"Public sector in India : its performance, profitability and industrial relations"

This book deals with a few important aspects of the Public Sector in India viz. its performance and profitability, in the context of industrial relations. Besides tracing the "raison d'etre" of the public sector, intially conceived as the major instrument of economic development of the nascent free India, the author, with his experience of heading one of the biggest corpora tions in that sector (ICI) for over 4 years in the seventies, spells out the basic weaknesses of the sector in the handling of industrial disputes parti cularly. Meagre profitability of many of the undertakings has been ascribed by him mainly to the lack of capacity utilisation and to the loss of produc tion due to work stoppages by strikes etc. He has worked out that there is an annual production loss of at least Rs. 500 crores on the latter score, in the public sector as a whole.
egretting the fact that the role of a 'model employer' in the public sec tor has not been accompanied by the "quid pro quo" of a 'model worker', the author doubts the validity of an unadulterated right of the workers, exercised in practice atleast, to strike work in some shape or the other, and gives valid reasons for treating the industrial relations problems of the public sector undertakings in a manner different from those of the private sector. In the end, the author has made a couple of proposals, including the one relating to the setting up of an Industrial Relations Commission for the Public Sector Units, to deal with their industrial. disputes of extreme type which, if adopted jointly or severally, would go a long way to help the executives in dealing with their labour problems. more effectively.