No room for complacency Question of sustainability

Ahmed Patel’s return to the Rajya Sabha seat from Gujarat should be seen as a rebuff to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah as well as Shankarsinh Vaghela, who recently resigned from the Congress and was the BJP’s candidate for the same seat.

Their script did not work this time, thanks to two Congress members of the Gujarat Assembly rendering their votes for the BJP invalid by their acts of wrongdoing. The Election Commission acted promptly on a complaint by the highprofile Congress delegation led by senior leader P Chidambaram.

For Shah, whose political craftsmanship led the BJP to capture power in some states without even getting the people’s mandate, the defeat of his candidate, an ex-Congress man, in his home state is a setback to his (Shah’s) image.

While Patel’s return could boost the morale of the Congress cadre in the state amid squabbles in the party and lack of effective leadership, this victory should not lull the party leadership into complacency. With Gujarat going to the polls later this year, the Congress has so far failed to energise itself and present a formidable challenge to the BJP by exploiting the anti-incumbency factor against its uninterrupted rule. Can Congress Vice-president Rahul Gandhi deliver, is a question uppermost in the minds of political observers.

S K Choudhury Bengaluru Congress has imbibed unfamiliar virtues of toil and ground combat. These might help bring it down from its ivory tower.

The Patidars registered their disaffection with one cross vote, one reason why the BJP chief had to enter the local fray. His presence was a clear acknowledgement of the changed political atmosphere in Gujarat. It has helped pre-empt greater damage. The BJP has realised that in a crunch situation, the Opposition could find its lost coherence — something that augur wells for a democracy.

R Narayanan Ghaziabad With reference to the editorial, “Reform or entitlement?” (August 9), the reform and rationalisation of central labour laws to effectuate the Minimum Wage Bill across the formal and informal sectors is a bold move. Concerted effort and deliberations of policymaking bodies on wage anomalies and labour law regulations for long deserve mention here.

Nonetheless, the regulation to vouch for the Bill is far from the benefits accrued to the absorbed labour force, which has a structural variation in terms of socio-economic disintegration, for example, cost of living, expenditure bills and welfare access. An important concern: Will the Bill ease labour market rigidities and make it relatively an arbitrage-free market with respect to spatial variation and price parity? So, when the Bill comes into force, an informal sector worker is entitled to the benchmark wage. This is in opposition to a job in the formal sector or the government that offers “insurance” cover of personal and liability risks along with welfare to employees and their families.

If the reform espouses all-round development of the labour force, it is welcome and can build a bridge between the labour market structure, conduct and performance. Otherwise, the Bill remains an entitlement. A larger question is, if per capital income increases post implementation of the Bill, how long would it be sustainable given complexity of jobs, skill set and macroeconomic uncertainties.

Kushankur Dey Bhubaneswar