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CHAPTER XVIII,

unfavourable to disputes than with machinery for their settlement.
It is precisely here, in our view, that Indian industrial organisation is
weakest. We believe that an important factor at work in creating
industrial unrest in India is the lack of contact which too often exists
between employers and employed. There are employers who, by special
efforts, have established reasonably close touch with their workers, but
they ave exceptional. In practically every centre and every industry*
the lack of contact and understanding is evident. In the interests of all
concerned, we urge that every effort should be made to bridge the gulf.
An immense amount of thought and toil has been devoted to surmount-
ing the technical, financial and commercial difficulties in the way of in-
dustrial development in India. But it will fail to secure the results it
deserves unless much more attention is given to the difficult sphere of
human relationships. Weakness in this direction has already produced
serious effects, and the outlook in some of the centres we visited was
menacing. Unless a vigorous effort is made to effect an improvement,
the development of large-scale industrial enterprise is likely to be difficult
and precarious.
Differences of Race.

The lack of contact to which we have referred may be traced
to several factors in the Indian industrial system. In the first place,
it is almost universally true that the management and supervision of
industry is in the hands of men not only of a different class but also
of a different race from those of the workers. Many of the firms which
control the larger industrial establishments are British, and a still larger
proportion of concerns are under British, American or other foreign
management. Even where the control and management are Indian, it is
the exception for the management and the workers to belong to the same
race. We are referring not merely to the differences created by caste
or religion ; it is rarely the case that the workers and their masters belong
to the same big division of the Indian nation. Indeed, we believe that
Ahmedabad is the only one among the larger industrial centres where the
bulk of both the employers and the employees are drawn from the
same part of India, and it is significant that in Ahmedabad there is
greater understanding, if not sympathy, between employers and employed
than is usual elsewhere. In Bengal industry is mainly in the hands of
Europeans and, to a less extent, Bengalis and Marwaris, while the workers
are mainly drawn from up country. In Bombay the workers come
largely from Maharashtra and the Konkan, while the employers are
mainly Parsis, Gujeratis and Europeans. In Jamshedpur the control
of policy rests mainly in Bombay, over a thousand miles away, and the
managing staff at the works is mainly American and British. In the
coalfields the control of policy rests with various Calcutta firms, and we
do not know of any case where the manager belongs to the same race
as the workers. Burma perhaps presents the strangest phenomenon of all,
for here both employers and employed are mainly drawn from across

* We are not dealing here with plantations in which strikes are rare. These
are discussed separately.