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this is the outline of the historical development of the labour regime and 
the everyday lives of the coalminers in the jharia coalfield.

Work and Time: The Everyday Lives of the Jharia Coalfield Mazdoors, 
1890s-1970s.

A [remarkably] large size of the labouring masses in the Jharia coalfield  
invested their gruelling labour ‘time and power’, blood, perspiration and 
lives in ensuring the memorable and priding achievements [viz. sinking pits, 
digging quarries & inclines and, securing a huge number of coal raisings ] 
at a lower cost of per unit of labour . The industry was from the beginning 
‘labour intensive’ (more than sixty percent of the cost of production was on 
labour).
The size of the labouring masses was around ten thousand during the early 
years of the decade of 1900’s. It rose sheerly to one lakh plus by 1920-21. 
Thereafter, it shrank a little during the period of depressed coal prices 
(1930-34), during the following decades it rose to 1.25 lakh plus in 
1938-39, 1.5 lakhs (1942), 1.24 Lakhs (1944-45), 1.34 lakhs (1951), 1.23 
lakhs (1969) and 1.37 lakhs in 1971 .
It comprised the mazdoors largely of those social groups like, the small 
tenants, dwarf landholders, landless labourers, bonded labourers as well as 
craftsmen of more or less similar sort of socio-economic background.  Most 
of them amassed from neighbouring bastis (such as Chandankyari, Baliapur, 
Tundi, Govindpur, Topchanchi, Baghmara, Nirsa, Chas, and Purulia blocks of 
Manbhum district); and nearby districts such as, Hazaribagh, Bankura, 
Bardhman & Santhal Pargana in the early phase of the colliery working . They 
were, however, accompanied by a small proportion of “mining community” who 
came from Raniganj coalfield or were in some way linked to the Raniganj 
colliers . A sizeable labouring poor hailed from the 1910s and the 1920s 
onwards, from the far distant areas such as, the districts of Gaya, Monghyr, 
Patna, Sahabad, Gorakhpur, Allahabad, Pratapgarh, Mirzapur, Naurangi, Raipur 
and Bilaspur (CP); while some other came from the ‘states’ of Punjab, 
Orissa, Madras (Andhra Pradesh) and Bengal (Mednipore). They clearly 
outnumbered the adjacent workers by the 1950s. A number of second generation 
collieries Mazdoors began to enter into the mining work from the 1950s and 
60s  .
Most of them (60% plus) had to work at underground work places of inclines 
and shaft mines, popularly known as Sirmuha and Khadan. These were dark and 
lit only by kupbatti (dhibri) till the 1920s, in the later decades by 
lantern and the 1960s onwards by caplamp (along with a few electric bulbs) 
carried by miners. Rest of the Mazdoors had worked in quarries and at 
surface work-as wagon loader, sale-picker, earthcutters boilers, 
chanuk-drivers, construction workers, electricians, etc.

They had to adjust to the painstaking working and living conditions 
prevailed in the coalfield. These conditions were a part of the 
all-encompassing mining regimes, which also included the time-regime. 
Mostly, they had made innovative, creative, emollient and enduring efforts 
adapting to the regimenting situation, i.e. time regime so that they could 
carry their wage work on in the collieries for securing physical and 
generational survivable as well as fulfilling socio-familial obligations. 
Notwithstanding, some working population had resigned. Their following 
folktales (?) give me insight into their experiences and acts of adaptation 
to the condition of work and time regime.

I here intend to investigate the pattern of adaptation of the colliery 
Mazdoors to the working-time regime in particular, during the period of the 
1890s-1970s. It involves these enquiry into the following aspects of the 
colliers’ lives. They faced what form of work-time routine, and the ways of 
its imposition?  How did they experience the work routine? What were their 
conception of work time which mediated their strategies of organising work 
time? How did they respond to the work time regime? What kind of pattern did 
emerge of those attempts of adaptation between the 1890s and the 1970s?
             The scholars have analysed in different ways the issue of 
‘adaptation’. The employers and their representative scholars have largely 
approached the issue in terms of a matter of labour supply and the problem 
of work discipline. According to them, the labouring people – who were 
predominantly agriculturist associated with non-mining natural inclination 
and habits – had to cope up with the time discipline/production rhythm. 
There pertained opposition between the two forms of time orientation viz. of 
the employer on the one hand and the mining community on the other. The 
latter could not fully synchronise with the mining tempo. It posed problems 
to the growth of mining industry.
	This above discussion had nothing to do with the questions such as, how did 
miners conceive & experience the time regime, and interact with & respond to 
it.
	The ‘critical theory’ approaches the issue of adaptation in a different 
way. The former regards it as a structural issue. The status of miners as 
agriculturists would not be as central here as the separation of miners from 
the means of work/production, as well as the structure of authority 
organising the economy (including labour relation and production process). 
It is the capitalist who owned means of work and, dominated the structure of 
authority organising the economy.  The issue of adaptation is located on the 
structure of relationship between the capitalist and the labourers. The 
former is constantly on the search of ways (for expanding capital and its 
profit) to drive up the work day in length and intensity – which of course 
is contrary to the ‘needs of human beings to have time for themselves, for 
rest and for their own self development.’ Thus there has been a 
contradiction in the orientation regarding the time of the capitalist on the 
one hand and the labourers on the other. And the latter has to cope up with 
the situation.
	Thus, the study of the structural adaptation of labourers to time regime is 
also a study of the structure of labour relation and response of workers to 
the organisation of means of work and the organisation of the economy in 
general .
The popular literature on this matter usually links an act of adaptation to 
the ‘conflicting orientations of employers and the labourers’. And they just 
stop here.  E.P Thompson in his essay suggested that if the industrial 
society has to mature, it would have to change the habits of labourers. The 
question that has not been raised is following: if the working classes have 
to survive with dignity and comfort, they will have to resolve the 
structural contradiction. And the issue of adjusting to the institution of 
work time routine is also linked to the workers’ responses to the authority, 
commanding the organisation of economy. I will here attempt to study the 
adaptation process by linking it to these concerns/questions. If the 
responses of the majdoors happened to be of more than one kind, What was the 
nature of tie-in between them, specially in ‘revolutionary manner’ on the 
one hand and ‘conservative manner’ & ‘compromising way on other’?
I have divided the period of my investigation into three sections. One, from 
the 1890s to the 1920s; 2nd from the 1920s to the 1940s; and 3rd from the 
1940s to the early years of the 1970s.

                                                       I

The labouring poor were brought in or/and arrived colliery primarily for 
‘wage work’ in order to fetch cash money for subsisting themselves and their 
families in the coalfield or/and in their villages . Some of them were 
service tenants of mine owners cum zamindars for example, in Bhowra (Eastern 
India Coal Company), Jealgora(East India Coal Company), Raniganj Coal 
Company, etc .
           They got themselves employed at the large numbers of mines, 
fluctuated between 200 plus around 1910, 424 in 1944/45, 279[1969], and 327 
in 1971 . The mines were of a size employing a few dozens miners to those 
employing some thousands of workers .
        They could be classified into four broad categories on the basis of 
their spatial and temporal engagement with the colliery-work uptil 1920s.
1. Sedentary family Mazdoors- the miners who settled in the coalfield and 
lived largely in the Dhowrahs provided by mine owners/Malik. Some of them 
also lived in on rented rooms. Contractors largely provided such rooms. Some 
other erected their huts of mud and thatch. Some miners lived in their 
Bustees.
2.Regular urban commuters- from adjoins Bustees.
3. Regular single male colliers or Regular rural urban Mazdoors- both from 
adjacent and distant areas.
4. Seasonal rural urban Mazdoors- both from neighbouring as well as distant 
areas. They were different from those Mazdoors who used seasonally to go 
back to their villages but regularly revert to coalfield.
                They could ostensibly go at work at the time they wished in 
the morning, and could leave at any time . The usual working day at majority 
of mines happened to be the entire period in a day when sunlight was 
available because, the electricity was available at maximum at 50 collieries 
even by 1925 . One chief Engineer in Bhowra colliery noted:
“The absence of strikes prior to the 1920 was because miners and their 
families were allowed to work when they please, and to come up & down as 
they chose”.
The form of miners associated with this practice of working had primarily 
been piece rated miners such as, coalcutter, loaders, trammers, railway 
mistress, wagon-loader, etc- who constituted a great majority of the world 
of miners .
            Nevertheless, they in practice faced the structure of working 
time routine, set by ‘exacting mechanism’ of employers. It was to suit 
latter’s sense of demand of coal and production pattern of industry itself.  
The mines happened to lower down their working pace during the rainy season.
            During normal season, employers expected from miners the 
utilisation of their labour time ‘at most’. The ‘coercive socio-physical and 
economic’ mechanism of extraction of labour-time was installed, like tea 
gardens in Assam. It was the lower rung of the supervisory authorities - 
under both sarkari and thekadari system that used to drive the miners to 
almost whole the day that they used to be there .
The labour contractors used to recruit labouring poor from contiguous and 
distant areas. They received commission (around 8-14%) on each coal-tub cut 
by miners under them. That’s why, they, even if not working as mining sirdar 
, used to drive their miners as long as possible in a day and week and 
season that miners happened to be in the coalfield.
They deployed lathaith/pehalwan for this purpose.  Some of them were also 
local zamindars such as zamindar of Mahalbuni, Tetulia etc who provided 
labouring people to Bhowra colliery.  Sardars used to drive colliers from 
Dhowrahs into the coalmines. It began to be practised more frequently when 
night-work had been started at some big collieries in the decade of the 
1910s and when working of some big shaft mines expanded.
                The engrossing and exploitative ‘labour economic’ and 
respective epistemological element of exacting mechanism  were manifest in 
the ‘mode of compensation’. The latter included two matters. One was a level 
of payment. Second was a form of paying. This was firmly rooted in the 
mercantilist conception of or approaches to labour economy i.e. the labour 
time and the level of earning of workers were inversely proportional. 
Employers continually explained the so-called practice /habit of 
‘absenteeism’ of miners in above terms.  It was expressed in the fixation of 
wage rate during 1900-1920.  The wage rate and consequent an average earning 
of miners during this period rose at maximum by 100%. This happened largely 
during the period (1914-18) of boom in coal trade. While, the same decades 
witnessed a rise in prices (of rice a subsistence food stuff) by 150%.  
Thus, the real wage /real income of ‘landless miners’ had virtually suffered 
from the decrease. This was the case when colliery owners were crying 
against the inadequate supply of miners, and coal industry had been 
expanding.
               The miners had, thus, faced probably multiple working time 
routines. The latter varied between mines especially big and small mines. It 
was also seasonally differentiated. There was notable unlikeness between it 
ostensible and ‘implementational forms’ .

