After some initial ad hoc experimentation, de jure, contractual provisions were introduced in Chinese labour law through a 1994/1995 National Labour Law and rural hukou allowed to work in urban China. But beyond reforms in SOEs (state-owned enterprises) it is doubtful whether this flexibility really drove China’s labour cost advantages. Instead, there were de facto deviations from worker rights codified even in the 1994/1995 Law, especially for rural hukou workers, whose numbers are estimated to go up to even 150 million.
We love this idea of controlling ‘suspected persons’ and their movements, enshrined partly in the hukou concept. Read Sections 109 and 110 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), under which cops indiscriminately pick up ‘suspicious’ people, invariably, but not always, the poor. Read Surjit Singh Barnala’s Story of an Escape: Barnala, then CM of Punjab, vanished incognito for a few days and was picked up under these sections in UP. The history of such legislation goes back to English workhouses, where able-bodied vagrants were picked up and forced to work. And we carry these legacies not just in CrPC, but also in statutes like Delhi Police Act. Had one gone ahead with the hare-brained idea, these statutes, and perhaps the Foreigners Act, would have been used.
... contd.
Group Websites : Express India | Financial Express | Screen India | Loksatta | Kashmir Live | Biz Publications
