Decent Work in India: Why It Matters in the Era of the Labour Codes
What does decent work mean in India’s changing labour market? This blog examines India’s four Labour Codes and explores how labour-law reform connects with minimum wages, social security, workplace safety, formalisation, migrant workers, gig and platform workers, women’s employment and social dialogue. It looks beyond job creation to ask whether India’s new labour framework can deliver work that is productive, secure, safe and dignified. The article also highlights why effective implementation, stronger institutions and better labour-market data will be critical to turning legal reforms into meaningful outcomes for workers.
Ajay Srivastava, Founder Atrh Advisory
9/19/20268 min read
India is at an important juncture in the evolution of its labour market. The country needs to create millions of productive jobs, move workers from low-productivity employment towards better opportunities, expand social protection and bring more workers into the formal economy. At the same time, the nature of work itself is changing. Contractual employment, platform work, migrant labour, remote work and other forms of non-standard employment are becoming increasingly important.
Against this backdrop, the question is not simply how many jobs India creates, but what kind of jobs it creates.This is where the idea of decent work becomes particularly relevant.
The issue has acquired a new dimension with the implementation of India's four Labour Codes: the Code on Wages, 2019; the Industrial Relations Code, 2020; the Code on Social Security, 2020; and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020. The four Codes came into force on 21 November 2025, consolidating 29 central labour laws into a new framework.
The Codes are therefore not merely a legislative exercise. They provide an opportunity to ask a larger question: can India's new labour-law architecture help make work more productive, secure, safe and dignified?
That is, fundamentally, the question of decent work.
What does “decent work” mean?
There is no single ILO “Convention on Decent Work”. Rather, decent work is an overarching ILO policy framework, supported by a wide range of international labour standards.
The ILO's decent-work agenda rests on four broad pillars:
rights at work;
productive and freely chosen employment
social protection; and
social dialogue.
These pillars are reflected in international labour standards dealing with freedom of association and collective bargaining, forced labour, child labour, discrimination, wages, occupational safety and health, social security and labour administration. The ILO has also incorporated a safe and healthy working environment into its framework of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.
Decent work is therefore much broader than simply having a job. A person can be employed and yet have an inadequate income, unsafe working conditions, no social protection, little security of employment or no meaningful avenue for raising a grievance. Employment is the starting point. Decent employment is the objective.
Where does India stand?
India has a long association with the ILO. It has been a founding member since 1919 and has been a permanent member of the ILO Governing Body since 1922. India has ratified 47 ILO Conventions and one Protocol, of which 37 are currently in force. It has ratified six of the ILO's 11 Fundamental Conventions.
The picture is therefore mixed. India has ratified the fundamental conventions dealing with forced labour, equal remuneration, discrimination and child labour. At the same time, it has not ratified some of the ILO's fundamental instruments concerning freedom of association and collective bargaining (Conventions Nos. 87 and 98) or the fundamental occupational safety and health conventions, Nos. 155 and 187.
Ratification, however, is only one measure of decent work. The more important question is what happens in the labour market and at the workplace.
The ILO's own assessment provides a useful starting point.
Its Decent Work Country Programme for India 2023–2027, developed through consultations among government, employers' and workers' organisations, identifies three priorities: strengthening international labour standards and social dialogue; promoting full and productive employment and decent work, including through formalisation and a just transition; and strengthening institutions so that workers, particularly vulnerable and marginalised workers, can progressively achieve universal social protection.
The programme also highlights the need for better labour-market information, stronger institutions, gender-responsive employment policies, formalisation and improved employment outcomes for vulnerable workers.
This is an important indicator of where India stands.
The challenge is no longer simply to create a body of labour legislation. It is to translate rights and protections into outcomes for workers across a highly diverse and increasingly complex labour market.
Why decent work matters particularly for India
1. India needs jobs, but it also needs better jobs
India's demographic opportunity depends heavily on its ability to generate productive employment. But job creation measured only in numbers can conceal enormous differences in the quality of employment.
A worker with predictable wages, social protection and safe working conditions is in a fundamentally different position from a worker who has an uncertain income, no social security and little protection against workplace risks.
Decent work therefore connects employment policy with the broader objectives of inclusive growth and social mobility. It asks whether economic growth is creating livelihoods that allow workers and their families to build greater economic security.
2. Informality remains central to the story
The Indian labour market cannot be understood through a simple formal-versus-informal divide.
Workers frequently move between formal and informal employment. Contract workers, migrant workers, domestic workers, construction workers, own-account workers and platform workers can occupy positions that do not fit neatly into traditional categories.
This makes formalisation a central part of the decent-work agenda. But formalisation should not mean paperwork alone. The meaningful test is whether formalisation results in access to minimum wages, social security, occupational safety, written employment terms, grievance mechanisms and other protections.
This is also why the ILO's emphasis on progressively achieving universal social protection is important for India.
The Labour Codes and the decent-work question
The four Labour Codes cover many of the institutional building blocks associated with decent work.
The Code on Wages seeks to establish a more universal framework for minimum wages, including a statutory floor wage, while addressing timely payment of wages and discrimination in wages and recruitment.
The Code on Social Security expands the legislative framework for social security and specifically recognises unorganised workers, gig workers and platform workers.