They responded to it in more than one way. The piece-rated miners usually 
“worked (in boisterous & fitful ways) between 12-16 hours or 18 hours in a 
day and sometimes some of them were found working more than one or two whole 
days at underground work places” . Some of them used to work regularly 12-16 
hours in a day for six-seven, eight or ten days, then returned back to their 
rural home for a few days .
Chief Inspector of mines Annual report noted in 1904:
“…Even in normal time the Dehatis would not work regularly. Some of them 
worked for six or seven days at a stretch and then returned to their home 
for a week and rest. And others who came from nearby village stayed for a 
day in which they spent eighteen hours working underground.”
The proportion of above type miners, in the total strength of workers was 
however declining towards the 1920s. The miners from the immediate bastis in 
the Manbhum district, who were convincingly predominant till 1910, largely 
practised this kind of work rhythm. They remained only around 36.7 percent 
by 1921.  Regular rural urban commuters as well as seasonal rural urban 
labourers practised this sort of working time. Some of them at this time 
used to come for earning some amount of ‘cash money’ and could not revert to 
collieries unless and untill the sense of desperate need of cash money 
further beckoned . E P Thomson noted a similar sort of working practice 
followed by British labouring masses in the 16th, 17th & 18th centuries . 
But a large number of such miners would regularly revert to work in colliery 
with this form of intervals .
              The sedentary  working population also used to, frequently, 
not work on weekly payday, and rest & celebrate ‘work free-time’ on the day. 
Some of them extended this free time for one or two days further following 
the payday.  This resembles the working rhythm of the Bombay textile workers 
. The owners repeatedly bemoaned about the difficulty of securing miners on 
the day of payment, when the colliers used to go to bazaar after receiving 
their wages. I am not informed whether employers attempted to physically 
bring workers back at work at these times? It was evidenced that owners used 
to take help of local zamindars and their own pehalwan for ensuring the 
regular attendance of labourers. The distant immigrant miners and the 
service tenants were ‘at most vulnerable’ to the “mafiacist animalistic 
feudo- capitalist” exacting mechanism of labour time.  In fact, in some 
cases even the colonial administration had critically remarked on this form 
of functioning of industrial relation. Colliery owners and labour 
contractors had vociferously defended the activities of their 
lathaiths/pehalwans.
The structure of time routine had at this time not consisted provision for 
“paid leave” or “ formal leave” or sick leave. Some of the absences from 
work or “ free time” of the miners in the coalfield could, thus, not have 
strictly been “ voluntary absence” from work. M D Morris analysed with this 
term the issue of work rhythm of textile mills workers in Bombay.   
Notwithstanding, the above finding about the “working pattern” of miners and 
its “ reinforcement on the structure of working time of employers, yet, 
stood at its place.
The mining classes designed the length of “workday” in relation to the 
stretch of week/ month or spell of workdays; they had planed to work in the 
colliery or stay in the coalfield. But this was also influenced by some 
technical factors.  The ‘mining work’ was by inherent dimension, ‘fitful’ in 
its character. It was by and large dissimilar to the working on ‘mechanical 
power driven machines.
Everyday the miners especially piece rated worked at a stretch of workday 
gratifying their “sense of enough coal extraction”, or/and making them feel 
physically and mentally exhausted. In other words, they cut and loaded an 
amount of coal, seemingly adequate for their “everyday sustenance”. One 
miner reported to RCL in 1930: “Unless he works 12 hours plus in a day, he 
could not fetch the cash earning required for his daily need”.  The 
extraction of coal was done by numerous gangs/Dangles.  Each dangal was of 6 
to12 colliers. It included mulcuttas, loaders, trammers, mining sirdars etc. 
  The dangal of mulcuttas & loaders were predominantly ‘family-gang’ . The 
latter included the male, the female and the children.  The latter two 
social groups were predominantly concentrated in work of coal loading 
alongside of mulcuttas. Usually male members cut coal, while Kamins gathered 
‘cut coal into a basket usually of 80 bl (80 pound=36 kg). The Kamins then 
laboriously carried out basket on their head and put the coal into either 
‘tubs’  kept at some distance from working faces, or up to bullock cart. 
They sometimes, carried them on head at the surface. A pair of mulcuttas and 
loaders was found cutting and loading coal on an average, in normal 
condition, 2 to3 tubs  in a day. Some miners owing to all those technical 
impediments, sometimes, could not secure even  ‘one tub’ of coal though 
worked on so ‘long workday.  They had to extract and load ‘full tub’ of coal 
either one or more and could not go out with half tub or so. They had, thus, 
to synchronise with this condition and the nitty-gritty of process of 
production everyday at the work place.
They would make breaks at the working sites for several activities such as 
lunch, chabbena, water, smoking biri, tambaco, natural calls etc.  During 
the night work, most miners went through some moment of sleeping.  They 
would converse /joke, sing/ hum pipe, among themselves even in course of 
coal cutting and loading . L.Barnens in her fieldwork noted:
“The women workers often narrated with joy ‘the work they did below ground, 
the people they worked with, the members of their gangs and how they used to 
sing and work’.  She collected one folktale- “young miner used to take in 
flute below ground and that he plays music, and women would stop work (?), 
and sing and dance, so no work was done. Hence, bosses stopped the women 
from going down the mine”.  However, one must be skeptical to the face value 
of this reporting. Unlike 2nd one, the former does not show the 
contradiction between work and singing.
One engineer, almost two decades latter lamentably transcribed about working 
practices of miners in these words “they work a little, [sing a little], 
smoke a little and joke a little.  It was also an example that mining 
community ‘emolliented/mitigated and internally negotiated the time routine. 
  I am not informed whether some contestation happened over these issues 
between employers and “actual producers”. At the working site it was the 
gang headman /gang sirdar who worked out the plan, direction and pace of 
extraction in combination with the gang members. Gang sirdar supervised the 
work process and worked along side other miners.
The Kamins  and children, as loaders, were relatively free/ uninhibited 
/untied to come & go, work as long they wished, or not at all in the family 
gangs.  They carried their breast-sucking babies below ground, and created 
temporal space for taking care of them. After the child had finished 
breast-feeding, they worked as a loader along side the parents, and Kamins 
could take care of them.
The Kamins used to return to their villages for the period of child bearing 
and rearing. Santhal women loaders interviewed in 1930 revealed:
“they often absented themselves for 6 months or one year at the time of 
childbirth. After this, they could return to the mines &take up employment 
again”.
Thus, family colliers and Kamins in particular could combine production & 
reproduction /familial tasks in the collieries at this time, as in the pre 
colliery days.
Thus, their practice of working time seems characterized by orientation of 
function/production-task, sense of cash money necessity as well as, the 
orientation conditioned by mental and physical –human capacity & “scope of 
its utilization”, and socio-cultural obligations. It could also be 
transcribed “an orientation of sense of concrete-time” in Postan's words.
The desired amount of raising/ or necessity of “cash money” on the part of 
miners had manifested in more than ‘one’ linear form. One, which regarded it 
in correspondence with “an average basic necessity” of working people of 
social group- the Santhal, the Bauri, the Rajwar, the Ghatwal, the Beldar, 
the Mushahar and the service tenants. William in 1896 observed:
“The Santhals, the Bauris, & few other kindred tribes who work in the 
mines…like most aboriginals prefer to idle (?) when they have earned enough 
(?) to satisfy their immediate wants.  CIMAR noted in 1906: “- of their 
Dehati’s collies… he can earn good wages, but for them, money is not 
everything. He is sensible enough consider comfort (?) and this is one 
reason which always draws him back to his old home, where he can take ease 
(?), in congenial surroundings”.
In a little contrast, the upcountry workers Paschhimas adopted themselves 
with machine-mining works, and worked with more “regularity” and 
consequently they earned a little more. In terms of commitment they were 
considered to be the nearest to “English Miners” remarked A. E. Azabeg.  
They worked everyday to meet the “basic necessity”, but do so to the extent 
that their mental & physical capability allowed them to exert  i.e. the 
maximum raising they could carry out in the given working conditions, by 
exploiting their mental and physical energy at most.
The time rated Mazdoors & service tenant-miners workdays were seemingly 
guided by the sense of worktime [might be measured by nature’s time]. They 
were at most vulnerable to the ‘violent mafiacist animalistic’ exacting 
mechanism. They had to work for a   (longer duration) length of time, 
usually, longer then “common sensual workday corresponding” sunlight period. 
  Underground workers had to adjust to gang of loaders & also negotiate with 
over-man about the time length.
These ways of carrying everyday work and the respective orientations of 
working time also impinged upon the stretch of days, miners worked and 
resultant rhythm of works. I have already discussed the ways working people 
designed “short spell of days of work”  and it was usually arranged around 
‘payday’ or an average 4/5/6/7/8/10 days. However some miners because of 
either fear psychic of accident and collapsing physical exhaustion & 
sickness could discontinue that spell for a while. For it, miners would have 
to develop tacit understanding with sirdars.  And, when this relationship of 
“despotic patronage” broke, and if it broke confrontaionally in particular, 
the mazdoor would move away to other colliery.
The mining community coped up with this situation in at least two varied 
ways. The sedentary and regular rural urban Mazdoors of distant areas would 
leave mines, when they experienced the context of work physically taxing. 
They escaped from the net of one colliery to another seemingly liveable 
colliery. That’s why this period witnessed a high rate of movement of miners 
from one colliery to another, and finally to villages. This was one of the 
ways of adjustment of Bombay textile workers to their working condition too, 
as discussed by Shashi Bhushan Upadhyay.  Employers transcribed it as 
unstable and migratory characteristics of Indian miners. They did not look 
at the non-resolving tension of labour regime confronted with by miners. The 
laters largely preferred to move to big colliery; especially British owned. 
The latter apparently paid better wage rate, than smaller & medium sized 
mines (largely owned by native entrepreneurs)  . In contrast, most local and 
adjacent immigrant rural urban Mazdoors preferred working in Pokharia & 
Shirmuhan, and only in daytime. They tended to move away from the mines, if 
it began working nightshift or went deeper. They did so, though got lower 
wage rate at the respective mines. They, in large number moved to new opened 
quarries during the 1915-19(boom period for coal trade.). Owners of big 
collieries sought the intervention of the ‘colonial government’ to check 
such tendency of miners. The govt had stipulated a provision that ‘it would 
buy coal only from big collieries’. Thus, it was not that the ‘laissez 
faire’ pertained in this period in the sense of absence of involvement of 
state in regulating the movement of labour and exacting the labour time .

