Vol. 10 · pages 166–170

28 * Government’s Policy Towards Labour Speech in Central Assembly “I think I may say that whatever may be said with regard to the Government of India in the matter of labour it can be legitimately claimed that there has been a new orientation with regard to the attitude of Government in respect of labour,” observed the Hon’ble Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Labour Member, Government of India, replying to the debate in the Central Legislative Assembly (on March 16) on Mr. N.M. Joshi’s cut motion on the policy of the Labour Department regarding labour questions. Dr. Ambedkar said : “Mr. Joshi has travelled over such an extensive field and raised so many points that I feel that it would be hardly possible for me to deal with each one of them specifically and to discuss what he has said and what I, as representative of the Labour Department, have to say in reply. Having regard to the inadequacy of time, 1 am bound to pick and choose such points as I think are necessary for me to reply to in the course of this debate. Conditions Of Labour Sir, Mr. Joshi started by making a general statement that the conditions of labour in India were extremely unsatisfactory as compared with conditions obtainable in the rest of the world. Sir, it is not my business to say from here that I dispute that proposition. Undoubtedly it is a fact. All that I want to say is this, that it can hardly be said to be the responsibility of the Government of India if the conditions are as unsatisfactory as Mr. Joshi has depicted them to be. Sir, the conditions of labour in India are largely governed by the industrial development of this country over which this Government has *Indian Information, April 15, 1944, pp. 410-13. [Legislative Assembly Debates (Central), Vol. 11, 16th March 1944, pp. 1187-91.]

150 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES hardly any control, and therefore it is of no use accusing the Government of India if conditions are really unsatisfactory. Mr. Joshi said that as a result of the examination of the conduct of the Government of India, he found that the Government was guilty of neglect, of inaction. It was timid and whatever it did was on an inadequate scale. I should like to say that in passing this judgment, Mr. Joshi failed to make a distinction which, I think, is a very necessary one to make. There are labour problems on which there is no dispute. There are labour problems which raise no financial consequences. Now what I would like to know from Mr. Joshi is this: Whether on any labour problem on which there was no dispute between the parties concerned, or which did not raise any financial question, the Government of India had not taken action with all the necessary promptitude that the urgency of the case required ? Sir, I have no hesitation in saying that in all such cases, where there has been perfect unanimity or an approximation to unanimity, and where there has not been the involving of any financial burdens, the Government of India has acted with all the promptitude that is due from it. Nawabzada Muhammad Liaquat Ali Khan : There was no need for action in such cases. Dr. Ambedkar : Very much action is necessary. Wartime Measures Then Mr. Joshi said that the conditions of labour during the war had suffered great deterioration on account of the fact that Government had granted certain exemptions from the Factories Act with regard to the time of working and they had introduced a limitation of labour’s right to strike on requiring 15 days’ notice. He also referred to the fact that Government had introduced the National Labour Service Ordinance and the Technical Personnel Ordinance by which people were compelled to stick to certain jobs notwithstanding their unwillingness to do so. I am glad to say that Mr. Joshi had the fairness to admit that in the midst of war such limitations were justifiable, and I would say on my part that wherever any complaint has been brought to my notice with regard to the operation of these wartime measures, I have taken the promptest action to rectify the grievance. I shall give only one instance. I remember Mr. Joshi raised a point that the power given under

151 GOVERNMENT’S POLICY TOWARDS LABOUR the Ordinance to the employer to prosecute the employee was harassment of the labourer. I readily accepted the point and I remember we issued an amendment to the Ordinance to remove the power from the hands of the employer and to hand it to the Crown Prosecutors. Sir, as I said, I cannot deal exhaustively with these matters but I could sum up the whole situation by saying this, that when I examine the wartime legislation of the Government of India, which undoubtedly has the effect of restricting the liberty of labour, I think two new principles have emerged from it. The first is this : that the Government of India for the first time has taken upon itself the responsibility which it never did before of fixing the conditions on which a labourer may be employed. I think this is altogether a new principle which had no place in our labour legislation so far, and I am sure that this principle which has found its place in wartime legislation will be given a permanent place in the labour legislation of this country. The second important principle which this wartime labour legislation contains is the principle of compulsory arbitration. Sir, I think my friends, Mr. Joshi and Mr. Jamnadas Mehta, will allow me to say that I have some personal experience of labour. I have known and seen the wasting efforts that labourers have made by going on strike in order to obtain certain advantages from their employers, and I think I can say without exaggerating the matter that I know hardly of a case where the workers, after a long, arduous, painful, wasting struggle, extending over months together, had ultimately to surrender to the employers and go back on their old conditions or conditions much deteriorated. Sir, the provision contained in Rule 81 of the Defence of India Rules, which gives the Government the power of compulsory arbitration, has been to my mind a matter of the greatest benefit to labour. There are very few cases, so far as I know, where this power, when it has been adopted, has not given labour what it was struggling to get. There are very few strikes, so far as I know, which have not ended successfully in favour of labour. The complaint which Mr. Joshi makes with regard to the provision contained in section 81 is that we had not employed Rule 81 in each and every case. His contention, so far as I have been able to find out, is that Government is not willing always and in every case, where labour has raised a dispute, to apply this section.

