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* Government’s Policy Towards Labour
Speech in Central Assembly
“I think I may say that whatever may be said with regard to the Government of India in the matter of labour it can be legitimately claimed that there has been a new orientation with regard to the attitude of Government in respect of labour,” observed the Hon’ble Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Labour Member, Government of India, replying to the debate in the Central Legislative Assembly (on March 16) on Mr. N.M. Joshi’s cut motion on the policy of the Labour Department regarding labour questions. Dr. Ambedkar said :
“Mr. Joshi has travelled over such an extensive field and raised so many points that I feel that it would be hardly possible for me to deal with each one of them specifically and to discuss what he has said and what I, as representative of the Labour Department, have to say in reply. Having regard to the inadequacy of time, 1 am bound to pick and choose such points as I think are necessary for me to reply to in the course of this debate.
Conditions Of Labour
Sir, Mr. Joshi started by making a general statement that the conditions of labour in India were extremely unsatisfactory as compared with conditions obtainable in the rest of the world. Sir, it is not my business to say from here that I dispute that proposition. Undoubtedly it is a fact. All that I want to say is this, that it can hardly be said to be the responsibility of the Government of India if the conditions are as unsatisfactory as Mr. Joshi has depicted them to be.
Sir, the conditions of labour in India are largely governed by the industrial development of this country over which this Government has
*Indian Information, April 15, 1944, pp. 410-13. [Legislative Assembly Debates (Central), Vol. 11, 16th March 1944, pp. 1187-91.]