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In this note, we assess the newly introduced Industrial Relations Code (IRC) 2020. First, we compare the provisions in IRC 2020 with its predecessor, Industrial Disputes Act (IDA) 1947, and the amendments to IDA 1947 in 1976 and 1982 regarding the employment protection provisions against layoffs, retrenchments, and closures. We find that IRC 2020 merely restored the factory-size threshold to the initial IDA amendment 1976 level of 300 or more workers to which IDA 1947 originally applied from 100 or more workers as notified in the 1982 IDA amendment. We calculate the effect of the threshold-size change on the workers and factories on the firms registered under the Factories Act 1948 2(m). We find from the ASI 2017-2018 data that an estimated 7.07% of the factories and 15.97% of the workers will be affected due to the change in the threshold size introduced through IRC, 2020. Finally, we conclude by discussing the current relevance of the employment protection legislation during the pandemic time and the need for discretionary usage and temporary expansion of coverage of employment protection provisions under the IRC if warranted.

India and South Africa approached the World Trade Organisation to negotiate the temporary waiver of Intellectual Property (IP) rights on Covid-19 vaccines to remove the artificial barrier of patents and boost vaccine production. This commentary advocates for the waiver of IP rights on Covid-19 vaccines. First, the article makes a case for the debate on the validity of the Covid-19 vaccine to qualify for a patent. Market failure and underinvestment in research and development arguments do not hold for granting a patent to Covid vaccines. Next, the article briefly reviews the evidence on the association between vaccination and virus mutations. Evidence suggests that waiving patents is vital to increase vaccination worldwide and curb mutation and reduce the risk of more infectious new variants. Finally, the article argues that the rationale for a patent is economical, based on incentivising innovation and therefore, the losses suffered by various sectors of the economy due to new variant induced fatalities and lockdowns need to be considered for a case for its waiver.

Despite accounting for a sizeable share in the overall output and employment of the manufacturing sector, the export potential of India’s Agro-processing firms has received less attention. This article investigates the determinants of export propensity and intensity of relatively labour-intensive agro-processing firms in India with a focus on the role of technology adopted, the proportion of imported raw materials used and status of the logistics infrastructure at the location of the firm. The article makes use of the CMIE-PROWESS dataset to obtain a cross-section of agro-processing firms for the year 2016–2017 and the Logistic Ease Across Different States (LEADS) database. The empirical strategy involves the Heckman two-step process to address the sample selection bias originating in modelling export behaviour. The article finds that the likelihood of an agro-processing firm to enter the exporting market increases with an increase in technology enhancing investment in terms of expenditure on research and development and import of capital goods. Moreover, a better level of logistics infrastructure enhances the likelihood of exporting. The likelihood of a firm to export also increases with the increase in the use of imported raw materials, firm size, age and superior managerial quality. However, the paper finds only the expenditure on imported capital goods and imported raw materials to be positively and significantly associated with the export intensity of the exporting firms.

This paper delves into the debates concerning labour market flexibility in India and suggests an improved measure of labour market flexibility to overcome the shortcomings of the existing measures. A state-wise time-variant composite index considering both de jure and de facto indicators of flexibility is constructed to account for the stringency of regulation of hiring and firing practices that affect labour adjustment mechanism of organised manufacturing sector firms in India. The newly built index reaffirms the criticism and limitations of the existing measures which solely rely on de jure indicators by pointing out that de jure measures alone are highly misleading and insufficient to identify a state’s labour market flexibility status. The index has been put to application in examining the role of spatial variation in labour market flexibility in explaining the difference in employment growth in India’s organised manufacturing sector. The paper finds no evidence in support of a statistically significant effect of spatial variation in flexibility in explaining the variation in employment growth. Interestingly, the paper demonstrates that employment elasticity of growth was lower in “flexible” states as compared to the “rigid” states, indicating that greater flexibility is associated with a weaker employment performance.