RECRUITMENT FOR ASSAM. 
373 
persuasion and propaganda. The law should be designed to regulate 
merely assisted recruitment, and assistance should be defined 80 as to 
include nothing more than the giving of tangible assistance (z.e., money 
or some concession having a monetary value) in order to induce a person 
to emigrate. Misrepresentation which results in emigration will, of 
course, remain punishable under the ordinary criminal law. Further, 
we propose later to provide an important additional safeguard against 
misrepresentation by securing that the emigrant who is recruited by such 
means be repatriated without delay at the employers expense. 
Scope of the Act. 
The Act should apply to those provinces in which the present 
Act is in force, but the Government of India should retain the power 
to extend it to other provinces. We do not consider, however, that it 
should be possible to control recruitment within Assam itself. The 
movement of labour from one district of Assam to another cannot be 
regarded as emigration, and we are not in favour of making it possible to 
restrict such movements. The new Act should make it possible to 
extend control to recruitment for any work in Assam, but in present 
circumstances we see no justification for control except in the case of 
tea gardens. The only contingency which would make such control 
necessary, would be the recruitment of labourers for other work with a 
view to their early transfer to plantations. 
Abolition of the Assam Labour Board. 
We turn now to the agencies responsible for administering the 
System of control. We have already indicated some objections to the 
Present constitution of the Assam Labour Board, but it is not proposed 
bo pursue this question in further detail, because we consider that the 
Board has outlived its usefulness and recommend its abolition. We 
fecognise that the Board and its officers deserve a share of the credit for 
the great improvements which have taken place since its inception, but 
those improvements are due in large measure to the tea employers acting 
through their own principal recruiting organisation, the Tea Districts 
Labour Association. The Board, in fact, owes much of both its weakness 
and its strength to its affinity, through the bodies electing its members, 
With that Association. The Board, in addition, served a useful purpose, 
during a period when reforms were being attempted, by providing a link 
between the industry and the central and provincial Governments. 
The main difficulty in the existing system is that the Board, which is 
responsible for the prevention of irregularities, exercises with provincial 
Sovernments an overlapping control in the recruiting areas. but has no 
authority after the emigrant has reached Assam. 
Supervision of the Emigrant. 
As we have already stated, there are three stages in the emi- 
8ant’s progress. Until now, attention has been concentrated almost 
entirely on the first stage, namely, up to the emigrant’s despatch from his 
district, and over this stage there has hitherto been overlapping control.