Dimensions of industrial relations policy in India : proceedings of the National convention on industrial relations policy/ edited by S. Chandra

In India, labour-management relations have acquired special significance with the adoption of national economic planning. The expansion of the public sector in the primary, secondary and tertiary industries, the need to improve both the productivity and the living standards of the working classes, have high-lighted apparently conflicting and complex problems which must be jointly resolved by the Government on the one hand, and the employers and trade unions on the other. It called for a tripartite, cooperative endeavour with a common understanding, aim, and goodwill. But unfortunately the interests have not risen to the occasion in an appropriate measure. Even the regulation of labour-management relations by the State has proved to be only a continuous experimentation punctuated by evasion of respective responsibilities by the managements and trade unions. Moreover, despite periodical endeavours to revise ways of resolving conflict and promoting industrial relations in the light of widening dimensions of socio-economic policy, the framework of trade unions and industrial relations laws has paradoxically remained time-worn and unserviceable.

In this context, the endowment of the V V Giri Chair on Industrial Relations and Trade Union Studies in the Adminis trative Staff College of India, Hyderabad, by the State Trading Corporation of India has proved to be very timely. It has enabled my colleague, Dr S Chandra, the incumbent of the Chair and a Senior Member of Faculty of the College, to organise a series of research studies on trade unionism and labour-manage ment relations. These pragmatic and policy oriented studies have not only led to the conduct of purposive courses both for corporate managers and trade union functionaries but also to the formulation of appropriate proposals for radical change in the trade union and dispute settlement laws with the dual purpose of promoting sound trade unionism and labour-manage ment relations for augmenting production.