Edition – 2025 – 26

PM Modi, Time for Bold Reforms Clean up the Centre’s land and labour laws to launch india’s industrial revolution Arvind Panagariya
Dear Prime Minister,
Your decisive victory in the recent elections has lifted the morale of the Indians around the world as no past event in my entire life. We go around, looking happy. Our faces gleam with optimism, and our heads are held high. Even the crucial 1977 election, which brought much needed relief, did not bring hope as this one has. When pundits argued that the era of majority governments was over for good in India, you thought outside the box, and dared people to give you a clear mandate to change their lives for the better. People responded, and delivered what pundits had uniformly predicted was impossible. They gave your party an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) the same mandate in both Houses of Parliament combined. It is now your turn to deliver. You have made an admirable beginning. You have crushed those who had constantly downplayed your sincerity, and underestimated your resolve, and the ability to work hard. You have dramatically improved governance at the center even within the short period that you have been in office. Your ministers, and bureaucrats are working long hours, six days a week. Transparency has risen with no signs that bribes are being taken to swiftly clear large projects. But alas, while vision and governance for which you are an icon today are indispensable, without an appropriate policy framework, they will not deliver what 125 crore Indians now expect from you. In order to deliver on your promise, you must once again think outside the box. Pundits tell us that the central government cannot make major changes to existing labour, and land legislations. I too have fallen prey to this thinking, and therefore sought stealthy avenues to land, and labour market reforms, through delegation of authority to states, and tweaking of rules and regulations. Rajasthan’s dynamic new chief minister has even taken the lead by initiating a set of reforms to the Factories Act of 1948, Industrial Disputes Act of 1947, and Contract Labour Act of 1971.

Your have created a huge momentum for change by infusing a level of energy and dynamism at all levels of government that existed earlier only in the immediate post-Independence era. By all accounts, your ministers, bureaucrats, and the people of India are ready for change. Why then the hesitation? Why not clean up labour, and land laws for all of India through central legislation? Why should you hold the vast majority of workers toiling in the informal sector hostage to the privileged status of a tiny elite labour force? Indeed, if we cannot take bold steps even at this moment when the entire country stands firmly behind you, I will perhaps not see an India free of abject poverty in my lifetime.