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* State’s Obligations to Labour
Presiding over the Seventh Labour Conference, which will in future be called the Indian Labour Conference, held in New Delhi on November 26, the Hon’ble Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Member for Labour, struck a balance-sheet of the State’s obligations to labour and urged legislation for raising Indian labour standards to the international level.
Taking stock of Government action on the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Labour and the ratification of I.L.O. conventions Dr. Ambedkar said there were actually only ten recommendations which were still outstanding, whereas India has yet to ratify 19 out of the 63 Conventions. “But”, the Labour Member pointed out, “this is due not so much to the unwillingness of the Government” but to “the rule which requires that a Convention must be adopted without change or modification. It should be possible”, remarked the Labour Member, “for the I.L.O. to draft a Convention so as to provide for stages.”
Welcoming the gathering, Dr. Ambedkar Said :
“I am sure we are all happy to see that peace has come. It has cost us six years of hard struggle involving incalculable destruction of life and property, not to mention the hardship and the misery which all had to undergo in order to win victory. It is a matter of great relief to us that we have no longer before us the problem of war and of war effort which required us not only to make things ready, but to make them ready at the shortest notice. Thank God that all our worries are over. But you all know that, though the problems of war are no longer there to trouble us, there are before us problems of peace, such as the reconstruction of the social and economic life of the people. These problems affect India no less than they do other countries of the world.
- Indian Information, December 15, 1945, pp. 684-88.