Infosys’s termination of 600 young professionals betrays the promise of NATS, NAPS apprentice schemes
The Karnataka Labour Department’s February 2025 inquiry report concluding that Infosys acted within the Apprenticeship Act and National Apprenticeship training scheme is flawed. The company’s predatory practice is disjointed from the vision with which schemes like NAPS and NATS were brought in.
Rohit Mani Tiwari
Published on: 4 April 2025, 11:47 am
IT GIANT INFOSYS has terminated around 600 young professionals (‘YPs’) in the last few months after they failed to succeed thrice in its ‘internal assessment’. These YPs have cried foul regarding what they call “unjust terminations” and have approached the Central Ministry of Labour to intervene to reinstate their jobs and restore labour justice.
As IT Industry constitutes a State subject under Schedule VII of the Constitution, the Labour Department of Karnataka was directed to investigate the matter and come up with a detailed report. In its recent report, published in February 2025, it found that “Infosys did not violate any employment laws and acted within Apprenticeship Act and National Apprenticeship Training Scheme (‘NATS’).” The Labour Department also found merit in the argument by Infosys that ‘these professionals were merely ‘apprentices’ and not ‘employee’ hired under the relevant scheme. It noted that to hire them on ‘stipend’ and fire them by ‘test’ was completely legal and they had no right to continue with the employment.
While this argument may seem clinical, delving into this exposes very grave and disconcerting questions surrounding youth employability, our education system and human development of demographic dividend.
The Labour Department also found merit in the argument by Infosys that ‘these professionals were merely ‘apprentices’ and not ‘employee’ hired under the relevant scheme.
In 2016, PM Kaushal Vikas Yojana (‘PMKVY’) was launched to complement and strengthen the somnolent Apprenticeship Act, 1961. It was conceptualised to attain firstly, the goal of providing accelerations to employment of ‘apprentices’ in industries and secondly, to share the burden with the industries for this national skill building mission.
The importance of ‘on-job training’ and ‘real life organizational experience’ were focussed upon for the first time under the National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme and NATS. NATS was to operate within the legal framework of the Apprentice Act. For example, the Apprentice Act provides that “graduate or technician apprentice" means an apprentice who holds, or is undergoing training in order that he may hold a degree or diploma in engineering or non-engineering.”
This provision pre-supposes that “only those students” are to be considered for any apprenticeship contract who do not have ‘practical experience’ of classroom learning. Though the Act does not explicitly exclude B-Tech and MBA graduates from its domain, their inclusion shall raise many more substantial questions that I would discuss later.
