NEW DELHI: 2025 will be remembered as a watershed year for India’s workers. The New Labour Laws enacted this year mark a golden chapter in our nation’s journey, bringing dignity and security to those who toil day and night to build India. Empowerment of workers is essential for an empowered, prosperous and Aatmanirbhar India.
After decades of neglect, India is witnessing a revolutionary pro-worker transformation under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership. Even after 73 years of Independence, 90% of our work force toiled in the unorganized sector without access to basic social security. For the first time, a government has stepped up to care for all workers—organized or unorganized and their families.
In the past, the working class was entangled in a web of 29 disparate and often conflicting labour laws. Successive regimes only discussed change but did little to actually help workers; the result was a stagnant system that failed to protect labour rights or encourage job creation. By 2014, both workers and industry were frustrated—the worker wondered why his rights were invisible, while the honest entrepreneur wondered why doing business was so difficult.
This indifference ended when Narendra Modi’s government charted a different course. He vowed that neither the policy nor the intention would falter and gave India a new work ethic: Reform, Perform, Transform implement real changes, deliver results, and thereby transform the country. Indeed, the most sweeping labour reforms in independent India have now been realized: the consolidation of 29 archaic labour laws into four comprehensive Labour Codes.
This isn’t just a merging of statutes on paper—it represents a fundamental reconstruction of India’s work culture, geared towards ensuring security, respect, health and welfare for every worker. These New Labour Laws 2025 focus entirely on the rights and dignity of the worker while boosting the nation’s development.
Key Labour Codes
The Code on Wages guarantees every worker across the country the right to a fair, minimum wage, ending regional disparities. For the first time, this right extends to all 50 crore workers in both organized and unorganized sectors. No longer is a fair wage a privilege; it is now a legal entitlement a constitutional promise that every worker’s sweat will be rewarded with due respect.
As Prime Minister Modi often says, “a poor man’s income may be small, but the pain of poverty is not small.” By establishing a national floor wage, the government has acknowledged that pain and acted to alleviate it. Crucially, the new laws also mandate timely payment of wages, protecting workers from the indignity of delayed salaries.
The Social Security Code extends the umbrella of protections to unorganized workers who were never formally recognized before. Gig workers, platform delivery personnel, app-based drivers, domestic helpers, construction labourers—the very people who drive India’s new economy—are now, for the first time, assured social security benefits. From provident fund and pension to medical insurance, every worker can now access these benefits regardless of their industry or job title.
To support this expansion, a dedicated social security fund is being created for the 40 crore unorganized workers, including gig and platform workers. This unprecedented inclusion means a Zomato food delivery agent or an Uber driver can finally say, “We too are nation-builders—and now we have security.”
To ensure fairness and harmony in the workplace, the Industrial Relations Code modernizes the framework for resolving disputes and promoting dialogue. It provides trade unions a statutory right to recognition… ensuring workers have an institutional voice. The new rules encourage negotiation so that strikes and lockouts become a last resort rather than a first response.
By ending arbitrariness and delays in dispute resolution, this code brings stability for employers and dignity for employees. As PM Modi has observed, “where there is dialogue, solutions come on their own.” That philosophy is now embedded in law, fostering a climate where labour and industry grow together instead of being at odds.
The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (OSH) Code prioritizes workers’ well-being like never before. It mandates safe working environments and basic facilities, recognizing that workers are not machines but human beings, whose safety, health and dignity must come first. In a groundbreaking move, for the first time women have been given the right to work night shifts in any sector, provided employers ensure their safety and transport.
This change isn’t just about flexibility it is a bold statement of women’s empowerment in the workplace of New India. The OSH Code also makes it compulsory for employers to provide free annual health check-ups to their workers, so that those who toil to build the nation are cared for. In a humane touch, employers must even provide interstate migrant workers an annual paid journey home to visit their families acknowledging the sacrifices of those who travel far for work.
Importantly, the new laws require that every worker receive a written appointment letter, formalizing their employment and preventing exploitation through casual hiring. These provisions together deliver safer working conditions, better healthcare, and a new level of dignity and security for India’s labour force.
Technological and Economic Impact
In parallel, the government has leveraged technology to empower workers. It launched the e-Shram portal… which has become the largest national database of unorganized workers with over 29 crore (290 million) workers already registered. Thanks to this, no worker remains invisible every hand that contributes to the economy is now counted, and can be reached with social benefits and emergency aid.
Alongside this, the decades-old Inspector Raj has been decisively dismantled by digitizing compliance and inspections. Where businesses once had to maintain 50 registers and endure frequent arbitrary inspections, now a unified online system, random computerized checks, and self-certification have replaced bureaucracy with transparency. Honest enterprises are freed from harassment, and workers’ rights are enforced more effectively.
