The Hindu Business Line : We need more flexibility in labour laws: Montek

The Planning Commission has favoured more flexibility in labour laws. "We do believe that we need more flexibility in labour laws," said Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission.

Flexibility would attract greater investment and create more jobs, he added.

But he ruled out a hire-and-fire policy being on the Government's agenda.

Skills development

While speaking at the Employment Summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry on Monday, he said the Government would launch a skill-development mission during the Eleventh Plan keeping in mind the needs of modern-day manufacturing, services and agriculture. Skills development is critical to the growth of employment. He said "current skills development is inadequate and we need employment-linked degrees.

We will scale up the programme to upgrade and modernise the Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) to improve both their quality and quantity in terms of training and equipment."

The Government is considering expanding the programme to 500 ITIs across India from 100 currently, Mr Ahluwalia said. However, even this is inadequate as there are 7,000 ITIs in India. The private sector has a major role to play in delivering job-related training because private colleges are more flexible in curriculum development than Government institutions.

Organised sector

He said the lack employment growth in the organised sector is the single greatest failing at a time when both GDP and profits were rising. There are structural changes taking place that have generated employment in the non-farm unorganised sector that have to do with outsourcing.

"Outsourcing creates value outside manufacturing, in the service sector."

To promote the unorganised sector's growth, the Government will create an enabling environment to encourage employment, he said.

Mr Ahluwalia called upon industry to come up with a reasonable employment growth rate, given that it was predicted to grow by 10 per cent for the next few years.

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