270 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
I should also like to submit that it was the desire of the House or of the Select Committee that a date should be fixed for the Bill to come into force. As my Honourable friends will recall, we had in the original Bill left the date for the operation of the Bill to the Provincial Governments. But we have departed from that procedure and we have now accepted the principle that this Bill itself should lay down the date on which it shall come into force; and the date as fixed in the Bill is the first day of January 1946. It is therefore quite clear that all administrative machinery that is necessary for the giving effect to this Bill must be brought into being within or before the 1st January, 1946 ; and I must confess my ultter inability to comprehend the possibility either of the Government of India or of the Provincial Governments being in a position to set into operation the machinery that would be necessary to give effect to the provisions contained in the two amendments. As I said, I have sympathy but the administrative difficulties are so great that I must at this stage oppose the amendment.
Prof. N. G. Ranga : May I make one suggestion, if it is agreeable to the Government-not otherwise ? In the first line, suppose we drop the words “or different managements” in the amendment proposed and merely say “or factories belonging to the same management” ?
- The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : I find difficulty in all that: I have paid attention to that.
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (Labour Member): Mr. President, I am not sure that those who have moved this amendment and supported it have much justification on their side. We always take as our standard measure the Conventions passed at the International Labour Conferences and the Honourable House will remember that the International Labour Conference in 1936, when it took up this question, fixed six days as the measure of holidays that ought to be allowed. Looking at the subject from that point of view, I am not prepared to accept nor can anybody say that the Bill as introduced falls short of the standard prescribed by the International Labour Conference. On my side I must also mention another difficulty. The Honourable House will
Legislative Assembly Debates (Central), Vol. IV, 2nd April 1945, pp. 2315-16.