The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code brings together provisions dealing with workplace safety, health and working conditions and addresses issues concerning inter-state migrant workers.
The Industrial Relations Code deals with trade unions, standing orders and industrial disputes, and introduces provisions including a reskilling fund for certain retrenched workers.
Taken together, these areas map closely onto the broad concerns of decent work: income, security, social protection, occupational safety and industrial relations.
The implementation of the Codes from November 2025 therefore creates an important opportunity to examine India's labour market through a more outcome-oriented lens.
Legislation is only half the story
The real test of the Labour Codes will be implementation. A legal entitlement has limited value if workers do not know about it, cannot access it or lack an effective mechanism to enforce it. This makes labour administration, inspections, registration systems, social-security delivery, grievance redressal and state-level implementation crucial.
The ILO's current country programme makes this point indirectly by placing considerable emphasis on institutions, social dialogue and evidence-based employment policy. It specifically calls for stronger labour-market information systems and greater institutional capacity at national and state levels.
The success of the new labour architecture will therefore depend not only on what the Codes say, but on how effectively institutions can make those provisions work in India's enormous and heterogeneous labour market.
The future of work is changing the meaning of security
The decent-work debate is also becoming more complicated because the traditional employer-employee relationship is no longer the only model of work.
Platform workers may receive flexibility but face income volatility. Contract workers may have employment without long-term security. Migrant workers may move across states and employers. Workers in the informal economy may have economic activity without meaningful access to social protection.
The Social Security Code's recognition of gig and platform workers is significant because it acknowledges that the world of work has moved beyond conventional categories.
But recognition is only the first step. The larger question is whether social protection can become portable, accessible and adequate across different forms of work.
That question will become increasingly important as India's digital and platform economy expands.
Women and decent work
There is another dimension that cannot be separated from the decent-work agenda: gender.
The quality of women's employment depends not only on whether jobs exist, but also on wages, safety, working conditions, care responsibilities, mobility and access to social protection.
The ILO's India programme explicitly identifies increasing women's participation in the labour market as one of the country's priorities, alongside formalisation, social protection and decent employment.
A labour market cannot be fully inclusive if women remain disproportionately concentrated in insecure, unpaid, underpaid or poorly protected forms of work.
Decent work therefore provides a useful framework for asking a deeper question about women's employment: are women merely entering the labour market, or are they entering it on terms that provide economic independence, security and dignity?
Social dialogue: the missing link?
One of the four pillars of decent work is social dialogue, which brings governments, employers and workers into the process of shaping labour-market policy. This is particularly relevant during a major transition in India's labour-law architecture. Labour regulation inevitably involves competing interests. Employers seek flexibility and predictable compliance; workers seek security, fair wages and protection; governments must balance economic growth with social justice and effective administration.
The answer cannot simply be to choose one interest over another. The more durable approach is to create institutions through which these interests can be negotiated.
This is why the ILO's emphasis on tripartism and social dialogue remains relevant even as the nature of work changes. India's Decent Work Country Programme itself places strengthening social dialogue alongside labour standards and employment policy as a core priority.
From labour-law reform to labour-market outcomes
The most useful way to think about the Labour Codes may therefore be to move beyond the question of whether they simplify India's labour laws.
The more consequential question is:
What kind of labour market will the new framework produce?
· Will workers have greater access to social protection?
· Will minimum-wage protections become more effective?
· Will workplaces become safer?
· Will migrant workers be better protected?
· Will gig and platform workers have meaningful social-security coverage?
· Will women have greater access to productive and secure employment?
· Will workers and employers have effective institutions for resolving disputes?
· And will formalisation translate into actual improvements in the quality of work?
These are the questions that determine whether labour reform delivers decent work.
The next phase: making decent work measurable
India's Labour Codes represent a significant restructuring of its labour-law framework. But they should be seen as a means rather than an end. The next phase of India's labour-market reform needs to focus on outcomes: employment quality, wages, social protection, occupational safety, formalisation, gender equality, skills, worker voice and the capacity of institutions to enforce rights.
This also means improving the way India measures the labour market. The ILO's Decent Work Country Programme highlights the importance of robust labour-market information systems and better-quality data for evidence-based policymaking.
That is an important point. What gets measured tends to shape what gets prioritised. India therefore needs to look beyond the headline employment rate and ask more systematically about the quality, security and sustainability of employment.
A new social contract for work?
India's economic transformation will inevitably produce new forms of employment. The objective cannot be to freeze the labour market in an older model of work. Nor can flexibility become a synonym for shifting all risk onto workers.
The real challenge is to find a workable balance between enterprise flexibility and worker security. That is where decent work provides a powerful framework.
It does not prescribe a particular economic model. Instead, it establishes a set of outcomes that a modern labour market should aspire to: productive employment, fair treatment, rights at work, social protection, safety and voice.
India's Labour Codes have created a new legal architecture. The bigger task now is to build the institutions, enforcement mechanisms and social dialogue necessary to make that architecture deliver better work.
If the first phase of labour reform was about consolidating laws, the next phase should be about consolidating outcomes.
And the measure of success should ultimately be simple:not merely whether India has more jobs, but whether more Indians have work that allows them to live and work with security, dignity and opportunity.