Power and justice C.1

Indian industrial relations are essentially triadic, with the state seated firmly in the saddle as conciliator, arbitrator and adjudicator. The way the state exercises its power has profound significance for labour, management and society. Whom does the state favour when it mediates in the industrial relationship and decides what labour and management will give to, and get from, each other? The Marxist answer is that capital is favoured. The pluralists see the state as a neutral referee ensuring the fair interests of both disputants and the greatest good of society. How do these theoretical postulates measure up to an empirical test? Based on first-hand field data on major industrial disputes, this book illumines these questions. It examines how exactly the bureaucracy and the political executive of the state in India go about the task of reconciling labour and management. The resultant is a critique of the system of industrial relations that India has operated since Independence and an assessment of theories of the state from an empirical viewpoint.

Dr Ramaswamy is currently Professor of Industrial Relations at the Staff College of India, Hyderabad. Until 1982 he was Reader in Industrial Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics. He is the author of The Worker and His Union (1976), a contributor to, and co-editor of, The Fieldworker and the Field (1980) and, with Dr Uma Ramaswamy, the author of Industry and Labour (1981).