The changes to the nature of employment in India are evaluated in the context of deregulatory labour reforms. A distinctiveness in the current government’s approach to labour (de)regulation is identified, locating it within the longer-term processes of informalisation, contractualisation and casualisation of work in the country. Contrary to the notions that such reforms create formal employment, they deteriorate the quality of jobs, and the nature of employment then being created can only be characterised as semi-formal. This is seen in the dissolution of the formal–informal binary as informality is increasingly incorporated into the formal employment.
