than weakening the unions are basically breaking the spine of the working people's bargaining capacity. The bargaining capacity or the limited capacity I would I'm not going to speak about what happens with the public sector or the other industries but when I look at the new generation industries or you could say all the new generation industries be it pharma, be it IT or be it any other biotech companies or any of these new generation industries it is going to become the bargaining capacity has been significantly high because the industry has been a booming industry. If you look at the pharma industry if you look at the biotech industry or if you look at the IT industry or IT it has been a booming industry for all these three decades. So in this industry people had a certain capacities of the bargaining power because there was a strong backup or strong labour laws that basically banned bar people from being reduced at any point of time but now this bargaining capacity is going to come down because there is no restriction on the employers at all. The employers are working out back doors to hit at the bargaining capacity for instance when they retrenched all the workforce who are 10 plus years of experience if there would have been no rapid increase in digital consumption most of the people who have been retrenched, lakhs of people have been retrenched in the period since 2016 actually went back into the industry by accepting lower wages from what they were getting earlier. So this is a way in which the employers figured out a way that they fire people and hire people back and a role that was I would not want to name the name of the company because they have been taking people back but we have seen that for the same roles when companies were paying close to one one and a half lakhs of rupees per month people were retrenched and they basically recruited again with the wages which were almost one third or 50% of what they were paying earlier because this is a very peculiar situation because there exists a reserve army of labour and you have already put there is already precariousness that is creeping into the lives of the people working in the new generation industries. So the companies have figured out a new ways of restructuring the entire wages in the companies even when the earlier losses existed but now the organization or the fight for some of those things did not really sharpen in the new generation industries because as a consequence of the COVID pandemic these industries again started to boom all the new generation industries but if something odd happens or if there is something that really affects these industries is going to come in place it's going to be very the precariousness is actually going to creep in back and it's going to put all the people even more vulnerable because we don't have the protection of the earlier loss where we can stand and basically fight back. So what is the way out the way forward is these laws that have been passed don't need to be amended we are demanding that these laws that have that are there in place they need to be amended they need to be amended or we need to have new laws in place of these laws where the rights of the people are protected and I think we have already started campaigns around