ALB India Brief Vol. 1

Cricket - Third Twenty20 International - Australia v India - Sydney Cricket Ground - Dec. 8, 2020 India's Virat Kohli REUTERS/Loren Elliott

(By Elizabeth Beattie) The captain of India’s national cricket team, Virat Kohli, recently found himself the subject of heated discussion after he took paternity leave during his team’s tour of Australia (not that India suffered too much as a result; in fact, it prevailed 2-1 in what is being hailed as one of the greatest Test series of all time).

And while Kohli is enjoying his newfound fatherhood — he recently updated his Twitter profile to call himself a “proud father” — he has become the face of a fierce debate around paternity leave rights and labour laws in India.

Avik Biswas, partner at IndusLaw, says the paternity leave taken by Kohli – who might have the second-most high-profile job in India today – struck a chord for a number of reasons.

“To begin with, the profile of the sportsman himself was a factor in the hullabaloo together with the importance of the Australia tour that he was scheduled to miss a part of,” Biswas says, adding this was further fueled by the fact that there haven’t been many recent examples of high-profile sportsmen taking paternity leave.

Also controversial was the tidbit that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) may not have a formal paternity leave structure in place — although as Biswas points out, it currently isn’t legally obligated “whatsoever” to have one.

And this is where the crux of the debate lies — while women are granted maternity leave, India’s employment legislation does not mandate paternity leave in the private sector. Male government employees may take paternity leave, although this is far from generous.

But this is set to change. While it is yet to become law, the Paternity Benefit Bill, 2017, which mandates paternity leave of 15 days across all sectors has been introduced in Parliament.

According to Biswas, India currently has over 100 state and 40 federal legislations regulating various aspects of labour across all sectors.

“Given the sheer quantum of the legislations, it often becomes challenging for companies to be consistently compliant especially when they have operations in more than one state,” he says.

In order to simplify this, India has consolidated the majority of existing labour laws into four Labour Codes, which are expected to make compliance easier. While these have been passed by Parliament, it not currently known when they will come into effect.

While the political process may be dragging somewhat, regardless, there is already something of a cultural shift afoot when it comes to paternity leave for fathers.

“The expectation in the market is that a paternity leave requirement will be statutory law in the very near future,” Biswas says, noting this has led to there being something of cultural change around paternity leave for male employees despite there being no obligation to do so.

“The key contribution to making paternity leave a norm and a legitimate expectation is undoubtedly the progressive, modern and pragmatic outlook of an employer — apart from statutory requirements of course,” Biswas says. And if India’s working men find themselves receiving paternity leave starting from this year onwards, they might have a certain combative cricket captain to thank.

For foreign businesses in India, 2021 appears to have gotten off to a rocky start.

Days after Indian and Chinese troops had a “minor face-off” on their shared border, tensions between the two Asian giants continue to run high. In January, a memo from China’s ByteDance revealed it is drastically cutting the size of its India team, following India’s decision to retain its ban on TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps over concerns of compliance and privacy. Those 59 apps were initially banned in June; another 118 apps were banned in September, and so far, no further decision on these has been reached yet.
While the climate is challenging for Chinese companies, they’re not the only ones finding it harder to do business in India. An India trader group representing millions of brick-and-mortar retailers told Reuters it has received government assurance that changes will be made to foreign investment rules for e-commerce, which could push players like Amazon to restructure ties with major sellers.

And speaking of Amazon, its erstwhile partner Future Retail has approached the National Company Law Tribunal to seek approval for its $3.4 billion asset sale to Reliance Industries. Amazon is trying to block the transaction after alleging that Future violated certain pre-existing contracts.

In the meantime, U.S. electric carmaker Tesla is expected to encounter hurdles of its own as it launches in India, although it may be well-placed to capitalise on the Indian government’s green ambitions.

D&I is becoming increasingly important within the legal industry. The Coca-Cola Company recently launched one of the most rigorous programs for outside counsel diversity so far, while 130+ top law firms received a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s latest Corporate Equality Index according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, major Australian law firm Allens was the victim of a high-profile cyber attack, which compromised commercial-in-confidence documents, AFR Weekend has revealed.
Over in the UK, self-employed barristers in England and Wales are facing “extreme” hardships due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, a recent survey from the Bar Council has found.
Also in the UK, Dentons has launched a redundancy consultation process, with more than 80 roles at risk, according to The Lawyer.

The National Law Review has five handy tips to help you get paid on time.
Lawyers Weekly explores the transformative role technology is playing for firms during the pandemic.
Tight budgets don’t have to mean unhappy staff, and Law.com has ideas to boost morale.
The Financial Times argues in favour of kindness in the workplace.
Need a way to banish stress? The Harvard Business Review has plenty of tips for making mindfulness easy.

Japan’s AMT is set to add foreign lawyers to equity partnership; banking, funds, tech company counsel top list of highest-paid in-house lawyers in Singapore; Reed Smith grows its office in Singapore with six lawyers from BCLP. Also, have you read our State of the Market reports of Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia yet? And don’t forget that submissions are open for the ALB Employer of Choice 2021 and ALB Firms to Watch (India) 2021 listings.

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