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CHAPTER XX,
life and their responsibility for the chronic scarcity of labour; but it
should be recognised that one of the important causes is far from being a
discredit to the industry, namely, the fact that many of those who serve
it are able to leave it for a more independent existence.
Advantages of Migration.
Quite apart from the economic advantages which the develop-
ment of the tea industry confers on India as a whole, we are satisfied
that migration to Assam for work on the tea plantations deserves en-
coutagement in the interests of labour. In any large scale migration,
some immigrants are bound to find that they have made a change for the
worse and, in the past especially, many must have regretted going to
Assam. There is still considerable room for improvement in condi-
bions generally ; bus for the great majority of the immigrants the change
is for the better, and for some it is an avenue of escape from desti-
tution and even servitude. We met no one familiar with conditions
both in Assam and in the recruiting areas who wished to discourage
migration. It is to be feared that some of the opponents of emigration
into Assam were interested in preventing labour from strengthening
its position in the recruiting areas. Having endeavoured to examine
the question from both ends, the source of the labour and its desti-
nation, we are satisfied that the labourers generally improve their condi-
tion by emigration. The better features of existence on the gardens
are many, and there are none of the worse features that cannot be found,
in an aggravated form, in some of the recruiting areas. Nor should the
effect of migration on those left behind be overlooked. Attention has
already been drawn to the question of the pressure of population in
the Report of the Royal Commission on Agriculture, and we would
merely remark again that the mobility of labour is the greatest safe-
guard against the continuance of depressed conditions in particular
localities and perhaps the most effective means of breaking down the
vicious systems of bond-service, to which reference was made in a
previous chapter. Under the kamiauti system in parts of Bihar,
and the vette and khambar: systems in the north of Madras (to mention
two examples of practices which we understand are not confined to these
localities), the labourer borrows money from a landlord under a contract
bo work until the debt is repaid. The debt tends to increase rather
than to diminish, and the man, and sometimes his family, is bound for
life. Serfs are even sold and mortgaged. Such systems have now no
legal sanction, and in Bihar special legislation has been adopted in the
endeavour to eradicate the abuse; but it continues to exist. It will
be readily appreciated that serfs who can escape from such a system
and agriculturalists oppressed in other ways are ready to go to Assam,
and that there are those who are vigilant in the endeavour to prevent
them and anxious to discredit Assam by any means in their power.
Restrictions on Recruitment.
We are now in a position to examine in more detail the system
of official control which regulates the recruitment of labour for the