The ‘seasonal arrangement of work pattern’ dominated the working practice 
for a sizeable workforce.  They reverted to the villages during seasons of 
transplantation & harvesting work on their small piece of land or others’ 
land.  Indian coalfield committees’ reports of 1920/1925 bemoaned against 
the persistence of “primary agriculturist status ” of Indian miners. Some of 
such reversion, though, mediated by the seasonality of colliery’s 
functioning/production. A large number of Mazdoors were made redundant 
during rainy season. Nevertheless, rest of others silently left colliery.  
It resembled the case of Sri Lankan tea garden labourers of the 18th C, 
local labourers in Assam tea gardens and Bombay textile mills workers in the 
latter 19thc & the early 20thc.
               This reversion was not so easier for service tenants. 
Zamindars cum colliery owners wanted them to become substitute of reverted 
non-sedentary workers. I am not informed that how did they cope with this 
form of organisation of economy. They apparently did not threaten the 
structure of authority organising economy. One of the ways they opted was to 
send someone from their family for imposed colliery task”.  The arrangement 
of work- timepieces of the sedentary colliers  was also greatly conditioned 
by the “industrial temporality”. They, though, also visited their bastis 
between June and August.  Majority of them used to visit during months of 
March, April and May. These periods were both a period of harvesting as well 
as of festivals & others socio-familial occasions (such as marriage etc).
Some majdoors toured their villages for some socio cultural (familial 
motives) and obligations. A group of miners- Santhalis rarely stayed in 
Dhowrahs, but went to their Bustees on the occasions of festivals such as, 
‘Sohrai’ (in January or Magh month) for about whole month or twenty days. 
The workers of adjacent areas  (the Rajwars, the Turis, the Ghatwals, the 
Mahtos etc.) used to go to rural home on Tilasakarat/Makarsakranti/Jal/Nadi 
and Machhali Puja.  A large number of up-country single male workers used to 
return to their villages on festive occasions of Holi (sometimes for a whole 
month) , Dashahra etc. This resembled with the practice of the festivity of 
the 17thC & the 18thC British workers.  Those who stayed in the coalfield, 
on the other hand, used to celebrate some festivals such as, Kali-Puja,  
Durga-Puja, Cake-Puja, and Holi.  The mining communities seem to enforce 
their practice of these festival/ritual-times.

I sum up with these remarks on the practices and methods that mining classes 
fostered in adapting the time routine up to the early 1920s. They faced 
“multiple work time routines “ pursued by employers. These varied between 
mines especially between bigger and smaller ones.  These were everywhere 
primarily framed by the capitalist deal of employers, tending to( 
animalistikally and mercantalistically) exact labour time at most from the 
mining community.  Not- withstanding, these were mediated by the nature of 
coal trade as well as conditioning intervention of nature such as, rainy 
season.(monsoon could be explained directly as an impediment to mining 
activity)
The form of their interaction with and responses to the time regime was 
differential. These were not- linear; mono-linear, homogenous and statically 
uniformed even during the 1890s-1920s. The multilinearity, interruptions and 
shifts were manifest. Different groups of mining classes perceived and 
encountered time regimes differently, and worked, a little varyingly at 
various levels. The piece rated miners had fair amount of control on the 
decision making structure about the pace and direction of work, and length 
of workday in normal season at the workplace . Nevertheless, this was 
possible within the constraints set by employer’s amount of raising and/or 
length of workday for that and, by the nature of process of 
production/impediments. A majority of piece rated miners was production-task 
oriented in day-to-day work at the work places.  Their notation  (notion)of 
time was guided by the two senses. One was production-task and, second was 
the sense of physical and mental capability to exert them. The former was 
predominant in the case of the set of miners largely sedentary colliers and, 
from some social groups such as, the Santhal, the Bouris, the Kols, the 
Ghatwals, the Turis, the Mushahars etc. While the latter was predominant in 
the case of the rural urban majdoors and from social groups- the CP miners, 
the Bhuiyan, the Bouris, the Jolahas, the Chamars and other distant 
immigrant working people. The time rated workers were subject to rigid & 
severe discipline. For the service tenants the work-time was a time imposed 
on them.
Mostly, the mining communities did not challenge the ceiling of minimum 
length of workday at the work places but they struggled hard for reinforcing 
the upper limit of working day. This was aimed to restructure the wage rate 
. They took resort of it more emphatically in the period of the price 
inflation of 1915-20. For it, they ‘internally negotiated’ with employers. 
They, failing in negotiation, preferred to move away to other colliery. If 
such option was not available some majdoors tried with a tense feeling to 
lengthen their work-day  or recoursed to engaging more family members at 
work or/and, ‘debt practice’ . Perhaps, this was one of the underlying 
reasons the tragic folklore of this period (cited earlier) expressed the 
critical and frightening experiences of majdoors of working condition in 
broader sense, than of formal time discipline.
The working people successfully & ‘non-confrontaionally’ created space and 
time for continuing pre-colliery working style that was the organic 
combination of work with rest/break, joy/leisure and reproductive tasks at 
the work places below ground.
Most of them innovated a short spell of days of work as well as a series of 
these spells. They used to keep off from work at the intervals of these 
varied spells. This included the seasonality and socio-cultural dimension of 
working rhythm.

In course of executing these working patterns they sometimes took recourse 
from the act of resignation/grudging conforming, escaping, desertion, 
internal negotiation against as well as about work-time to remonstrative 
enforcement or contesting negotiation. They expressed their agonised 
disagreement and remonstration through ‘non permitted’ or self-declared 
‘free-time’ or break/rest-day etc. For it, they had to even negotiate or 
contest with ‘exacting means of supervisory authority’. But, these did not 
target/lead the abolition of structural contradiction of ‘time-regime’ .
Some scholars as one of the forms of resistance transcribed the acts of 
miners moving from one colliery to another and so called the idling 
practices or absenteeism on different occasions. The act of resistance would 
mean, in my mind, the act of opposing something from unfolding /happenings. 
In this sense the acts of moving away from one colliery to the other, could 
not turn to be a resistance. These seem to have been largely acts of 
‘non-conformist desertions’ or ‘remonstrative-escaping’.
Nevertheless, their working practices constantly and submissively worked to 
mitigate a little the sapping/taxing tension ridden labour/time regime they 
lived in . These practices, in fact, mediated in coping up with that 
situation . The former sometimes proved one of the conditioning factors for 
the latter. James Mackie (the manager of Bhowra colliery) stated:
“The compulsory shift can not be started since the most miners were…. 
commuting daily from distant villages (mid 1920s)” .
	This period saw dynamism in adaptive methods. As the proportion of 
sedentary and regular miners had been rising, the social strength behind the 
particularistic practices & ways changed. Miners’ assertiveness on the one 
hand and the patron-client nexus formation on the other became a usual 
strategy of survival and obtaining destinations. I will discuss these 
affairs in the next section, since these became more apparent there.

