World of Industries

The evolution of the working class in India has been direct outcome of the country's industrial development and a considerable increase in its population. This increasing number put a heavy pressure on land forcing many landless persons to seek alternative employment elsewhere. The British-induced land tenures implied high taxation and insecurity for the tiller of the soil which made them indebted. The growing indebtedness and the diminishing capacity of the land to sustain them, pushed them to nearby cities for urban employment. The number of such job seekers further increased on account of the devastation and disintegration of the cottage and village industries under the impact of competition generated by British imports. Thus, unlike the West, industrial labour in India has mainly been drawn from amongst the landless agricultural labourers. The immediate causes of this city - ward migration of the rural people have been : (i) increasing pressure of population on land on accountof the decline of cottage industries ; (ii) increasing number of land-less agricultural labourers which froce them to earn their livelihood elsewhere ;(iii) the ill-treatment of the high caste people towards the scheduled castes and other depressed classes, and the social disabilities from which these later people suffer ; (iv) family quarrels and worries ; and (v) indebtedness of the people. These confirm the views of the Royal Commission on Labour that labourers do not come to the cities for ots attraction or a betterway of life but economic pressures in the village force them to mover The Commission observes, "the driving force in migration comes entirely from one end of the channel that is the village end.