Abstract
The paper discusses the work of early Indian professional economists in the field of labour. They undertook wide-ranging studies of labour in factories, mines, and plantations as well as of the condition of rural and agricultural labour and of urban labour outside of industry. Between 1918 and 1930, a major body of work had emerged on Indian labour, with contributions by both Indian and foreign scholars. This work was mostly based on government data, but, in addition, and with telling effect, some scholars also conducted field investigations and came up with disquieting findings. The latter part of the paper examines the contributions of a British statistician-economist, George Findlay-Shirras, and of an Indian labour economist, Rajani Kanta Das. The former, despite some excellent work, was probably responsible for giving a misleading picture of rising agricultural wages, perhaps to suit the views of the colonial government. R.K. Das, through his extensive work on labour economics, before and during his service with the International Labour Organization (ILO), contributed much to the work of the Royal Commission on Labour (1931), but this went unacknowledged. Also, his work on plantation labour in India earned the ire of a British official in the department of industries and labour probably, for highlighting the negative role played by foreign (British) capital. Given his numerous substantive contributions to Indian labour economics, the paper concludes that R.K. Das should be given due recognition for his pioneering role in the development of labour economics in India.
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Notes
For a history of the Labour Bureau see: http://64.227.179.246/history-bureau
Undertaken in response to the claims of Dadabhai Naoroji and others, the Viceroy, Lord Dufferin, launched an “inquiry into [whether] the frequently repeated assertion ‘that the greater proportion of the population of India suffer from daily insufficiency of food’ is wholly untrue or partially true.” Despite the rather biased terms of reference for this internal inquiry, the results were disturbing and had to be suppressed for many years. See Shireen Moosvi: “Agrarian inequalities in colonial UP: The Dufferin inquiry, 1887–1888,” Social Scientist. January-February 2015, pp. 9–21.
For a discussion, see Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, J. Krishnamurty and Gerry Rodgers (eds): "India and the ILO in Historical Perspective,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.46, No.10, 05 March, 2011.
Reproduced in J. Krishnamurty (ed): Towards Development Economics, Delhi 2009, pp.19–52. Also see J Krishnamurty: “The Indian Antecedents of Disguised Unemployment,” Indian Journal of Labour Economics, January 2008.
V.G. Kale: “Economics of Education in India,” Journal of the Indian Economic Society, 1918.
See Daniel Thorner (ed): The Social Framework of Agriculture: Indian, Middle East, England, London 1967.
J.P. Srivastava, “Labour SSupply from Allahabad and Adjoining Districts”, Indian Journal of Economics, Volume II No 4, November 1919, pp. 676–688.
Gulzari Lal Nanda: “Labour Unrest in India,” Indian Journal of Economics, 1922, Vol.III, pt 4, PP.461–480.
Janet Harvey Kelman, Labour in India: A Study of the Conditions of Indian Women in Modern Industry, London, 1923.
Gladys Mary Broughton: Labour in Indian Industries, London, 1924.
See https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/women-in-the-law/a-woman-ahead-of-her-time/5105485.article. There are slight inconsistencies in different accounts of her life and work.
R N Gilchrist, The Payment of Wages and Profit Sharing, with a Chapter on Indian Conditions, University of Calcutta, Calcutta, 1924.
See Alexander Robert Burnett-Hurst: Labour and Housing in Bombay: A Study in the Economics of the Wage-earning Classes in Bombay, London 1925.
Margerat Read, From Field to Factory: An Introductory Study if the Indian Peasant Turned Factory Hand, Student Christian Movement, London 1927. She also published another book: The Indian peasant Uprooted: A Study of the Human Machine. Longmans, Green & Co, London 1931.
Raj Bahadur Gupta, Labour and Housing in India, Longmans, Green & Co, Calcutta, 1930. Radhakamal Mukherjee’s introduction in well worth reading.
Ahmad Mukhtar, Factory Labour in India, Annamalai University, Madras, 1930 and Factory Labour in the Punjab, Huxley Press, Madras 1929.
Morris David Morris, The Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India, A Study of the Bombay Cotton Mills, 1854–1947, California University Press, 1965.
P S Lokanathan: Industrial Welfare in India, Methodist Publishing House, Madras, 1929.