                                    III, 1920s- 1940s

In the subsequent decades the mining community saw the ‘stipulation’ of some 
legislative provisions streamlining the time regime.  They, notwithstanding, 
had to confront with their ‘implemented form’ at the ground level designed 
like the previous period, by the exacting mechanism of employers demanding a 
particular level of coal raising. It was a multifarious and a little varying 
in its characters. The working people had practically been expected and 
asked by employers for utilization of labour time at most, [and definitely 
longer then those permitted under the laws]. This remained in practice 
through out the period of the 1920s, 1930s and the 1940s.  They were asked 
to work six days in a week, at a large number of mines, and at some mines 
even on Sundays. While, some collieries used to close even on Mondays.  The 
possibility was created that the mazdoors would work more than the regulated 
maximum hours of work. Deshpande committee observed:
“One curious feature which was noticed particularly in the attendance 
register maintained by raising contractors in railways colliery was that 
several workers shown to have been present for more days in the week than 
seven. As a matter of fact instances were noticed in which certain workers 
shown having worked nine to nine and a half-day in the week. The explanation 
given by the raising contractor was that when a man had worked over time, he 
was given credit for it in terms of days”.  “In the case of the contract 
labour, it was noticed that the hours of work was definitely longer than 
those permitted under the laws. It is not unusual to see sirdars and the 
Overman of contractors driving the labourers, particularly women workers 
almost the whole of the time that they are there”.
The contract system of organization of labour had remained conspicuously 
widespread during these decades.
The element of coercion and rigidity of regime had been becoming more taxing 
and reprovingly subjugating.  BLEC observed:
“The lathaiths of one labour contractor or colliery owner had beaten up the 
miners in Bhadrachack colliery, when the miners did not turn up at the work, 
and remained resting/leisuring in their Dhowrahs on Monday”.
This was a frequent encounter for the miners at night shift work, since 
virtually some of them would sleep . [Thus, the mining community witnessed 
the persistence of ‘feudo-capitalistic’ labour relations in practice . 
Labour investigation committees  had criticized the persistence of such 
labour relations, but in relation to service-tenants, not mining community 
in general.
This mode of eliciting labour time , each miner might not frequently have 
suffered from. They might have witnessed it repeatedly, in public 
demonstrative form, working on one of them. It might have worked in the form 
of ‘fear psychic’ in the coalfield
Some mechanical and technical development happened that conditioning the 
working of mines.  It had, however, remained at rather very low level 
between the 1920s-40s. The coal industry in Jharia was constantly 
characterized largely by ‘labour intensive production technique’,  and 
arduous working condition.
The development of mechanization unfolded unevenly between the collieries, 
and within one colliery.  S.R.Deshpande noted:
“In the development of phases where gallery driving was going on working 
conditions were often tiring because, until the gallery has been driven and 
connected with ventilation passages there is no free circulation of air. 
Moreover it was noticed in one case that the heat out by the seams was so 
excessive that the working condition was almost unbearable. The workers were 
seen to be perspiring profusely and the only means of keeping themselves dry 
they could think of was to rub their bodies with dhotis. In many mines the 
air was so saturated with moisture and here blasting operation had taken 
place the air was full of fumes”.
In addition, the coal industry witnessed the retreat in some of the fields 
of the technological development during the period (1930-35) of coal price 
depression. Almost all coal-cutting machines were made non-operational in 
Jharia during this period. Only by the 1940, their utilization rose to the 
level as it was in 1929-30.
Nevertheless, the “progression of mechanization” had influenced the 
work-routine as well as the ways of its imposition at some working sites.  
This resulted in intensification of work for respective miners. The 
extension of electricity made possible work increasingly even in night & on 
shift system (two or three shifts). The big and medium sized collieries in 
particular gradually moved towards it. RCL observed in the 1930, ‘a few big 
mines worked even on three shifts’, and the number further rose till the 
decade of the 1940s.  The colliers working on shifts, even though, asked or 
allowed their workers to work ‘longer hours’, had to formally work on a 
system of 8 or 12 hours per shift. The colliers of one shift could no longer 
remain, continuously, working for a longer period in a large number even if 
shifts overlapped. Miners of next shift would have to contest for the 
working-faces and tubes. In other words, the technical development 
inherently set a “ceiling” regarding the upper length of workday. Employers 
set the ceiling of lower length of working day i.e. work day of a minimum 
eight hours. An increasing number of collieries were gradually emerging out 
of the situation of vulnerability before rainy season. By using powerful 
electric pumps these mines could continue working.
                 The majdoors witnessed and experienced the increasing 
demand /exaction from their employers of ‘greater regularity’ at work and 
greater attention towards it.  Colliery owners, because, wanted quickly and 
a greater return from their investment in technological upgradation, so they 
also wanted the miners to use maximally those machines and organization of 
production. This (business strategy) influenced and was manifest on the 
employers’ talks/discourses of time routine. The latter, towards the late 
1920s, began to bemoan vociferously against the ostensible ‘irregular, 
irrational and non-disciplined/non-efficient working pattern’ of Indian 
miners. CIMAR (D.P.Denman), European and big colliery owners from the 1925 
onwards agreed-in contrast to their position in previous years -
“…that women at present keep cost up by hampering the work. They are very 
largely in the way and prevent speeding up. They lead to difficulties about 
discipline and that sort of thing reduces output”.
All these affected the working time of miners in more than one way. The work 
time for wagon loaders actually became erratic and forceful. The extension 
of electricity fostered the possibility of working in the night even on 
surface at increasing number of collieries. It affected the time regime of 
wagon loaders in particular. They had to adjust with the nature of supply of 
wagons because, keeping empty wagons useless would amount rising the cost of 
production and marketing of coal. Hence, the wagon loaders were called up at 
work according to supply of wagons. They were subject to this time routine 
by contractors. The latter did it often forcefully, like other labour 
contractors.
Nevertheless, the dominant anatomy of time regime exalted the continuity in 
its functioning from the ‘pre age of legislation’. The rigid time discipline 
(only in terms of lower limit) was its characteristics . Deshpande noted,
“Where only one shift is worked the work generally starts at nine a.m. and 
ends at six p.m. Where two shifts or relay are worked the hours of work 
generally are from 9 or 10 a.m. to six or seven p.m. and 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. 
In the case of mine working three shifts the first shift starts at seven 
a.m. and finished at three p.m., the second shift is from three p.m. to 
eleven p.m., and third shift from eleven p.m. to 7 a.m. Usually one shift or 
relay worked on the surface. The hours of work being 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. to 6 
p.m. with an interval of two hours. In quarries it is from 7 a.m. to 7p.m 
with an interval of two hours from 12 noon to 2 p.m.”  “In most of mines the 
general impression gathered that there was no rules and regularity (?) as to 
when underground workers should go down and come up except in the case of 
Haziri worker. Nor was any system noticed of sounding a warning such as a 
bell or siren to notify the change of shifts. In the case of underground 
miners there are no regular intervals and the men rest as and when they 
like.”
While Haziri workers had to work even on Sundays and in general longer 
hours.

