A dipping graph in occupational safety and health

Contact Counsellor

Last Updated14/02/2022

Recently the CRUSHED Report 2021 released by Safe in India (SII), reported a dismal picture concerning occupational safety and health in the auto sector.
Occupational safety and health (OSH) has not received due attention from law-makers and even trade unions in India.

Occupational safety and health (OSH) is an existential human and labour right.
There is a need for a comprehensive review of labour inspection and the labour statistical system
There are two primary requirements to ensure safe workplaces: 1. A strong monitoring (inspections)

It becomes important to understand the statistical profile relating to industrial accidents in India and the quality of inspections.

Statistics concerning industrial accidents are produced by the Labour Bureau.
It compiles and publishes data on industrial injuries relating only to a few sectors:

It is inexplicable why the Labour Bureau has not considered expanding the scope of statistics on injuries by adding sectors such as plantations, construction, the service sector, etc.
The data it produces is not representative of the situation in India as several major States default in the provision of data to the Labour Bureau.
Example: during 2013-14 - States such as Delhi, Gujarat, Kerala, Odisha, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal defaulted.
It is not surprising that the number of non-fatal injuries declined from 21,370 during 2010-2015 to 5,811 during 2016-2019.
There we get a ridiculous statistic of average total injuries per factory at 0.02 (5,562/353,226) during 2017-2019.
It may be added here that the drop is far higher in the case of non-fatal injuries than for fatal ones.

Here data on industrial injuries published in the Indian Labour Statistics by the Labour Bureau has been used.
Gujarat's share for 2006 was 14.98% of total fatal and 25.70% of total nonfatal injuries,
Kerala's shares for 2005, respectively, were 2.94% and 6.73%,
Tamil Nadu's shares for 2005 , respectively, were 8.16% and 11.11%,
Maharashtra's shares for 2004 were 25.65% and 36.78% and for 2014, it was 12.62% and 57%,
Odisha's shares for 2006 were 37.73% and 21.99%.
Here we can make a statement that the reported figures for fatal injuries for all-India would be less by around 40%-50% and that for nonfatal injuries by at least 50%.

Even if States sent their data to the Labour Bureau, the States’ data are more likely to suffer from underreporting.
Under-reporting is more likely to be in case of non-fatal injuries than fatal ones for obvious reasons.
The SSI’s report shows massive under-reporting of industrial injuries occurring in Haryana.
Its report covering a segment of the auto sector in Gurugram and Faridabad showed that since 2017, on average 500 workers have received nonfatal injuries.
The under-reporting of industrial injuries, unlike for strikes and lockouts, is a far more serious issue and cause for grave concern.
According to the Directorate General, Factory Advice and Labour Institutes (DGFASLI)’s Standard Reference Note for 2020: the proportion of working in sanctioned posts for factory inspectors for India was 70.60%, But major States such as Maharashtra (38.93%), Gujarat (57.52%), Tamil Nadu (58.33%), and Bihar (47.62%) had poor employment rates of inspectors.
In 2019, there was an inspector for every 487 registered factories: this reveals the heavy workload of inspectors.
The inspector per 1,000 workers employed in factories is a meagre 0.04, it means there is an inspector for every 25,415 workers.
The inadequacy of the inspectorate system is so obvious.

The proportion of registered factories inspected for all-India declined from 36.23% during 2008-11 to 34.65% during 2012-2015 and further to 24.76%.
While Kerala and Tamil Nadu had higher inspection rates at 63%-66%, Gujarat and Kerala had lower rates at 26%-30% and Haryana the lowest at 11.09% during 2008-2019.
The inspection rates declined in all five States.
The decline over the three sub-periods noted above for Maharashtra (31% to 12%) and Haryana (14% to 7%) was much higher (50% and over) than for others.
The factory inspectorates were inadequately equipped and worse, the inspection rates fell in almost all the States over the last 12 years.
Inspectors cannot feasibly inspect every factory, so they used their discretion to target the easy factories to demand compromising payments.
Many of them belong to the powerful industry groups which have successfully lobbied against the inspection system.
For all India, the conviction rate for 2015-2019 stood at 61.39% and the average fine per conviction was ₹12,231.
The efficiency of the penal system is low as the percentage of decided cases out of total cases is a poor 15.74% during 2015-19.
The SII’s findings are similar to these.
During the four of five years of 2015-19, some imprisonments took place,

The mindless liberalisation of the inspection system as has been effected during the last 20 years will not promote sound labour market governance.
Simplifying the annual returns and self-certification systems weakens the already poorly placed labour statistical system regarding all variables especially industrial injuries
This is because of low reporting by firms to State labour departments and the latter to the Labour Bureau.
India has ratified ILO conventions, the Labour Inspection Convention, 1947 (convention 81) and Labour Statistics Convention, 1985 (convention 160) and these defects violate the conventions.

Government is in the process of framing the Vision@2047 document for the Labour Ministry to overcome these issues.
So against these tenets, the labour codes, especially the OSH Code, the inspection and the labour statistical systems should be reviewed.