340 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
referred to by the Honourable Mover have to be dealt with by the Government of India, it is incumbent on the Government of India, as in duty bound to frame its policy in such a manner that the policy shall benefit labour in general and not any particular class of labour.
Now Sir, my Honourable friend mentioned that the Government of India maintains various classes of allowances and salaries for different classes of its own employees. I confess that I am painfully aware of that fact but what I would like to ask is this—who is responsible for the gradation which one sees now in the scale of payment either of basic wage or of dearness allowance or of gratuity or any of the perquisites which the employees working under the Government of India are receiving today. I have no hesitation in saying that the fault entirely lies with the leaders of labour. Here we have got the Railwaymen’s Federation. Any one who studies the policy of the Railwaymen’s Federation, I think, will agree with me that it has always taken a parochial view of its own interests. The Federation happens to be in control of a strategic service on which the essential life of the community depends and they use that position for the purpose of coming down to the Railway Department and insisting that certain privileges shall be given to them. I may also say that they get certain Members of the Legislature interested in their case and there develops a partisan spirit which is blind to all other interests and concentrates itself on securing certain special privileges for railway workmen alone. The railwaymen, although there is no open declaration to that effect, maintain that they must always be in a leading position with regard to any other class of employees of the Central Government. If the Postal Department is given something which happens to equate the scale of wages of the postal employees with the railway employees, the railway employees immediately become dissatisfied and they say that owing to the margin of privilege which custom, usage or their position has enabled them to secure they must have a further increase, so that their privileged position is maintained. This sort of thing is going on and the position of (lie Labour Department has become completely difficult. My Honourable friend maintains or rather sugggested that the Labour Department was not establishing arbitration boards as it should do but what is the advantage of appointing adjudication boards for specific cases, for specific service each case being dealt with in isolation without