The vice president of the Indian Staffing Federation (ISF) has told Recruiter that the industry has “started moving in the right direction” towards staffing receiving more open acceptance from government as a valuable tool for competitive businesses.

Rituparna Chakraborty said: “Interestingly in India everyone acknowledges that staffing is an effective means of running a competitive and dynamic business, but mostly within closed doors.”

The ISF was launched in the summer of 2011, and Chakraborty said there was much room for growth and development in what is currently “an extremely fragmented market dominated largely by local ‘mom and pop’ shops”. She added that the governmental involvement will be key for the industry to secure progress in 2013, saying “the biggest challenge as of now is the legal and regulatory environment”.

“India has more than 100 labour laws, more than most other countries. Moreover, there is considerable overlapping of several statutory provisions. Variations in definition of words used in various labour laws causes a lot of confusion … basic terms such as ‘employed persons’ and ‘wages’ have been defined differently in the various labour laws. Hence, there is a need to move from multiple labour laws to a single labour code.”

• For more on India, see our Global Spotlight article, which also appears on p17 of January 2013's issue of Recruiter.