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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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter XXIV. - Statistics and administration

Collection:: Economics Books

STATISTICS AND ADMINISTRATION. 447 employment of substitutes is not entered in the books, and other factors boo often introduce errors of importance. Further, the employer is only able to give particulars of the individual when he is actually earning money. There is at present little record of periods of absence, and the record of a man’s earnings for a month or two may afford an entirely misleading indication of his average annual income. Finally, even if accurate information regarding the earnings of the individual could be secured from the employer’s books, it would in itself have a very limited value. We believe that in some cases employers might find such information useful as a measure of the success of any endeavour to raise the standard of living by increasing regularity of employment, but it would be of practically no value as a measure of the standard of living itself. This depends on a large number of factors lying outside the knowledge of the employer. It depends in the first instance on the income, not of the individual, but of the family, and even that income affords little indication of the measure of comfort. In order to secure this, it is necessary to have full information regarding the com- position of the family and the various claims on its income. Income and Expenditure. Information regarding the income of the workers must ordinarily be associated with information regarding its expenditure, and both are best, collected by means of family budget enquiries. Here again we find that comparatively little progress has been made. Enquiries of value have been conducted by the Bombay Labour Office in Bombay, Ahmed- abad and Sholapur and by the Labour Statistics Bureau in Rangoon. In some other centres a certain amount of work has been done. As a rule this has been directed more towards measuring movements in the cost of living than towards giving any full indication of the standard itself. One or two of these smaller enquiries have been successfully carried through. In a number of cases enquiries have been instituted by students of economics, social workers, officials and other agencies, without any clear recognition of the difficulties involved and without much regard bo statistical principles. The two commonest errors were the failure to give adequate training to the investigators of the basic facts, and in- difference to the vital factor of sampling. As a result of these and other mistakes, a fair amount of honest effort has been misdirected. Training of Investigators. Anxious as we are to see a great extension of economic enquiries bearing on the standard of living, we must emphasise the difficulties in the way. The collection of statistical material from the workers on any extensive scale requires special qualifications. For an untrained investi- gator to descend on the workers’ homes and collect such particulars as he can in a casual visit 18 valueless. The preliminary difficulties have been faced already by the Bombay Labour Office, and they have evolved a technique which can be studied with advantage by others Who propose to embark on similar enquiries. We recommend that, where- ever possible, investigators should undertake a course of training with

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