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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APPENDIX IIL. 339 B.—SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTIONNAIRE. Letter No. L. C. 5 (1), dated Simla, the 7th April 1920, from S. Lal, Esq., 1.C.S., Joint Secretary, Royal Commission on Labour in India, to All Local Governments and Administrations excluding the North- West Frontier Province and Baluchistan. The Royal Commission on Labour is about to complete the first stage of its enquiry and the Chairman and Members feel that, while Local Governments and sthers have taken great care and trouble in the preparation of memoranda and written statements, which have proved invalusble, the information evoked by the lish of subjects circulated last year is in certain directions hardly sufficient to enable them adequately to discharge the terms of their reference. They would be greatly obliged, therefore, if the Local Government could supplement their evi- dence in two respects before the Commission completes its enouiry next cold weather and commences the writing of its report. 9. The Commission is required by its terms of reference to enquire into and to report on the standard of living of the workers. A full discharge of this part of its reference would involve the collection and preparation of statistics based on family budget enquiries on a scale which has so far been attempted only ‘in a few centres such as Bombay, Sholapur, Ahmedabad and Rangoon. No adequate statistics of the kind are available in regard to other important centres. It has sherefore been decided to lay the position before Local Governments and to ask for such data as it may be possible to provide by the commencement of next cold weather. The decision as to the material which can be produced in the time must rest with the Governments concerned and this letter is to be regarded in the light of a supple- mentary questionnaire asking for information in regard to the standard of living of the workers. The Commission does not wish to prescribe any particular procedure for securing this information but it feels that it may be helpful if Local Governments are given some indication of the lines upon which, in the opinion of the Commis- sion, a useful enquiry, practicable within the time, could be undertaken bv Local Governments. 3. The Commission fully appreciates the fact that a full enquiry on the lines of those recently conducted at Ahmedabad and Rangoon is out of the question within the time available, more especially as quch an enquiry would necessitate sonsiderable preliminary training of staff. Failing a comprehensive enquiry, whose results would be subject to scientific statistical treatment, the Commission would welcome the collection of particulars indicated by the schedule enclosed in regard to typical working class families, which would be useful for purposes of illustration when they come to report on matters referred to them. The object is to secure information regarding some poorer working families in order to supplement the in- formation that the Commission has gained as & result of its tour. “On a number of oceasions questions have been put to industrial workers designed to elicit informa- tion of the type contemplated in the schedule. But it is not easy in such matters for a large body like the Commission to obtain particulars of value or to test the in- formation supplied, and in any case the time at its disposal during this winter's tour has been insufficient to obtain all the information it would like to have in this direction. The Commission is therefore anxious to secure through the agency of the Local Governments evidence of the same character as it might itself have secured if it had had a much longer time at its disposal and had been able to obtain from a number of witnesses information of a somewhat intimate character regarding their manner of life. 4. The value of this enquiry will depend on the accuracy of the information collected and the representative character of the families selected for investigation. The Commission, therefore, attaches greater importance to quality than to quantity provided care is exercised in obtaining representative samples. The method of sampling is of the greatest importance and the smaller the number of budgets collected the more dependent is the result on the judicious selestion of the sample. The

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