Globalising Economy, Localising Labour

The evolution of Indian industrial relations is discussed here in a historical and structural context. In the first phase nationalist economic doctrines led to a state-dominated pluralism in the IR arena that finally gave way to its crisis of legitimacy. The state slowly began to withdraw from the economic domain. The second phase represents the post-liberalisation period with the 'structural adjustment programme'. The essential thesis of this paper is that the gradual spread of market principles has led to wide inter-regional and inter-sectoral differences in the levels of economic activity resulting in turn in considerable variation in the nature of labour-management relations. Consequently, an erstwhile 'national' IR system has given way to many 'local' IR systems.