z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-04.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 212
212 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Now, Sir, the question that I would like to ask is, is this departure from the position taken in 1929 any way justifiable ? And I think it would be desirable if I begin by stating what was the position of the Congress Party in 1929 when this Bill was placed before the Central Assembly. Now, Sir, I have taken the trouble to hunt up and read the report of the Select Committee which was appointed by the Central Legislature to consider the provisions of the Bill which ultimately became the Act of 1929 and confining my attention to the two contestants, if I may say so, the bureaucracy, I use the terms which are familiar on the other side, the bureaucracy, on the one hand and the Congress Party on the other, what were the points of contention there when this Act of 1929 was on the anvil ? I find that the points of difference were these two. Government wanted that public utility services should be left to be defined by them at their discretion. They did not want to give in the Act itself a definition of what was a public utility nor were they prepared at the time to enumerate what, in their opinion, were the public utility services. They said that a public utility and its importance depended upon the circumstances of the case. It may vary according to times and circumstances. A service which may not be a public utility at one time may be a public utility at another time and they felt that in the interests of society as was conceived and understood by them it was necessary that the situation should be left in a flux undefined to be defined at the discretion of the Government. Now the Congress stood for two things at the time. The one thing it stood for was that nothing should be left to the discretion of the bureaucracy, that it could not be persuaded to bureaucratic purposes and therefore the Congress Party took the attitude that no discretion ought to be left with the Government. Whatever public utility was to be brought within the purview of section 15 ought to be stated clearly in the Act itself. The second position which the Congress Party took in the year 1929 when the Bill came up was this. They said that the category of a public utility was too large and that a strike should not be made illegal only because it related to a public utility serivce. The position that they took was that it should be confined to what is called “social security services”. That was the position in 1929. In this contest Government gave up on one point. They agreed that a public utility should be defined in the Act and therefore you will find, Sir, that section 2 of the Act, which is an interpretation clause, has got a definition of what is a public utility and you have got there a public utility enumerated, Government not having any discretion to add to it or to take anything out of it. With regard to the other position, namely, narrowing the category of service to which the illegality of the strike was to be confined, Government did not yield. Government said that their formula that it should be extended to public utility services must stand and the Congress Party did not succeed, but that does not really matter for my argument, because my argument is this that in 1929 the Congress Party stood for restricting the illegality of the strike to social security services. Sir, I want to read from the report of the select