Industry
The Famine Commission of 1880 and 1901 emphasised the need of industrialising India as one of the means of combating the problem of famine. A change from the indifferent attitude of the Government towards industries seems to have commenced in the time of Lord Curzon, at whose instance a separate Imperial Department of Commerce and Industries was created in 1905. The Swadeshi Movement also gave rise to considerable enthusiasm for the industrial regeneration of India. But the Government again reverted to the old laissez-faire policy, when in 1910 Lord Morley, the then Secretary of State for India, who was suspicious even of creating a Provincial Department of Industries, sent a despatch to the Government of India discouraging attempts at the development of industries. The war of 1914-1918 strikingly revealed India’s industrial poverty and made the Government realise clearly the importance of industrialization not only from the economic but also from the military point of view. After the Government of India had issued Rules for the Defence of the country, which authorised the Executive to control supplies of all kinds and to organise the resources of India, a Munitions Board was established in February, 1917. Although the primary functions of this Board were to control the purchase and manufacture of Government stores and munitions of war, it indirectly gave a great stimulus to industrial development in India by supplying information and advice, by placing orders with Indian firms and in some other ways.
In response to Indian public demand, the Government appointed an Industrial Commission in 1916 to examine the possibilities of industrial development, to find out new openings for Indian capital in trade and industries and to recommend means of Government encouragement to industries. The Industrial Commission presented its report in 1918, and recommended to the Government the initiation of ” a policy of energetic intervention in industrial affairs “, the establishment of Imperial and Provincial Departments of Industry, the organisation of scientific and technical services, the provision of greater facilities for industrial and technical education, a change in the policy of purchasing stores, the grant of technical and financial aid to industries, the encouragement of industrial co-operation, and the improvement of transport and freight facilities. Government accepted these recommendations and tried, to some extent, to carry them out in practice. After the reforms, ” industries ” became a Transferred subject. The fate of Indian industries is closely linked with the tariff policy of the Government, which we will now try to review briefly.
Fiscal Changes
The stimulus to industries during 1914-1918 was temporary. Soon after its termination, foreign competition appeared again and the need of protection for Indian industries was felt. As a matter of fact, Indian public opinion had demanded a revision of tariff policy for about half a century before the war, and this demand revived under post-war conditions. Although this subject was excluded from the deliberations of the Industrial Commission, the Montagu-Chelmsford Report supported India’s claim to determine her own tariff policy. The joint Select Committee on the India Bill recommended the grant of fiscal autonomy to India. In response to a resolution for full fiscal autonomy, moved in the Council of State in 1921, the Secretary of State sent a despatch, dated 30th June, 1921, accepting this principle. A Fiscal Commission was appointed in the same year to determine the nature of this policy. This Commission recommended the adoption of a policy of “discriminate protection “, the claims of the respective industries to protection being determined by a Tariff Board. The Government accepted this recommendation and a Tariff Board was appointed in July, 1923. Acting under the instructions of the Government, the Board examined the claims of many industries, and protection was extended to the iron and steel, cotton, paper, sugar, salt, match and other industries. Certain important changes in the tariff were afterwards introduced by several Acts, the most important of these being the Indian Tariff (Ottawa Trade Agreement) Amendment Act, 1932, which gave effect to the tariff changes necessitated by the Trade Agreement made between the Government of India and His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom at the Imperial Economic Conference held at Ottawa during July-August, 1932. These agreements, which came into force from Ist January, 1933, provided for certain margins of preference on a number of goods on importation into India from the United Kingdom or from a British Colony. According to some Indian politicians and commercialists, they benefitted British trade with India at the cost of India’s ” wider interests “, as Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru puts it in his Autobiography.
Acts
The modern conditions of life have made the regulation of labour an almost indispensable duty of the State in India. The agitation carried on by Lancashire and Dundee trade interests led to the appointment of a Factory Commission in 1908, which after carefully investigating conditions in factories of different kinds recommended certain important changes. These were accepted in the main by the Government and were finally embodied in the Factory Act of 1911. The Act limited the working hours of children and women to seven and eleven respectively and provided for a compulsory recess for half an hour in the midday in all factories. The old limits (9-14) for the age of children was retained, but arrangements were provided to get their age properly certified. Particularly in the case of textile industries, the working hours of children were limited to six and of adult males to twelve. Certain new provisions were introduced about the health and safety of the industrial workers. The ferment in the labour world after 1919 made further changes in the conditions of labour in India necessary, and the incentive for these came this time also mainly from outside. The Draft Conventions and the Draft Recommendations of the International Labour Conference at Washington (1921) were introduced into the reformed Indian Legislature and became law in 1922. This new Act widened the definition of factory; abolished the old distinction between textile and non-textile factories; raised the minimum age for a child employee from nine to twelve, and the maximum age from fourteen to fifteen, provided the children should not be employed for more than six hours a day, and fixed compulsory rest intervals; restricted the work of all adult males to eleven hours a day and sixty hours a week, with a rest interval of one hour after six hours’ work and a regular weekly holiday, and made regulations regarding payment for overtime work. But the provisions of this Act applied only to factories and not to all industrial workers. It underwent slight amendments in 1923 and 1926 to ensure better working. A Workmen’s Compensation Act was passed in 1923 providing compensation for certain kinds of injury, or death, of industrial workers of various classes.