Employment pattern in India since 1911

Abstract

The analysis of the long- term trends in the employment pattern has been a topic of great attraction for many researchers. Among the major pioneering contribut ors in this field, mention may be made of B.G. Ghate, V.N. Kothari, Daniel and Alice Thorner, and the Labour and Employment Division of the Planning Commission. B. G. Ghate ' s work was published in 1940, and it dealt with the analysis of the trends in the size and the industrial distribution of the working force for t he then area of India , covering a period up to 1931 . The analysis was accompanied QY a considerable insight into the nature and quality of the Indian census data on working force . Ghate is perhaps the first one to point out how the departure in the practice of enumeration of workers in the 1931 census had affected the operational comparability of the working force data of that census with those of the earlier censuses . His comments on the working force data of the 1931 census and the earlier censuses are so pioneering and important that one cannot fail to include them in one ' s own analysis of the comparability of the working force data from different censuses. The next important work to appear was that of V.N. Kothari, covering the period 1881-1951. This work was noted for two reasons first, it identified the expanding and shrinking sectors of employment; and, second, it took great pains to explain the reasons for the trends of employment in each of the important industrial groups in the light of the political, socio - economic and demographic history of India. Tije most important work covering the period 1881- 1951, undertaken on a larger scale, however, was that of Daniel and Alice Thorner . The study entitled "The Working Force in India, 1881-1951," is a monograph with five parts. The study is important, not merely in regard to the analysis of trends in the size and industrial distribution of the working force, but also in regard to an exhaustive critical examination of the comparability of Census economic data, 1881-1951. It also deals with the problem of reshuffling the numerous industrial groups of the earlier censuses into comparable industrial divisions or sub-divisions of the latest census. The work is specially noted for the exhaustive critical examination of the 1951 census data on working force. The study by the Planning Commission attempts a simple analysis of the employment trends during 1901-1951. It also includes data for 1941, estimated from the two per cent sample tabulation of the census data. The analysis contained in these studies was rather handicaped by the non-availability upto 1951, of the cross-tabulations of the working force data by other important characteristics.