As to the actual employment of Indians, nowhere has the principle been
more carefully applied that Europeans--a term which in this connection
must be taken to include Americans--are only to be employed when and so
long as no Indian can be found competent to perform the particular work
required. The proportion of Europeans to Indians works out to-day
approximately as 1 to 230, but this figure is in itself somewhat
misleading. Out of the total of 197 Europeans, no fewer than
seventy-five are the highly skilled mechanics who are still absolutely
indispensable as supervisors at the steel-smelting furnaces and the
rolling-mills. Work of this kind requires a powerful physique, long
experience, and plenty of pluck. One has only to look at the muscular,
hard-bitten Americans and Englishmen who stand round the furnaces to see
that they represent a type of humanity which in India is still extremely
rare. The Company have tried eighteen Indians, carefully selected, but
only three have stayed. The up-country races, physically more promising,
lack the training. It will take, it is believed, twenty-five years to
bring on Indians who can be trusted to replace Europeans in these
arduous jobs.
Nevertheless, in the steel-smelting furnaces there are only forty
European supervisors to 2000 Indian workmen, and in the rolling-mills
only thirty-five to 2200. In other departments much more rapid progress
has been achieved, and the results are already remarkable. Indians do
excellent work as machinists, cranemen, electricians, etc., and even in
the rolling-mills they do all the manual work. The best of them make
reliable gangers and foremen. In the blast furnaces there are only eight
Europeans to 1600 Indians, in the mechanical department only six to
3000, and in the traffic department only one to 1500. In two other
important departments it has been already found possible to place an
Indian in full charge. One of these is the electrical department, which
requires unquestionably high scientific capacity. Another is the coke
ovens, on which 2000 Indians are employed under the sole charge of an
Indian who seemed to me to represent an almost new and very interesting
type--a young Bengalee of good family, nephew to Sir Krishna Gupta, who
was recently a member of the Secretary of State's Council in Whitehall.
He had studied at Harvard, had worked afterwards right through the mill,
and had acquired the habit of organised command, which is still rare
amongst Indians. If Jamsheedpur may be not inaptly regarded as a
microcosm of India, in which the capacity of Indians for self-government
in a wider sense than any merely political experiment connotes is being
subjected to the closest and most severe test, it assuredly holds forth
high promise for the future.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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