Posted By Jay Joshi
The main problems in India are to do with:-

1) Health and Safety is seen a primarily a "Factories/Manufacturing" requirement--not much focus elsewhere

2)Occupational Health and Safety is a devolved subject enforced by the State Governments. Enforcement is often non-existent unless there is a disaster

3) The resourcing and professionalism of the enforcement bodies. When I refer to professionalism, I also refer to the degree of corruption etc. and the political interference at local level

4) The lack of an over-arching occupational health and safety law –what exists now is the Factories Act from –Even UK has repealed such legislation with modern over-arching legislation

5) The lack of protection for the construction industry workers who are largely unorganised in context of industrial relations and supplied through agents. They are often exploited and under-paid compared to the organised workers Manufacturing Industry


6) Where the government (whether central, state, municipal, district etc) is the client, there is too much bureaucracy on administrative aspects, but not enough attention paid to safety critical measures

7) The expectation and practice when it comes to occupational and public safety by the overall population and especially the educated population. (For example, use of motor cycle helmets is a legal requirement in a majority of Indian states, but very few enforce it and riders do not comply with the law). The ex-president of India, Dr Abdul Kalam has written that when Indians go abroad, they will comply with trafiic and other laws, but will not think twice about littering the streets, jumping red traffic lights etc in India.

8) There are several examples of world-class excellence in both private and state-run enterprises in India that have excellent safety records and also positive safety cultures second to none elsewhere in the world—For example any of the Tata group of companies, or Reliance Industries, Larsen & Toubro (L & T), L & T’s engineering construction division (ECC)to name a few. The majority of the British Safety Council Sword of Honour overseas winners are from India. The reason is that these organisations themselves realise that good health and safety in the long run pay’s off and is good for all the stakeholders.

India has the management skills and also the expertise to design and run their own courses—the only problem is that so far none of the top or other Management Institutes, such as the Indian Institutes of Management have identified the need to train existing and future managers in Occupational Health and Safety. If some of these management institutes have a reputation of being comparable to the top management institutes in the world, such as Harvard, I personally do not think India lacks the skills and resources.

I am sure that both the state-run and private sector companies can (some already do it) cascade good/best practice. However, Occupational Health and Safety id not seen as a priority by the central or state governments and it is not a popular election issue, despite India having one of the highest industrial accident rates in the world.

What is lacking is focus, both at professional and government level.