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. CHAPTER XX.
tendency, already explained, to perpetuate itself. The aim of recruiting

should be to reach a point where, in effect, organised recruiting is un-

necessary. In other words, by making conditions sufficiently attractive,

the employer should reach the stage where, instead of having to go

out and induce recruits to enter his employment, applicants for em-

ployment approach the employer. As we have shown in an earlier

chapter, some of the important industries in India have passed through

the earlier stage of having to search for recruits to a position where this

is unnecessary. But apart from any other obstacles in the way of the

tea industry, the present system of control effectively prevents progress

in this direction, For the recruit, generally, has neither the knowledge

nor the means to go to Assam without assistance; as a matter of fact,

many of the fresh recruits to industry who go even to Calcutta and Bombay

receive some assistance to go there. Itis only in the case of Assam that
neither the employer nor any one else can assist the labourer who is
willing to migrate, except by the expensive and cumbersome expedient
of sending down a garden sardar to sponsor the recruit. Our proposals,
therefore, are designed, among other things, to facilitate the forwarding
to Assam of recruits who, in the recruiting districts, offer themselves for
employment. The essence of our scheme is that powers of imposing
control should be retained, but that actual control should be reduced
t0 a minimum. We proceed, therefore, to indicate, first, what we believe:
to be necessary in present circumstances and, secondly, the safeguards
which, in our view, should be retained by Government in the form of
powers to re-impose control, if necessary.

Free Recruitment.

First in importance, we would place free recruitment, using this
term, not in the wide sense of removing all control over the engagement
and forwarding of recruits, but in the more accurate sense of withdrawing
all special restrictions on the agencies for obtaining recruits. In other
words, we advocate that, in all provinces, there should be complete free-
dom to bring recruits to a forwarding agency and to engage them there.
The Assam employer should be left as free as any other employer to
select the agents whom he considers best fitted to obtain recruits. We
believe that he will still rely in the main on persons who have worked in
his garden, but he may find it advisable to secure recruits himself, or to
engage recruiters permanently resident in the district in which recruiting
is conducted. Further, if the attractions of tea garden life in Assam are
increased, the result should be that recruits will offer themselves at the
dep6t without the intervention of any intermediary.

Control over Forwarding.

We believe that, at least so far as the more important recruiting
areas are concerned, it is still necessary that there should be control over
the forwarding of assisted emigrants to tea gardens. Where this control
is required, it should, for the present, take the following form. Aggisted
recruits should not be forwarded except through a depét maintained by
the industry and in charge of a local agent appointed by the industry and