WELFARE AND SOCIAL SECURITY OF WORKERS 343
a fact-finding Committee in order to take a survey of the entire condition of workers in this country. So far, we have received 34 reports from this Committee on 34 different industries besides one general report giving a bird’s eye-survey of all the specific reports that have been made. Of these reports, 18 have been already printed and the rest of them are with the printers. Apart from obtaining this general survey of industrial condition of workers, the Government of India have appointed a Special Officer, Professor Adarkar, to prepare a report on the health insurance of workers in this country. As I said, we have not only an objective, but we have a programme, and we are now in possession of the facts on which any plan of social security could be based. The next step now for the Government of India is to decide how to plan for social security. As the House will know there are at present two views. One view is that we should go stage by stage, as other industrial countries will, dealing with each case of insecurity specifically and building an administrative machinery for the purpose of giving relief in respect of that case of insecurity. There is another school which is more or less influenced by the Beveridge Plan and which proposes to have an over-all policy of security covering all cases of insurance at one shot. I do not wish to approach the issue in any matter and to say as to which plan would be better. The Government of India propose to appoint a Committee or such other body as it may be advised to tell the Government of India, after examination of the reports that have been made as to the method by which they should proceed in this matter whether they should proceed stage by stage or whether they should take up such ambitious plan as the one adumbrated in the Beveridge report. This survey, which I have given which I am afraid is all too brief, I have had no time to elaborate or to develop, will convince the house that the complaint made by the Honourable Mover of this Cut Motion that the Executive council is complacent is indifferent and has taken no steps to provide for the welfare and security of the workers is entirely unfounded and I hope that the House will not accept the Cut Motion that is moved by him.
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