Since independence the government has striven to adopt wage fixation policies with regard to public sector organised labour. Initially the role was discharged by the judiciary and a while later by a tripartite machinery - the wage boards. However, the setting up of the Bureau of Public Enterprises in the early 1960s signalled a shift to greater centralisation. Despite the bureau's existence as a 'supra-bureaucracy', its attempts to impose wage standardisation and salary restraints, but for a brief period during the emergency years, proved by and large ineffectual.
