Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Bibliographic data

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 II. - Migration and the factory worker

Collection:: Economics Books

18 CHAPTER II, those who, for individual reasons, find it better to leave the village, for a time at any rate. The new world of industry offers a refuge to those who are anxious to escape from family conditions that have become intolerable, or from the penalties of the law, or from the more severe penalties with which the village visits offences against its social and moral sodes. Causes of Retention of Village Connection. These causes serve to explain the move from the village to the factory, and by applying them to conditions in different rural areas it is sasy to account for the main streams of migration. But they do not axplain the most striking element in this migration, which is the retention of the village connection. The reasons for this feature are complex and raise psychological issues. But, in our opinion, the chief cause is to be found in the fact that the driving force in migration comes almost entirely from one end of the channel, z.e., the village end. The industrial recruit is not prompted by the lure of city life or by any great ambition. The city, as such, has no attraction for him and, when he leaves the village, he has seldom an ambition beyond that of securing the necessi- ties of life. Few industrial workers would remain in industry if they could secure sufficient food and clothing in the village ; they are pushed, aot pulled, to the city. The Family and the Village. A contributory cause is the joint family system which, by link: ing the emigrant to the village and even to its soil, serves to keep con- nections alive in many cases. Moreover, the comparative scarcity of smployment for women and children in factories encourages the practice of leaving the family in the village, where their maintenance is more simple and less costly. In the perennial factories as a whole more than three-quarters of the workers are males over 15 years ; and the children form a small proportion of the remainder. On the other hand the village offers at least intermittent work for everyone, even for small children. Further, where migration has resulted less from the lack of land than from the precarious character of its yield, there are obvious economic advan- tages in retaining interests in it. Even where relatives have not been left in the village, the ties of generations are strong. To a large extent, [ndian life is a community life and the more individualistic existence inseparable from a city is strange and unattractive to the villager. o Contrast of Environment. Finally, an important cause of the desire of the factory workers so maintain village connections is to be found in the environment in which shey must live while employed in the factories. We deal with this later and merely observe here that no one who is familiar both with village sonditions and with the factory areas can be surprised that so few work- ars are ready to establish in the latter a permanent home. We do not Jesire to suggest that the village is always, or even generally, an idyllic slace ; but the average factory worker, contrasting the scenes in which he has to live with his memories of his native place, must welcome

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