India’s problem isn’t restrictive labour laws but a failure to innovate—Making workers work harder won’t help

Beneath the gloss of finance and digitization, capitalism in India is an unfinished—and perhaps unfinishable—project: 79% of small, family-run manufacturing units in cities (and 94% of rural ones) are single-person ventures, meaning there is no way to separate profits from wages, or capital from labour. Unincorporated establishments that do hire outside staff pay employees less than ₹1,50,000 ($1,700) a year, on average.