Reproduced in J. Krishnamurty (ed): Towards Development Economics, Delhi 2009, pp.107–122.
See G. Findlay-Shirras, Indian Finance and Banking, London, 1919, cover pages. Also available as an e-book: http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/g-findlay-shirras/indian-finance-and-banking-rih/1-indian-finance-and-banking-rih.shtml
S. Subramaniam, “A Brief History of the Organisation of Official Statistics in India during the British Period,” Sankhya, The Indian Journal of Statistics, Volume 22, No. 1–2 (January 1960), pp. 85–118. See in particular paras 74, 79 and 98.
For further details of his career, and of his publications see Who Was Who, 1951 – 1960. See also his obituary in Aberdeen University Review, 36 (1955—1956), 219. See also http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb231ms2795andgb231ms2876.
Not surprisingly, no similar effort was mounted in Bengal to set up a Calcutta labour office or to officially study wages and working conditions in the jute mill industry.
See Findlay-Shirras’ chapter in Hans Mayer, Frank Albert Fetter, Richard Reisch (eds) Die Wirtschaftstheorie der Gegenwart, Vol.I, Vienna, 1927 cited by Brij Narain in his Tendencies in Recent Economic Thought, Delhi, University of Delhi, 935, pp.3–4. Also Findlay-Shirras’ chapter on India in Walter F. Willcox (ed) International Migrations, Volume II, Interpretations, NBER, 1931, reproduced in http://www.nber.org/chapters/c5120.pdf.
See Government of India Finance Department, Resolution No. 1614, dated 24 October 1914, cited by S. Subramanian, “A Brief History of the Organisation of Official Statistics in India during the British Period,”.
Sankhyā: The Indian Journal of Statistics, Vol. 22, No. 1/2 (Jan., 1960) p.106.
The literature on the Datta Committee Report cannot be summarised here. The interested reader is referred to the following to get some idea of the reactions of contemporary and more recent scholars in India and abroad. See Arun Banerji, “Revisiting the Exchange Standard, 1898–1913, III – Rise in Prices: An Unsettled Controversy,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 37, No. 43, October 26, 2002, pp. 4455–4465; Jadunath, Sarkar, Economics of British India, 4th edition, Longmans, Green and Co. M C Sarkar and Sons, Calcutta 1917, particularly, pp.253–263; and Brij Narain, Indian Economic Life, Past and Present, Delhi, Low Price Publications, 1996 (1929 edition), Chapter VIII.
See for example Tirthankar Roy, “Globalisation, Factor Prices, and Poverty in Colonial India,” in Australian Economic History Review, Vol. 17, No. 1, March 2007, pp 73–94.
See K.L. Datta, Report on an Enquiry into the Rise in Prices in India and a Resolution of the Government of India Reviewing the Report: Resolution and Report with Appendices, Calcutta, 1915, Annex G, Para 8, p. 248.
Ibid.: Volume I, page 169.
For a fuller account of Das see J. Krishnamurty: “Indian Officials in the ILO, 1919-c 1947,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLVI, No. 10, 5 March 2010, pp.57–58.
See Rajani Kanta Das: “Woman Labour in India,” International Labour Review, Vol 24, 1931, pp. 376–397 and 566–572. Reprinted (partially) in J Krishnamurty, Towards Development Economics, Delhi 2009, pp. 127–153. Also see Rajani Kanta Das: “Child Labour in India,” International Labour Review, December1933-January 1934.
R.K. Das: Principles and Problems of Indian Labour Legislation, Calcutta, 1938, Preface, p.vii-viii.
For details see J. Krishnamurty: “Indians in the ILO, 1919-c 1947,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLVI, No. 10, 5 March 2010, pp.57–58.
This would have included material collected by the Indian branch office.
R.K. Das: Principles and Problems of Indian Labour Legislation, Calcutta, 1938, Preface, p.ix.
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This is a substantially revised version of a keynote address delivered by the author at the 62nd Annual Conference of the Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE) in Roorkee, Uttarakhand, during 11-13 April 2022.
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Krishnamurty, J. Pioneers in Indian Labour Studies, 1900–1930. Ind. J. Labour Econ. 66, 961–974 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41027-024-00475-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41027-024-00475-8