How the Code on Social Security overlooks two groundbreaking national labour commission reports
Two forgotten labour commission reports from the early 2000s had key lessons for the future of social security in India.
Dr K R Shyam Sundar
Published on: 14 December 2025, 11:15 am
REFORMS TO INDIA’S LABOUR LAWS have happened since the late 1960s, and the government has always sought inputs from academics and practitioners while formulating new labour policies or laws, or introducing key amendments. Since the time of the Royal Commission on Labour, established by the British government in 1929 to investigate industrial working conditions in India, committees and commissions have played a critical role in the modification of existing laws in accordance with the social and economic changes sweeping the country.
One such committee was the National Commission on Labour (‘NCL’). The first NCL, formed in 1969, headed by Justice P.B. Gajendragadkar, the seventh Chief Justice of India, which in 1969, prepared a comprehensive report with several important recommendations that were for unknown reasons never implemented.
Over the years, many other committees were formed - in 1982 came the Sanat Mehta Committee, in 1990, the bi-partite Ramanujam Committee, and in 1991, the Rural Labour Enquiry Committee. Alongside these, between 1999 and 2004, under the previous rule of the National Democratic Alliance (‘NDA’) government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, numerous bodies were formed that were headed by industrialists.
It was under the NDA-I government that the terms of reference for the Second NCL were drawn up - one, to rationalise existing laws for the organised sector, and second, to propose an umbrella legislation to provide a minimum level of protection for workers in the unorganised sector. The Second NCL was also directed to consider factors like globalisation, technological change, and international competitiveness when making its recommendations. The Second NCL’s report came out in 2002.
In pursuance of the recommendations by the Second NCL, the government framed a pilot study of the Unorganised Sector Workers Social Security Scheme, 2004 for fifty districts. It had a poor response. In 2004, the first United Progressive Alliance government (‘UPA-I’) constituted the National Commission on Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (‘NCEUS’) which submitted its report in 2005 .
The National Advisory Council, an advisory body set up by the UPA-I government to advise Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, submitted a draft bill, the Unorganised Sector Workers’ Social Security Bill, which was then forwarded by the government to the NCEUS for its consideration.
The NCEUS constituted by the UPA-I government produced two well researched reports, one on Social Security (2005) and the other on Conditions of Work (2007), both of which pertained to the unorganised sector.
I will primarily assess to what extent the implementation of critical social security reforms is reflected in the Code on Social Security (‘CoSS’). This assessment is particularly important as there are two important reports, which were prepared over a short duration in the first half of the 2000s. It is also important because these reports had also made passing references to laws relating to different social security mechanisms and institutions like the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (under the Employees’ Provident Fund Act (‘EPF Act’)), and the Employees’ Social Insurance Corporation.
