PM kicks off labour reform with Shramev Jayate, says crucial for 'Make in India' success

Launching a new scheme that seeks to improve employability, skill development and other conveniences for labour, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the measures were key to the government’s push to boost manufacturing through the ‘Make in India’ programme.

Inaugurating the Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Shramev Jayate scheme that seeks to improve services for industries and labour, the Prime Minister said that it was a crucial scheme that should be given importance.

“Shramev Jayate has the same power that Satyamev Jayate has for the development of our nation,” Modi said while inaugurating the scheme.

He also said that it was important to improve the ease of doing business in India.

“The shram yogis who emerge from this scheme will become rashtra yogis. This is a scheme that will help Make in India succeed,” Modi said.

Under the scheme the government has launched a unified labour portal and an information system that would allow transparent labour inspection scheme. The Prime Minister said that the government was seeking to end ‘inspector raj’ which had hampered the operation of industry in the country.

“I have been hearing about inspector raj since I was a child and I used to think it had to do with the the police,” he said jokingly, adding that he later discovered what it was.

Modi said that under the new scheme inspectors would be allocated industries to inspect as per a computerised system and would be required to file their reports within 72 hours.

The scheme also seeks to provide portability of employees provident fund accounts through a Universal Account Number (UAN), which the Prime Minister said had already been launched.

As part of the launch of the scheme, around 1 crore EPFO subscribers were to receive an SMS regarding portability through Universal Account Number (UAN) while about 6.50 lakh establishments and 1800 Inspecting Officers were to get an SMS about the Unified Labour Portal.

The scheme also promises demand-based vocational training, an apprentice scheme and revamping the health insurance scheme Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) for workers in the unorganised sector.

The Prime Minister also spoke about the need for people to change their attitude towards those who graduate from vocational training institutes like ITIs and also towards manual labour at large, which he said was being looked down upon in the country.

Industrial houses have been seeking wide ranging reforms to overhaul the country’s archaic labour laws from the Modi government (read more about that here ), but there was no sign of any Rajasthan-like reforms from the central government any time soon.

The Prime Minister said that it was essential to see all issues plaguing labour through their perspective.

“We have to look at labour problems through the perspective of the labourers. Not the industrialist,” he said.