74 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
know the points which are troubling his mind. With regard to the other question which he raised, namely, that in his mind there appeared a certain discrimination between the rates we were paying under the War Injuries Ordinance and the rates we proposed to pay under the present measure, I fear he is labouring under a misapprehension because, as I tried to make out, the object of this measure is really to equalise the position of those who are covered by the War Injuries Ordinance and of those who are going to be covered by the present measure. As I pointed out, on examination of the rates we offered to the war injuries victims, we found that those who drew Rs. 24 and above only got relief and those who drew Rs. 24 and below got compensation. And what we propose to do now by this measure is to give compensation to those who stand above Rs. 24. Therefore, my Honourable friend will see that far from creating a position which will be called discriminatory, we are really equalising the position of all workmen to which both these measures are going to apply. I quite appreciate the point that my Honourable friend, Mr. Miller, made, namely, that this measure is restricted to a certain type of workmen or certain classes of workmen who are defined in clause 5. That is quite obvious from the provisions of the Bill itself. But, as I pointed out, having regard to two circumstances, firstly, that it is not possible for Government to undertake the liability of paying compensation to all workmen and, secondly, having regard to the fact that any scheme of insurance which Government can put forth must be administratively workable, it follows that Government cannot spread itself out to cover all sorts of workmen because, as I said, it would be too much of liability for Government to take and the scheme will become administratively unworkable. In order that we may run the insurance scheme, it is quite obvious that we must be able to locate an employer on whom we can definitely place the liability and from whom we can recover the premium. In the case of general population it is not possible to locate someone on whom this liability could be imposed and from whom the premium could be demanded. That is certainly the reason why we have been required to limit the scheme to certain classes of workmen who have been defined in clause 5. My Honourable friend, Mr. Miller, said that we have given no justification for confining our scheme to the classes of workmen who have been defined in clause 5. Some of the answers which I could