How did the mining community cope up with the situation?  In the early years 
of the 1920s some leaders of working classes and trade unions, such as, 
Indian Colliery Employees Association (1920), Indian Trade Union Congress 
(1920) started demanding for shortening the length of work-time. Towards the 
end of the 1920s, they also asked for an 8 hours (or if possible less) 
workdays, because ‘work in mines is far strenuous and arduous than in 
factory. They cited before RCL the trend of similar kind of development in 
advanced western countries.  Notwithstanding, the implemented form of 
‘time-routine’, mineworkers had to endure.
They worked ‘longer hours’ i.e. more than nine hours in a day.  It often 
used to cross 12 hours in a day.  They worked for a week and backed to their 
bastis and rested for 2 to 3 days afterwards. One of them in a piece rated 
underground work reported in 1930 that “he unless works for more than 12 
hours a day, could not fetch the ‘cash-earning’ that he required for his 
daily needs.
The technical factors by and large continually rendered to lengthening the 
working hours in day-to-day works . This had been recurrently noticed by RCL 
in 1930, BLEC in 1938, Burrows Coalfield Committee in 1937, Deshpande in 
1946 etc. But, their production activities at the same time were largely 
motivated and oriented towards raising enough coal for their basic 
sustenance. Deshpande makes an observation,
“As a matter of fact in several mines workers who were supposed to go down 
at 7 O’clock in the morning do not do so till 10 or 10.30 a.m., and do not 
come out until they feel that they have had enough production for the day. 
In point of fact, however, in one apparently well managed mine, night shift 
workers who were supposed to be off-duty at 7 O’clock in the morning 
actually found working at 11.30 in the morning…the workers do not have 
watches to know as to when a shift begins or ends”.
They had to confront at the workplace to control the pace of work. Employers 
argued, ‘even though the workers stayed 8-9 hours below ground in a day, 
they never worked for more than 6- 6&1/2 hours’. They employed supervisory 
staffs on a basis of commission per tub of coal extracted by miners under 
them . The ‘Colliers’ struggled to maintain a control over the structure of 
decision-making regarding the rhythm of the production act and the labour 
process at the workplaces. They contrived to ‘appropriate’ some time and 
create moments at the work itself imbuing ‘arduous’ and onerous work with 
some joy/humour breaks for lunch, calls of nature; in addition to the breaks 
for relaxing and for recouping physical mental capacity. They could do it in 
two ways. One, by making work enjoyable. Two, by creating moments in the 
structure of the working time itself not only for recouping exhaustion, for 
leisure and carrying out reproduction tasks.  B.L.E.C. observed,
“There was so much heat in the workplace that workers would be forced to 
take break each hour to wash the perspiration with seepage water.”
They would smoke and take tobacco in between apart from the usual sharing of 
jokes and singing of songs. Similarly, family gangs & Kamins in particular 
struggled to maintain a balance between the production work and their 
reproductive obligations. They took the break in work to suckle and take 
care of their babies .
They had to confront with the ‘repression’ and ‘marginalisation’ on this 
front in this period. The acts of Kamins carrying breast-feeding children to 
workplaces was considered repugnant and declared an uncivilised practice. 
Kamins now evolved new tactics. They would hide their children in mines, 
when white men visited, and leaving ‘older’ in the care of family members or 
other retired/old women in Dhowrahs, [after child labour (below 13 years) 
was banned in 1923]. 	Some Kamins, yet, could not successfully fight the 
gradual marginalisation imposed on them.  Collieries, seeking regular 
loaders, got these adequately in the form of male workers ready to work as 
loaders in the context of the second half of the 1920s and 30s .
The Majdoors had, yet, to innovate and create a space and time for securing 
their ends. They had to extract coal in accordance to their “needs” within 
the constraints of working-time . In this context some new working practices 
were evolved. They began to compete stiffly for empty tubs, so that they 
could secure required amount of coal.  The nexus developed between Munshi, 
who distributed tubs and the miners. Those who paid bribes to Munshi and 
mining Sirdar got empty tubs rather conveniently. The 
caste/territoriality/community ties also served the formation of such nexus. 
The miners, who could not confirm to this labour regime, would suffer from, 
waiting for a while for empty tub.  These sufferers were largely “Dehatil” 
such as, the Santhal/Kol etc., who could not incline to forge such nexus 
with Munshi and mining Sirdars. The later were while largely “Paschhimas” or 
immigrants from Bengal. Miners could not cut coal without empty tubs 
because, such store of coal was not safe. These incidences of stealing coal 
of fellow miner expanded increasingly during the 1920s, 30s and 40s, 
particularly in big collieries.
Miners tended to indulge in some conniving-practices for resolving one of 
the constraining elements of labour relation. They were deprived from wages 
for the tub, if Munshi declared it inadequately filled with. While, they 
hardly got reward for tubs over-loaded.  Both types of instances frequently 
took place in this period.  Whether the miners asked the pay for over-loaded 
coal?  It was reported that miners were given, if any, one Anna no matter 
what their claims stood for overloading.  In this situation they began to 
fill up tubs in such a way at the bottom with bigger pieces of coal that tub 
could be filled with rather lesser amount of coal. Thus, they had been 
trying to cope up with the structural and institutional contradictions of 
wage relation by innovating and conniving some scope helped the continuation 
of scarcity, tension, and non-dignity ridden survivable through a strategy 
of cunning and conniving.
The practice of working time by the Haziri-majdoors seems to have remained 
tenacious during this period. They were compelled to work longer hours. It 
happened so that, sometimes boilermen and other went for dozing at work. The 
workers on machine had to adjust themselves to the pace of machine in the 
situation of the longer hours of work and as a result dozing at work 
infrequently proved hazardous. They suffered from accidents. When they found 
work routine and labour relation unbearable, they moved away from one 
particular mine to other.

Among the surface workers, the wagon loaders, who were predominantly 
piece-rated, now faced ‘erratic’ work routine. A gang of wagon-loaders used 
to work continually sometimes even for 24 hours a day.  Then, they might not 
get work for next a few days. In this case, the recalcitrant wagon-loaders 
had to suffer monetarily. The fear of a period, without work, would lead 
them to work as long as they found themselves to be physically and mentally 
capable when wagons were available . Nevertheless, both types of loaders 
would chat, joke and smoke. Loaders evolved these ways for overcoming the 
log work. A majority of them tried to recuperate themselves by resting for a 
while, but some of them actually suffered from lack of work rather than 
entertaining a time for rest.
A notable change in the formal working time regime, that intervened in this 
regard, was the institutionalisation of weekly rest day on Sundays. But, 
mining community saw its conversion by employer into a payday. They had to 
enforce their rest day at the weekend. A small proportion of them could get 
their payments on Saturday evenings. Those hailing from neighbouring bastis, 
walking on foot as long as three and three-and-a-half miles had to take 
payment on Sundays in a long queue. They could obtain it only till noon or 
so. Thereupon, they could go to market (Jharia, Dhanbad etc.). Thenceforth, 
theirs return to bastis likely to possible only by the late evening or early 
night. Thus, the very holiday seems turned to be an extension of their 
working time. One could see here the exploitation of time by the owners. It 
resembled the practice of factory owners, in Britain in the 18th and 19th C, 
manipulating clock-time.  Whether those colliers opposed or protested 
against such exaction? Notwithstanding, they experienced it in terms of 
“deprivation” of time.  It reflected in their absence at workplace on 
Mondays and sometimes evens on Tuesdays by extending their ‘work free-time’ 
with their families or village communities.  This could however, have been 
both as enforcement of extended free time on colliery work time regime, or 
just an escape from gruelling work if not resigning to it. A notable section 
of majdoors staying in the coalfield too used to live away on Mondays and to 
a lesser degree even on Tuesday from work. [Only a small proportion of 
miners, worked on Mondays and Tuesdays, albeit, they might take breaks on 
some other day]. Some of the colliery owners reported to B.L.E.C. that they 
kept their mines closed on Monday, because, the turnover of miners used to 
remain very low . E.P Thompson, in the case of the British coal-miners, 
found largely a similar sort of practice. S.R. Deshpande, in 1946, noted:
“In two of the collieries, surveyed in the Jharia coalfield, an allowance 
called Monday rate was being paid at one Anna per tub on raising of the coal 
by miners on Mondays in order to encourage attendance on this day. It was 
stated by the management of these mines that the payment of this additional 
bonus did not result in improved attendance (?) on Mondays.
	Mining communities enforced it in both non-confrontational and 
confrontational ways; but it was largely internal negotiation against the 
imposed form of workweek. It was not an escaping act because, the workers 
had been occupying Dhowrahs. Yet, it was not a subversive negotiation since, 
they did not ask for formal reordering of work time regime, nor of the 
socio-economic relationship that was controlling and organising economy.
The proportion of colliers, organising work time in accordance to the 
agricultural temporality, was gradually diminishing.  Yet, besides some 
redundant majdoors during rainy seasons, some workers positively preferred 
to go to their bastis. B.L.E.C. observed,
“..in these months- June to August, mines become depleted of their labour 
supply. This was actually found in course of our visit to the coalfield. 
Now, a few collieries were found to be working with only half of the labour 
force. These colliery owners were making desperate efforts to get sufficient 
workers by playing lorries or by poaching one another’s labourers. The 
exodus is much less in the busy months of February and March …but it again 
increases in the month of November when paddy is cut”.
They happened to get off from work even on a certain occasions suiting their 
socio-cultural obligations. The miners of Santhal social group continued to 
returning their bustis for holding Parva- Sohrai. Employers however, not 
officially recognised this. Whether the lower rung of supervisory staffs 
(increasingly of non-Santhal social group) recognised that? Similarly, a 
sizeable number of workers continued going back to their Gaon on such an 
occasion such as, Holi, Makarsakranti, Dashahra, and Kali-puja etc.
Among the Mazdoors staying in the coalfield, the practice of celebrating 
these festivals entrenched. Colliery owners, however, did not officially 
recognise these as holidays. But, the colliery generally remained close on 
these days . It did not happen in the case of occasion of Ganesh-puja, which 
was largely held by the C.P workers. Different section of the labouring 
masses began to hold some new festivals at relatively noteworthy level in 
the decades of the 1920s, the 1930and the 1940s. These were Jhanda/ 
Ramnavmi, and Muharram processions in particular. These processions were 
never a native festival.  The mines did not remain close on these occasions 
in this period. Notwithstanding, the groups of colliers tended to involve at 
conspicuous level in these activities.
Some workers used to get off from work in some erratic and wayward ways. 
Some might have gone through it because of sudden health deterioration or 
falling ill. There was not a provision for a formal sick leave . Relatively 
independent ‘unmarried male labourers’ were inclined to make break in really 
a wayward manner . Permeshwer Nonya reported to me that ‘they would not work 
for a few days after earning some amount of money. They returned at work 
when they were financially exhausted or forced by parents’. ‘But this way of 
working dramatically changed after marriage, and once the responsibility of 
family and household fell on their shoulders’.
  The family majdoors & the Kamins  in particular struggled to combine 
production and reproduction tasks. A majority of them continued to return to 
their rural home during the period of child bearing and rearing. But, it was 
not a case with all Kamins. Those who came in the coalfield and joined mines 
for escaping socio- cultural cage of villages, they had to stay in the 
colliery-bastis even during those critical moments, observed B.R Seth. The 
proportion of such sedentary Kamins had steadily been swelling. Their 
practice was characterised by the organisation of timepieces favouring a 
natural obligation.
              Similarly, mining community could not attend colliery in 
preferences to attending some unpredictable but frequent and some 
deliberated communitarian obligations. These were the times of accidents, 
death, funeral, mourning, and political & labour-economic collective 
actions. The accidents were frequented from the 1910s onwards . Likewise, 
the public agitation of Mazdoors conspicuously expanded during 1938-41. And 
it rocked almost entire coalfield during 1945-48 . These acts underwent a 
consequential & radical addition.  These activities and their time frame 
expressed the motivation of colliers to enforce their own rhythm of work 
upon the organisation of colliery’s fiscal time

