Contract labour act in India: a pragmatic view

In order to surpass the stringent regulations, the industry sector in India is largely resorting to contract labourers, who are governed by an Act. A primary survey carried out in an industrially developed state in India, reveals that several stipulations made in the Act are not followed. The workers felt that collusive agreement between the labour inspector, and the entrepreneur (or the contractor) has aided the violation of law. We consider a game theoretic model of Marjit, Rajeev and Mukherjee (2000) to show why such an act is optimal and examine whether any provision of reward for the inspector independent of fines collected by him would help to protect the law.