Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1850495947

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-233603

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: His Majesty's Stationery Off.

Year of publication:: 1931

Scope:: xviii, 580 S.; graph. Darst., Kt.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter XX. - Recruitment for Assam

Collection:: Economics Books

370 . 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

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