They adopted multiple methods to pursuing above forms of organisation of 
time. Some of them would ‘inform’ mining sardars or ticcadars under whom 
they were employed. Sedentary labourers in fact involved sirdars in those 
festive ceremonies, such as Dashahra, Holi, Kali-puja etc. Perhaps, this was 
one of the reasons that practically colliery started to remain closed on 
those occasions . Some colliery owners/employers began to distribute some 
‘gifts’ to their employees on some occasions such as-Dashahra, or Kalipuja, 
or Cake-Puja . The latter was probably practised at colliery run by 
Europeans such as, Bhowra, Amlabad, Jealgora, Lodna, Kustore, Bhudrachawk, 
Industry collieries etc. This development regarding “organisation of 
colliery work-time & breaks” was an example of “incorporation” of 
“assertive” popular practice, of mining community, and promotion of new ones 
between them as well. But, this pursuit of re-organisation of time traversed 
through different phases-from ‘subversive struggle’ against work-time, to 
‘assertively internally negotiating’ about work-days/free-time. This was the 
case also with the festive activities such as Ganesh-puja, or Sohrai parva, 
Makersakranti etc which could not get the validation of employers. The 
Mazdoors did not go on work on these occasions. Some of them could inform 
sirdars or ticcadars. But a great number of them would leave the collieries. 
Those stayed in coalfield had to internally ‘confrontaionally’ negotiate on 
the issue with employers. They resisted the imposed time regime & enforced 
own version of organisation work-time .
            The reorganisation of work-time as arrived at by miners & 
employers – was hardly “absolute”, completely  ‘coherent’ & tensions free 
ones. One informer (younger brother of Keshvo Rawani) told me that ‘he used 
to go to the village on Holi and stayed there around one month & so. But, it 
could not have been the case with his family working in the colliery and 
stayed permanently in Bhowra. For them the days that went into celebrating 
those occasions had been ‘limited’. The “paternalistic incorporation” of the 
practice by employers was also aimed to reconfigure such practice, and 
subordinate them to the logic of “structure of work-time”. While 
recalcitrant and refractory miners would have to either conform to the 
“reorganised form of work-time” or resign/ remonstratively escape from that.
                The mining classes started demanding and agitating for 
institutionalisation of provisions for “formal leaves (paid and casual) and 
sick leaves during the second half of the 1940s. They had organised a total 
strike in Bhowra and Amlabad colliery for around three months and thirteen 
days in 1948.  They had called for a strike for largely similar demands in 
March 1947, before the declaration of recommendation of the Board of 
Conciliation. But, neither the recommendations of the Conciliation Board, 
nor the contesting agitation of the mining community could achieve fully 
their demands . The confrontation occurred between employers and the mining 
community on the issue of implementation of the 1947 Conciliation Board’s 
recommendations. It led to the constitution of the “Joshi Agreement” in 
1948.
The process of adjustment of the working classes to the time regime also 
involved the ‘reaction’ of the former on the issue of “wage rate” . They in 
the 1920 and the 1921 conducted a few strikes. For example, in Standard and 
Kinkend collieries and a stoppage of work in most of the collieries for a 
few days in 1921 during the conference of AITUC in Jharia for demanding a 
wage increase in the context of acute inflation. After the interval of 
almost 7 years on the issue of wages or against wage cut, Mazdoors of 
Amlabad colliery (around 430 workers) in 1930 and Tosco’s Jamadoba colliery 
(4,000 workers) in 1932, agitated.  These were also proactively zeroed in on 
time regimes. Instead of lengthening the “working time” (which was already 
pretty long) in order to fetch adequate wage, they attempted to adapt the 
wage structure and wage labour relation as well.  Meanwhile, an increasing 
number of workers had to recourse to the “established” tradition of 
fulfilling the cost of reproduction. It was a “cycle of debt”
The tension between the work- time routine and the worker’s version of fair 
time routine could not entirely resolve, despite such subversive political 
galvanisation of colliers.  The workers continued to address in multitude 
ways the tenacious ‘tension’? Some workers thorough propitiating their 
employers (ji-hazuri/clientele) could secure patronage favours. They were 
known as loyal workers such as, congress leaders in Bhowra (Kedarnath Singh, 
Budhu Mia etc) who worked to run a ‘pocket union’, and cherished the 
patronage of management. Some of them exploited personal nexus with 
supervisory staff or trade union leaders by paying bribe too. At the same 
time, they resented on system and agony came out in the form of slang, 
criticism and repressed mental tension. All these were reflected in their 
attempts to dissolve tension through inebriation of alcohol, flight, 
fatalism or/& improvising continuously to further their agenda. The latter 
reflected in the persistence of the popularity of “Lal Jhanda” among a group 
of miners, even, if its ‘revolutionary activities’ remained limited. Keshvo 
Rawani conceived that for them the politics of ‘Lal Jhanda’ was aimed to 
control the structure of authority commanding the organisation of economy, 
thus to subvert the labour relation/production relations/labour regime 
itself, and place forward their/mining classes’ agenda.
	The mining community had adopted “defying method of negotiation for 
adapting time-routine on some other issues as well. For instance, for 
opposing oppressive and exploitative presence of some ticcadars, 
victimisation of fellow miners and, asking reinstatement have dismissed 
fellow workers. But, it was not pervasive and consistent regarding all 
matters. They demanded for the “maternity benefit” , like the working class 
in Calcutta, Bombay or Coimbatore. But it was not made ever a central issue 
by the existing trade unions. The usual ways opted by Kamins were to just 
silently stop working during “period of confinement and initial days rearing 
their babies. The maternity benefit act could be passed as late as 1943.