152 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES Sir, I have great sympathy with that point; but it is obvious that the contention of Mr. Joshi cannot be accepted. With qualification we could not accept the position which Mr. Joshi has taken up, that is to undertake to apply this rule in every case, the moment a trade union notifies its intention to go on strike, because its grievances have not been met. An Honourable Member : Why is this right being refused to India when it is not refused in the case of other countries ? Dr. B.R. Ambedkar : There is no compulsory arbitration there, if I may tell my Honourable friend. Dealing with the point, as I said, we cannot accept the principle that the moment a trade union sends a notice to the employer or threatens a strike we should at once proceed to apply Rule 81. We must have the opportunity, we must have on our shoulders the responsibility, of examining whether the grievances are genuine ; otherwise the question of strike may be a matter of day-to-day work, to which I am sure nobody in this House will be prepared to lend countenance. The other point which Mr. Joshi raised was with regard to the inadequacy of the Labour Department in order to deal with the problems of labour. His contention was that there should be a separate and exclusive Labour Ministry to deal with questions of Labour, that there ought to be officers appointed—one for reporting on the old age pension, another on sickness insurance and the third one on some other urgent labour problems. Now, Sir, it is not my business to controvert what Mr. Joshi has said; in fact, personally, I have a great deal of sympathy with what he said. Expansion Of Labour Department All I wish to say on the point is this : that if we take the circumstances in which we are living and carrying on administration, it cannot be said that the Department of Labour, as it is constituted, is inadequate to deal with the problems arising. Sir, the first thing to be noticed is that the Labour Department is no longer an appendix to some other Department. At one time it was an appendix either to the Commerce Department or an appendix to the Industries Department. It is no longer so. It is a separate and an independent Department. It is true it is not an exclusive Department. All the same let nobody argue that it is an independent and a predominant department in the group of

153 GOVERNMENT’S POLICY TOWARDS LABOUR Departments which are controlled by the Honourable Members in charge of them. Then, Sir, we have recently considerably expanded the Department. Before 1942, we had only one Under-Secretary to deal with labour matters in the Labour Department. We have now one Deputy Secretary and two Under-Secretaries in the Department. In addition to that we have a Labour Adviser, we have a Labour welfare Adviser—Mr. Nimbkar—we have eight Assistant Labour Welfare Advisers. We have appointed a statistician in our Department in order to collect all labour statistics, and in addition to that we have a very large staff, in fact, a very considerable staff to deal with technical training, which, I am sure, is a matter of great benefit to labour in general. An Honourable Member : A good case for a scrutiny committee. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar : Then, Sir, with regard to the question of appointment of special officers, this is not a matter about which the Department had no knowledge. As a matter of fact, we had made a beginning by appointing a special officer to report on sickness insurance. He was Professor Adarkar. It was our wish and our proposal to go on appointing similar officers to deal with similar problems, to make reports and to suggest means and methods for carrying this proposal into legislation. But what happened was this. Last August, when the Tripartite Conference met, we placed before them the report for consideration. The Committee and the Tripartite Conference unanimously passed a Resolution that the Government of India should also appoint a Committee to consider social welfare measures and also to suggest ways and means by which the principle of social security could be applied to working classes of India. To that resolution, I am glad to say, we immediately gave effect, and constituted a Committee which has now been working on that subject. Obviously, Sir, it would have been very wrong for the Department to have gone on appointing other officers to report on separate subjects. We had to wait till the report of the Committee was placed before us. I can assure my Honourable friends that the project which we have of appointing special officers to make investigation into special problems is not abandoned, but will be taken up when the report of the Committee is made available to Government. Sir, I think, that