Publish or Void: The State Cannot Enforce What It Has Not Made Knowable, but That Alone Will Not Raise Wages

Knowable Law Is a Duty, Not a Growth Strategy

TAN holds that any rule the state wants to enforce must be published in one searchable place and that a rule not published there should be unenforceable. We hold, just as firmly, that this will not by itself raise India's wages.

Why the Guarantee Is Sound Start with a

small manufacturer in Ludhiana. A notice arrives citing a circular she has never seen. She may be told that ignorance is no defence. But that old maxim rests on a bargain: the citizen must know the law because the state has made it possible to know.

The Supreme Court has long recognised this. Harla v. State of Rajasthan (1952) rejected secret law. B.K. Srinivasan (1987) stressed that subordinate legislation must reach the public it binds. Union of India v. Viraj Impex (2019) tied a law's operation to publication in the Official Gazette.

Manish Sabharwal's proposal extends this logic from the gazette to the working reality of modern regulation, including the more than 25 kinds of administrative instrument that he says employers face. Other democracies show that this can be done.

The US, the UK, the EU, Singapore and Australia all maintain public legal registers. The idea also targets a real source of discretionary power. When a rule is hard to find, the official who knows it holds an advantage over the citizen who does not.

Publication shifts that balance without asking anyone to be more virtuous.

Where the Argument Claims Too Much Mr

Sabharwal's larger claim is that low wages stem from excessive and inconsistent regulation, while land, labour and capital are not the binding constraints. Here TAN disagrees and readers should know that he co-founded a staffing firm with an evident interest in labour regulation.

That does not make him wrong and his case must be judged on its merits. It does call for a close look at the claim. His half-acre arithmetic shows that India has enough area. It does not show that land is usable, with clear title, at a viable price.

A third of the workforce in employed poverty, on his figures, may show a surplus of workers without showing a surplus of skills. An aggregate financing ratio says little about whether a small firm can get credit. His China comparison also cuts awkwardly.

China's per-capita income is about five times India's after near-parity in 1991, yet few would call its regulatory system a model of published, predictable rules.

The Strongest Objection Unions and

some labour economists fear a different danger. In a largely informal economy, they argue, the threat of criminal penalty is one of the few things an employer fears. Take it away, void every unlisted rule and workers lose protection while wages stay flat.

That fear is serious, but it runs together two separate reforms. Decriminalisation asks how severely a breach should be punished. Publish-or-void asks whether an obligation is known. A published safety rule is easier for a worker, a union or a court to invoke.

So the sensible course is to publish everything, keep firm penalties for serious harm and give departments a fixed deadline to list existing rules so that no protection lapses by clerical accident.