In summing up, I will underline some of the trends of development that took 
place in this period. The time regime varied between mines.  It meant that 
not only legislative form of time-regime” was not followed, employers 
continued working with their versions of time regime. In this period some 
big mines’ management started to assert the “talk of disciplined” working 
practices. In contrast, the working pattern of wagon loaders was made rather 
more erratic and forceful. Nevertheless, the mining community was largely 
subject to “intensification of work.”
	They worked at several levels and developed multiple ways in course of 
adaptation to time regimes. At the workplaces they worked largely longer 
work-time viz a viz the latter’s legislative form and were gradually pressed 
hard for completing task or carrying work . The piece rated miners were 
largely ‘production- task’ oriented. They struggled to maintain their 
control on the production process especially, its pace in day to day work. 
It was aimed to mitigate a strenuous work and make it joyful. But some of 
the family workers had to remonstratively fight for carrying the work 
pattern suited to the logic of reproduction. However, they had gradually 
been loosing this possibility.
Additionally, a group of miners – single male workers in particular strove 
to redesign the work time. They focused on the time which happened to be 
‘break’ due to technical interruptions for their human purposes. This marked 
a shift. In the previous period, mining community tended to create 
moments/breaks for combining production and reproduction tasks. Now they had 
involved themselves in practices of purposefully consuming breaks frequently 
created by technical interruptions. At the same time, they contrived for 
animating the course of extracting and loading work through their chatting, 
jokes and smoking etc. They began to agitate for lead and lift allowances 
and compensation for enforced idleness towards the end of this period. This 
also marked a big shift vis-à-vis the form of labour economy of the mining 
community, which prevailed in the preceding period.
	In the context of ‘shortening work time’, they developed some conniving 
activities. For acquiring optimum amount of coal, they not only tended to 
bribing supervisory staffs, stealing coal of fellow miners. Some other had 
struggled for lengthening the workday. Some others were subject to under 
utilisation of their productive capacity.
	These developments were not informally, all pervasive in the entire 
coalfield. The majdoors working in the least mechanised mines had drudged in 
a little different situation. The working pattern here was largely 
characterised by continuity of the practices prevailed in the preceding 
period. Perhaps that is why some family Mazdoors and regular commuters 
preferred working in those mines. The politics of lead and lift allowances 
and compensation for forced idleness was, ipso facto, not as intense among 
these miners as was the case with the agitated group of workers.
	The workdays of the mining community had undergone a process of 
formalisation. Sunday became a rest day in the week, over time. It disrupted 
the practice of working a spell of six, seven, eight, nine or ten days. But 
all colliers could not equally entertain the new rest day. Some of them 
suffered from the manipulative strategy of employers converting Sunday as 
payday. These sufferers in return, enforced the extension of rest day on to 
Monday as well. Some of them extended it even to Tuesday.
The proportion of miners sharing characteristic seasonality of working 
pattern diminished over time. However, a majority of the rest of the 
workforce did not disrupt their association with and infrequent visits to 
rural home places. They continued to reinforce their festival time, time of 
confinement and time of accident on the structure of work time-routine. They 
introduced free time on occasion of some more festivals such as Mahavir 
Jhanda procession and Muhharam procession.
For executing the above forms of working pattern, the mining communities had 
adopted multiple methods. These were from act of resigning, escaping, 
asserting, internally negotiating, and contesting negotiation to subversive 
negotiation. At the workplace they tended to exploit their labour time and 
power themselves at its best. Infrequent normal negotiation as well as 
agitation for better wage rates accompanied it.  Additionally, they 
innovated ways for relieving & relaxing themselves in a course of work. They 
enforced some breaks such as, extended weekly holiday, on occasion of 
festivals, agricultural seasons, confinement, political agitation etc. But 
these were attained through the following ways: some just escaped, some 
internally negotiated, others asserted both confrontaionally and 
non-confrontaionally. Sometimes they attempted to subversively negotiate, 
such as the case of workers of Bhowra colliery, like Keshvo Rawani, Munshi 
Bhuiya etc. in the 1947-48.
The most pronounced and landmark change in the method was this: an 
increasing number of majdoors moved towards political and social assertion 
in the course of negotiating their demands. They started demanding 
institutionalisation of annual leaves – including paid and casual leave as 
well as sick leave. Similarly, they started reinforcing their time of 
protest from the 1930s onwards. These were not only acts of publicly 
absenting from work. They also slogged to ensure complete stoppage of work 
till their demands were redressed. It was radically a new development 
vis-à-vis the act of desertion of colliers as prevailed in previous period.
The above recapitulating remarks are not intended to argue that continuity 
between some of the practices and the strategies for carrying forward those 
practices did not exist. In fact, it happened as I have already underlined 
in some places above.
Then the entire period of the 1920s to the 1940s was not representative of 
one process of adaptation. In fact, the period witnessed only a gradual 
relinquishment of one set of working patterns and embracing some new ways. 
But it is to be underlined that the new rhythm of work and methods of 
adaptation were apparently able to strongly influence the direction of 
further development with respect to the anatomy (politics) of adaptation.

