NEW DELHI: Sixty-six years after India attained independence, the country could finally lose a relic from the British Raj that was invented by Scottish scientist James Watt in the 18th century in order to estimate the output of a steam engine – horsepower.The Narendra Modi-led government ’s proposal to amend the 1948 Factories Act includes far-reaching changes beyond their obvious reform objective of making it easier for firms to hire people in formal jobs.The new factories law on the anvil will redefine “a week” to cope with rising power shortages, lift the bar on women from working in several factory operations and kill all references to the British electricity unit of horsepower to belatedly complete India’s switch to the metric system, officials familiar with the matter said.In keeping with the new government’s drive for cleanliness in its offices, the law will raise the fine on all employees who spit outside designated ‘spittoons’ from the once-princely sum of Rs 5 to Rs 100. If the proposed law passes parliamentary muster, entrepreneurs will no longer have to inform authorities about the ‘total rated horsepower installed in their factory’ 15 days before they commence operations.Instead of ascertaining the right horsepower context for their operations (there are at least five different formulae to calculate different forms of mechanical, electrical and boiler power in horsepower terms), they can simply inform the factory inspector about the ‘kilowatts of power’ their manufacturing unit will run on.The horsepower legacy embedded in India’s law governing factories passed in 1948 has inexplicably survived even as the country made a conscious decision in 1954 to switch to the metric system for measurements from the British imperial system of ounces, pounds and horsepower.For the record, one horsepower equals nearly 746 watts. A thousand watts make up a kilowatt. Though the factories law was last amended 27 years ago, the need to change horsepower clauses to kilowatts slipped through the cracks. But this was not the only necessary change that slipped through.The provisions barring the use of child labour in factories still rely on a 1938 Employment of Children law passed by the British government , though India had adopted a new Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act to replace it in 1986.The definition of a week – or as the law puts it, “a period of seven days beginning at midnight on Saturday night or such other night as may be approved in writing for a particular area by the Chief Inspector of Factories” – will also be amended.As per the present definition, the factory inspector allows all factories located in an area to observe a day other than Sunday as the weekly holiday. “We are proposing a new definition of a week to cope with the power shortages across the country,” said a senior government official, explaining that the change would enable individual factories within an area to determine their own weekly holidays. “If factories located in one area observe different days as a holiday, we hope to moderate power demand across the week,” added the official, who did not wish to be identified.Although trade unions may oppose the aspects of the new law that raise the maximum ‘overtime’ from 50 hours to 100 hours a quarter, they are likely to welcome the clause that mandates all factories provide their workers “cool and safe drinking water during hot weather”, as opposed to the earlier provision of mandating cool drinking water in factories employing over 250 people.Besides, with women’s participation in the labour force dipping sharply over the past decade, the new law governing factories could help improve opportunities for them. Instead of explicitly barring all women from doing any work “near or on machinery in motion” or any work involving hazardous processes, the new law proposes to prohibit only pregnant women and young persons from such work.“We are suggesting this in order to promote gender equality at the workplace and have got a recommendation to this effect from a special task force on women and child development to make these employment restrictions applicable only for pregnant women, persons with disability and youngsters below 18 years of age,” the official said.