(View: More than five years after Parliament approved them, India’s four labour codes are now in force from 21 November. The Codes on Wages, Social Security, Industrial Relations, and Occupational Safety & Health replace 29 laws, but some labour rights activists say the reforms erode rights in the name of ease.)
In a seafood plant on Odisha’s neglected coast, Anam Dalai raises her thumb—split, swollen, and barely recognisable. She earns Rs 90 for peeling a 50–70 kg box of fish. Four boxes bring in Rs 360, still below the state’s minimum wage. Gloves slow the work, so she peels barehanded until infection takes over.
Then the humiliation compounds. Biometric scanners at ration shops and banks reject her disfigured print. No grain. No cash. No day off.
The factory shrugs; Anam isn’t a “regular” worker. Just another invisible cog.
Her story encapsulates the reality of nearly 90 percent of India’s 565 million workers trapped in informal, precarious labour. And today, that precarity is being codified—literally.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led federal government’s four new Labour Codes are being marketed as “simplification,” promise flexibility and ease of doing business. What they actually deliver is a state-backed blueprint for profit over people, one that trades Ambedkar’s labour protections for corporate convenience.