Labour relations About seven per cent of the 400 million-strong workforce were employed in the formal sector (comprising government and corporates) in 2000 contributing 60 per cent of the nominal GDP of the nation. The Trade Unions Act 1926 provided recognition and protection for a nascent India In 1997, India had about 59,000 trade unions registered with the government of India. Of these only 9,900 unions filed income and expenditure reports and claimed to represent 7.4 million workers. The state of Kerala at 9,800 trade unions had the highest number of registered unions, but only few filed income and expenditure reports with the government of India. The state of Karnataka had the fastest growth in number of unions between the 1950s to 1990s. In 1995, India had 10 central federations of trade unions, namely (arranged by number of member unions in 1980): INTUC, CITU, BMS, AITUC, HMS, NLO, UTUC, AIUTUC, NFITU and TUCC. Each federation had numerous local trade union affiliates, with the smallest TUCC with 65 and INTUC with 1604 affiliated unions. By 1989, BMS had become India's largest federation of unions with 3,117 affiliated unions, while INTUC remained the largest federation by combined number of members at 2.2 million. The largest federation of trade unions, INTUC, represents about 0.5% of India's labour force in organised sector and unorganised sector. In 2010, over 98% of Indian workers did not belong to any trade unions and were not covered by any collective bargaining agreements. Labour relations during 1950–1990 A number of economists (e.g.: Fallon and Lucas, 1989; Besley and Burgess, 2004) have studied the industrial relations climate in India, with a large number of studies focusing on state-level differences in India's Industrial Disputes Act. Some studies (e.g.: Besley and Burges, 2004) purport to show that pro-worker amendments to the Industrial Disputes Act have had a negative impact on industrial output and employment - as well as on poverty. However these studies have faced serious criticism on the grounds that the data used are misinterpreted, and that the results are not robust with respect to standard econometric tests. Between 1950 and 1970, labour disputes nearly tripled in India, from an average of 1000 labour disputes per year, to an average of 3000 labour disputes per year. The number of labour relations issues within a year peaked in 1973 at 3,370 labour disputes. The number of workers who joined labour disputes within