4 - World War II, Tripartism, and a National Welfare State for Industrial Workers

Summary

By the eve of World War II, nationalist leaders and industrialists alike were concerned about unregulated industrial competition among regions. A national tripartite structure of industrial relations was thus initiated at the beginning of the war. War-time political re-alignments, including Quit India, Indian Communists’ support for the war efforts, as well as the Labour Party’s influence in the UK war cabinet, changed the context for negotiating social security. Dr B.R Ambedkar, who became Minister for Labour on the Viceroy’s Executive Council in 1942, pushed an all-India agenda of social security for industrial workers. This chapter charts the agreement by representatives of employers and workers to a contributory model of sickness insurance within the new structure of tripartism. This was inspired by Beveridgean policy development in Europe during the war but was ultimately confined to a more Bismarckian focus on industrial labour. On the eve of independence, an accommodation between labour and capital helped enforce a floor in labour market competition within India and paved the way for sickness insurance to be enacted in 1948 as part of India’s new industrial relations regime.