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