No longer will files crawl through offices—now the nation moves forward at speed, boosting investment, employment and growth. These reforms are already laying the foundation for a more robust and inclusive economy. Simplified, worker-centric laws are attracting record investments and accelerating industrial expansion.
India has witnessed all-time high Foreign Direct Investment inflows, a manufacturing boom, and strengthened MSMEs—developments that translate directly into lakhs of new jobs for our youth. Make in India and Aatmanirbhar Bharat are no longer mere slogans, but a global reality, as the world recognizes that India’s rise is being powered by its empowered workforce.
As a testament, institutions like the World Bank, OECD, and the ILO have praised India’s labour reforms as one of the most effective models of the 21st century. The narrative around India has changed—where once it was seen as a nation of potential, it is now hailed as a nation of potential realized, a dynamic reality.
Broader Commitment to Workers
Crucially, the 2025 labour reforms are not an isolated initiative, but the latest milestone in the Modi government’s long-standing commitment to worker justice… and dignity. From day one in 2014, this government set out to uplift the common worker and ensure India’s growth includes the poorest.
It opened bank accounts for over 55 crore unbanked citizens under Jan Dhan Yojana, giving financial dignity to the poor and ensuring wages, subsidies and pensions reach them directly without leakage. It launched Ayushman Bharat, the world’s largest health insurance scheme, which has created over 41 crore health ID cards and enabled nearly 10 crore free hospital treatments for vulnerable families—so that no worker is devastated by medical expenses.
It set up pension schemes like PM Shram Yogi Maandhan, offering unorganized workers a secure monthly pension in old age, recognizing their right to retire with dignity. And when the Covid-19 pandemic struck, the government stood by workers—providing free food grains to about 81 crore people under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, directly transferring cash to millions of needy women and labourers, and launching the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyan to employ migrant workers near their homes.
Every budget, every policy whether building affordable housing, giving out Ujjwala gas connections, or expanding the social safety net—has put the welfare of the labouring poor at the centre. The Modi government’s push for skill development and apprenticeships has further boosted employment opportunities.
Through the Skill India mission and National Apprenticeship programs, millions of youth have gained vocational skills and on-the-job training, helping transform India’s workforce for the modern economy. This focus on skilling is moving India from a labour-driven economy to a skill-driven economy, opening pathways for higher productivity and incomes.
Job Creation Initiatives
Job creation under the Modi government has not been left to corporate boardrooms alone—it has become a people’s movement. By unleashing the entrepreneurial… energy of ordinary citizens, the government has catalysed millions of livelihoods. Take the Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana: since 2015, over 52 crore collateral-free loans worth Rs 32.6 lakh crore have been sanctioned to small and micro entrepreneurs, fuelling a nationwide wave of grassroots enterprise.
Business growth is no longer confined to big cities—it is spreading to small towns and villages, as people who once only sought jobs are now becoming job creators for others. Likewise, the Startup India initiative has firmly established India as the world’s third largest startup ecosystem. As of 2024, more than 1.5 lakh government-recognized startups have generated over 16.6 lakh direct jobs across the country.
This startup revolution—supported by schemes like Stand-Up India and a culture of innovation—has opened new frontiers of growth and employment for the youth.
Conclusion of Reforms
India’s growth story is incomplete without justice for those who are the engine of that growth the workers. The New Labour Laws 2025 affirm that economic development and labour welfare are not opposing goals, but complementary pillars of nation-building. They show that our nation’s progress is measured not just in GDP figures or corporate profits, but in the dignity and security of its working people.
While opposition parties remained content with the status quo or paid lip service to labour rights for decades, the Modi government has made worker welfare a cornerstone of national policy. By delivering these historic reforms, Prime Minister Modi has proven to be the guardian of India’s workers a leader who has given voice, visibility and value to those at the base of our economy.
For this government, passing laws is not about headlines, but about building trust. Today, an ordinary Indian worker can proudly say, “I am not just a labourer I am a nation-builder,” and an industrialist can confidently say, “India is becoming the… easiest place to do business.” This simultaneous empowerment of labour and industry is the hallmark of the Modi model of governance Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas, Sabka Prayas.
The New Labour Laws of 2025 stand as a testament to that ethos. They proclaim that India’s rise will be truly meaningful only when it uplifts those who toil in its factories, fields and offices. Under Narendra Modi’s leadership, India has shown that ensuring labour justice is nation-building in its purest form. And indeed, this is just the beginning—the foundation has been laid, and India’s workers can stride into the future with newfound hope, pride and security.
Author is National General Secretary of the BJP.
