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CHAPTER IX, 
control over the non-pensionable subordinate establishment in matters 
of appointment, promotions, dismissals, leave, etc. In the case of 
company-managed railways, the agents are primarily responsible to 
their respective Boards of Directors, who enjoy extensive powers in 
administrative questions. In financial matters their powers are on a 
par with those exercised by the agents of state-managed railways and 
the budget demands of company-managed lines are subject to scrutiny 
and approval by the Railway Board. In establishment and labour 
questions, the Railway Board states it is not in a position to enforce 
its policy on the company-managed railways. It can suggest reforms 
and improvements, but the men employed on such railways are the 
servants of the companies concerned and, while it has been the 
custom for company-managed railways to give due consideration 
bo the suggestions of the Railway Board, there has been no 
uniformity of practice in the treatment of labour matters. There 
are factors peculiar to each railway which have an important 
bearing on the conditions of labour pertaining to that particular 
line. Among these are the length of the railway, the territories 
through which it passes, the climatic, ethnological and other 
features peculiar to those territories the intellectual and industrial 
progress made by the people living therein, the scope such progress 
affords for the satisfactory recruitment of railway labour and the other 
avenues of employment open to labour. Not less important are varia- 
tions in the nature and extent of the traffic available and in the earning 
capacity of one railway as compared with another. As an offset to these 
factors may be placed the natural tendency for each railway to be 
affected by any scheme of improvement in conditions on an adjacent 
line, a tendency strengthened by the workmen’s associations which are 
not slow to claim, and press for, the extension of similar schemes to 
their railway. The general working policy of the Railway Board, as a 
central controlling body representing the Government of India, acts 
as a co-ordinating force, while the Indian Railway Conference Associa- 
tion, to which we refer later, also makes its influence felt when labour 
questions affecting more than one railway are under concideration. 
Recruitment of Labour. 
We now proceed to a detailed examination of the conditions 
obtaining on Indian railways and of the problems to which they give rise. 
The supply of labour available locally is generally in excess of require- 
ments, except in outlying areas where the local supply is supplemented 
by immigrants from distant parts. Temporary labour required for the 
construction of new lines or on large open-line works is usually recruited 
locally or imported by contractors to whom such works are let out on 
contract. These workers, however, form only a small proportion 
of the great body of labour employed on railways. The main classes 
of employees engaged in the maintenance and running of railways 
may be divided into three groups, namely :—(1) labour employed in the 
engineering department on the maintenance of the permanent way ;