Even though labour reforms in India remains a contentious issue, a significant change in India's industrial sector during the year 2002 was a dramatic 50 per cent fall in instances of strikes and lockouts.

Revealing this, the Economic Survey, presented in Parliament on Thursday, said, "The current state of buoyancy of the industrial sector should further accelerate if some of the labour laws are removed."

The number of industrial strikes and lockouts came down by half to 321 during the first nine months of 2002 from 674 in the previous year, the survey said.

As per provisional data available up to September 2002, industrial strikes dipped to 142 compared to 372 in 2001.

Similarly, industrial lockouts also fell sharply to 179 from 302 during 2001.

"At the aggregate level, there was a decline in the number of strikes and lockouts during 2001, as compared to the previous year," the Survey said while noting that reduction in strikes and lockouts were more prominent in the public sector.

While highest incidence of strikes and lockouts were being faced in the textile, coal-mining and engineering industries, the states of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat experienced the highest number of strikes and lockouts in 2001.

The reduction in strikes and lockouts had a positive impact on the man-days lost, which also improved to a mere 6.21 million up to September 2002 as against 23.77 million during 2001.

PTI