                                                        IV , 1940s-70s

During the decades of the 1940s to the early years of the 1970s, the mining 
communities were introduced to a series of state statutes aiming to 
streamline and relatively shorten the time of colliery work.  But the 
implementational form of time regime, like the previous decades remained 
notable by its dissimilitude from the legislative version. Some big 
collieries, albeit in increasing numbers , worked on three shifts such as, 
Bhowra, Jealgora, Lodna, Jamadoba, Industry etc. The rest of small and 
medium sized collieries continued to function on two shifts each of twelve 
hours such as, Dubari, Bera etc.
	The working time routine formally became more rigid and coercive. The 
Majdoors were animalistically driven from Dhowrahs into mines. It happened 
frequently at small and medium sized mines in particular. Satrodhan Rajwar 
and Yakub, workers respectively of Dubari and Bera mines informed me:
“Miners were expected to go into mines with the siren (during this period 
almost all registered mines set up power house sirens). A sizeable number of 
workers would sleep during the night shift (it began from ten o’clock when 
mines worked on two shifts or from eleven o’clock when mines worked on three 
shifts). In that case the pahalwan of the company or contractors would check 
such workers. They forcefully and sometimes even violently drove miners from 
the dhowrahs into the mines.”
The miners, especially of night shifts, in big collieries were also 
subjected frequently to these incidents.  Pahalwans used to display the 
weapons of abusive threats (kamchor, muftkhor, maachod, bahanchod, sala 
etc.), along with their lathis and muscles. The colliers were compelled to 
submit themselves to siren for starting their work. At the workplace the 
commissioned sirdar and Munshi regulated the length of the workday. They 
usually set the lower ceiling in this regard. It was either eight hours or 
twelve hours. In the small and medium sized mines, miners could be called at 
any time at work when the need arose. This was the case in relation to the 
wagon loaders in particular everywhere.
The statutory provisions for paid leave, casual leave, sick leave along with 
other monetary benefits and provisions for compensation were nowhere 
practised in their entirety, by management. The latter had ingeniously 
evolved ways to escape from such obligations. They categorised the workforce 
into four types: permanent, Badli, casual and contract workers. In fact, 
only direct recruited permanent labourers were in post war period retrenched 
as well as divided into permanent, regular, Badli and casual labourers.  The 
Badli worker could get jobs when some permanent workers were absent; and/or 
there would be an acute shortage of labourers. The mines were supposed to 
maintain the list of Badli workers . The latter had to render them daily for 
getting work at the colliery. But the casual workers could secure mining 
work in case of an acute shortage of labour.
	The permanent workers only could claim all statutory benefits. Since they 
could only prove their claim in labour court (set up in 1948 in Dhanbad) 
that they were denied their rights and benefits by showing their names on 
payrolls . The management in general improvised methods to restrict the 
number of such permanent miners they did not allow the regular workers to 
fulfil conditions of becoming permanent miners. The most common strategy of 
achieving it was that they repeatedly changed the name of regular workers on 
the payroll. They could also just show workers absenteeism on the payroll by 
dropping them for a while. The banality of this practice was at annoyingly 
extreme in the case of small and medium sized mines. The latter did not 
usually maintain list of Badli workers
	The majdoors continually struggled for the status of permanent workers. 
Where workers’ unions were strong and influential such as in Jealgora, 
Lodna, etc. the management was forced to maintain payroll properly and to 
follow the system of promoting regular workers from the status of Badli to 
permanent worker. The overall proportion of permanent workers in such 
collieries was between one third to two third.  But the case was very 
dissimilar in small and medium sized collieries. Here either strong workers’ 
union were noticeable by its absence or just a pocket union existed. The 
latter worked in collusion with management to subjugate the recalcitrant 
miners. In these collieries a very small number of miners succeeded to 
become permanent. For instance, in Dubari during this period at maximum some 
three hundred workers were represented as permanent workers. The total 
workforce of this mine was on an average around 1,500 to 2,000.
	Some of the provisions were followed in varying ways. There were only a few 
mines, which paid Monday rate. Nowhere was the attendance bonus given. The 
Tata colliery, which gave Monday rate also, introduced production bonuses in 
1942-43. But it was given to workers who could work 190 days belowground or 
260 days at the surface in a year. Deshpande had found that very few miners 
could become eligible for these benefits. A majority of the collieries 
provided rations to workers and not their dependants, as had been the 
provision under the Young Plan.
	The mining communities evolved some new practices in course of dealing with 
the working of labour regimes in this period? The piece rated miners had 
been oriented to raise tubs of coal at most, in given time and physical & 
technical situation. The pace of work was still largely under the control of 
mining sirdar and its gang members at the work place. The pace happened to 
be more intense in a colliery working on three shifts rather than those, 
which worked on two. Since the miners and loaders of former collieries found 
it difficult to cut and load more than one tub on an average even if they 
wanted to do so. They over time developed work ethics that they would create 
a store of cut coal in a shift and demarcate it with limestone. The miners, 
in small and medium sized collieries, gradually came with this practice that 
they would not cut more than one tub in a day because the employers did not 
pay them for the surplus coal cut. They were also paid less than their 
actual weekly earnings. They would get wages of only five tubs even if they 
cut six tubs in a week. All these discouraged miners from utilising their 
full potential.  What happened in the mines that young robust new comers 
utilized their productive capacity at most for a while with orientation of 
task/cash need. S/he, over time began to realise the improper remuneration 
of his or her investment of labour power and time in the exiting situation 
of labor relation and production process. Thereupon, the old experienced 
miners tended to resign to the system. They cut an average amount of coal, 
and spent time belowground under pressure.
They could definitely, like previous decade, chat, smoke, and take break for 
relieving/recuperate themselves. Some of them proceeded to big collieries. 
Some miners tried to redress politically and socially the problems. They 
fostered collective struggles. It happened in Dubari, Bera and some other 
collieries. They affiliated with CPI, and Congress. But they were co-opted 
by management. Now, a few leaders of union could get relatively fair 
treatment from management. For maintaining this relationship with employers 
this unions had to assert itself and deploy its political strength as well 
as muscle-power, It used to maintain a bunch of pehalwans .The latter were 
used by leaders to constrain and repress the recalcitrant workers.  Those 
miners, who were not active members of unions, could not get advantage. They 
sometimes fought for their “ just and fair claims such as the case of 
Satrudhan Rajwar. He initially suffered from the violent and repressive 
reaction of management and its pehalwan. Some friends from caste fellows who 
were senior workers in those collieries saved him. The latter intended to 
convince Satrudhan for submitting himself to the labour regime.  Satrudhan, 
because did not want to leave that colliery, dropped the apparent demand for 
the fair treatment. But he also like majority of miners, lowered down the 
use of productive capacity. He experienced additional uncomfortability with 
the animalistic and exploitative industrial system. There were some more 
miners of that kind. They had politically been organising themselves and 
working to change entire system (too break away the depressive constrain). 
But this force expressed itself in the 1970s(between 1971- 73/74 ), when 
they fought (under the banner of Bihar Colliery Kamgar Union ) against the 
octopus of management and pocket trade unions and their pehalwan.  This 
struggle was aimed at to save their jobs and enlisted themselves as 
permanent workers of colliery. Earlier such voices for just and fair 
treatment could outburst only spontaneous and at individual level. They had 
to leave colliery, otherwise they were just eliminated by pehalwan.
The badali workers or casual workers in the collieries, like new comers in 
small and medium size collieries, were inclined to work hard and for as long 
a work as possible. They were not sure about the continuous availability of 
work in coalfield.
Sizeable labouring poor were employed in Pokharia and unregistered 
outcropping mines .  Here, the miners had to work either in two shifts or 
one shift. The local workers worked in a family gang, thus it was not that 
family gang entirely disappeared from the coalfield with the legislation 
prohibiting women from belowground work. They worked largely on time rated 
system and the sunlight was the notation of time. In this condition these 
miners devised some strategies to endure the coercion. They contested to 
control the pace of work, by rather slowing the cutting and loading work. 
Similarly, they contested to prolong the lunchtime. This form of working had 
largely manifested also in the case of other time rated workers even in 
registered small and medium size mines, and the Gorakhpuri labourers in 
general . The great numbers of workers had yet not had watches. Some of them 
increasingly were getting hand watches especially through practice of dowry 
(or dahej), but they were forcefully prohibited from putting on these 
watches . They could not get off from work unless the supervisory staff 
released them. For them the situation of labour relation was close to the 
condition of wage ‘slavery’. Yakub had reported to me one such incident “ 
once he was working below ground, he could not get off from work for 
breaking his roza. He had to unfast at below ground workplace itself with 
one roti and some water”.
In big collieries, the mining community was not so severely regimented. The 
workers on time rate used to go to work at around eight o’clock on siren and 
got relieved in the evening before the sunset. Nevertheless, Kamins could 
get back their home not before the sunset, even in summer season. This was 
definitely a rule, than exception in case of Kamins coming from nearby 
bastis. It was manifest in the 2nd folktale cited above. They had to contest 
to create breaks and off time during work day. They would often demonstrate 
against despotic domination of munshi or Haziri-babu of wagon loading-work. 
The latter even used to ask for sexual favour in return of flexibility at 
work.  But a few Kamins could allow such  harassment or relationship . The 
Kamins sometimes joined together and collectively resisted the despotism and 
the harassment by staff. A few of them also actively participated in the 
politics of trade union affiliated with CPI and later with BCKU to resolve 
their structural as well as institutional contradiction.
A sizeable proportion of miners still showed reluctance to work on Monday. 
They were underground and quarry coal cutters and loaders in particular. 
Workers of neighbouring areas continued to back their bastis on Sunday or 
fortnightly.  They would easily inform to sardars about their visits, 
because, now the coalfield witnessed the pouring of surplus laborers. The 
miners, who wanted to continue working in some collieries, had to maintain 
good rapport with institution of recruitment . The miners lived in Dhowrahs 
, in notable number, inclined to extend the time of rest even on Monday, 
despite of recurrent violent dragging of those miners by pehalwan. In these 
cases the miners either hid out themselves in room or kalali (grog shop).
The above practice albeit, dwindled in this period. Nevertheless, a large 
number of miners gradually succumbed to fear psychic generated by employers. 
It was at such a level that in day to day working the miners would remain 
ever ready to go at work on hearing siren. If they could not turn up 
themselves the badali workers would have been put on work. The Gorakhpuri 
labourers had been at most vulnerable in this respect. They were compelled 
to work on Monday in particular. Some of them remonstratively contrived to 
escape from work. They tried to hide out inside the mines. But, when they 
were caught by lathaith of employer, they were brutally beaten up. I was 
informed about such a practice going on in industry colliery:
“…in industry colliery the white sahib used to deploy bulldogs to teach 
lesson to such workers or recalcitrant miners. In some cases the brutality 
resulted into the death of victims. And all this happened in Broadway light. 
The employers carried on this form of regimenting the miners in collusion 
with colonial police administration, which during 1950s and 1960s existed 
largely unchanged” .
These were displayed in such ways in order to make workers “awfully 
submissive.” It could hardly achieve complete success, although. The 
incidence of hiding out remained noticeable till early years of the 1970s. A 
few miners preferred to become pehalwan of companies or contractors for 
escaping from such torturous relation of domination and exploitation. Some 
miners moved to political trade union activities and establish themselves as 
an activist of some trade union units affiliated to INTUC or Socialist 
Unions and AITUC. These miners could escape the situation of victimization. 
Where those trade unions’ units commanded stronghold.
The heavily indebted miners, who did not see the possibility of redeeming 
their debts in the given situation, were not inclined to work above an 
average work days (one tub per shift). They would just spend the lower 
ceiling of workday. Similarly, they declined to have been at work on Monday. 
Actually whatever amount they could earn were seized by the kabuliwalas or 
moneylenders at the pay counter itself. Sometime these usurers had 
forcefully and treacherously received pay from accountant in place of 
indebted actual producers. Thereupon the usurers used to give a minimum 
amount of money to miners for running bare subsistence. The money was so low 
that miners family could half fed only, if another member of that family 
were not working. Some miners however, fought against such relation of debt 
and strove to secure the remuneration of their labour power.  Some of such 
miners even approached to the company officials and trade unions- of 
Congress, Socialists and Communists. The latter at most tried to facilitate 
negotiation between usurers and miners for nonviolent realization of debt. 
Usually the miners, accountant and usurer overtime arrived at a compromise 
that usurer himself could receive payment of the respective miners. 
Thereupon the usurer gave the piecemeal amount of money-as a next debt- to 
the miners.
The practice of short spell of workdays couldn’t have been dwelled on by the 
piece rated wagon loaders. With the expansion of the use of electricity the 
work of wagon loading happened to be at the night as well. The wagon loaders 
had to remain ready for the work of longer hours in accordance with the 
supply of wagons. There was no question of a formal rest on Sunday.
Like previous decades the regular workers took break on any day in a week 
when they were either physically exhausted or pressed with some other 
obligation. The permanent workers would bribe Haziri men for showing his or 
her regular attendance (the bribe was usually around fifty percent of wage 
of a day). They did so for ensuring their claim for production and 
attendance bonus and, paid leaves, which were linked to the attendance 
performance of miners. The companies tended to de-legitimize the claim of 
the miners by contriving irregularity in their attendance. But the miners 
had overtime ingeniously improvised ways for securing their claims.
The rest on Sunday gradually became one of the crucial days in the life of 
mining people. The latter considered this day as their Appna Din. They 
declined to work on this day, while the work on Sunday was formally an over 
time work. In 1947 the board of conciliation had recommended 1& ½ times wage 
for over-time work. On this day they participated in Akhara in nearby area.
The practice of working time was continuously conditioned by majdoors 
physical and mental position (such as sickness and ill health) as well as 
other social-cultural and familial orientation (such as, festival 
time-Durga-Puja, kali-puja, Makarsakranti, Ramnavmi, Muharram, Sohrai; on 
occasion of marriage/funeral procession). The great numbers of mazdoors have 
to remonstratively enforce these days/ leaves since these workers were 
literally non-permanent or non-registered ones. Even the permanent workers 
had to enforce on some of the occasions because, they could avail only seven 
paid leaves. In 1967, central coal wage board recommended some casual leave. 
The provision was for one holiday on each twelve-day regular attendance and 
on fourteen days regular attendance respectively for underground and surface 
majdoors. But these were not implemented fully except the collieries of NCDC 
. The labor trade unions have been demanding these benefits from the 1940s 
onwards. These were some of the core issues behind the battles that mining 
classes fought during the 1945-1948. They could achieve it but at very low 
level- both in terms of formal provisions and its accessibility. In the 
following years and decades, though they had to struggle continually for 
getting implemented the pertaining provisions. The struggle in 1946-48 for 
some miners was an attempt to subvert the entire structure of authority and 
labor regime, though not production relation as such. Keshvo Rawani reported 
to me: “if the strike in 1948 had been successfully continued for just one 
more day (after three months thirteen days in Bhowra mines) the collieries 
would have come under the control of working class and communists”.
They struggled and negotiated for becoming permanent workers so that they 
could entertain legislative form of time routine. Some took recourse of 
politics of trade union for attaining such status. The numbers of such 
workers were pretty high in  big collieries where high number of distant 
immigrant workers were concentrated (such as in Jealgora, Lodna) . In 
addition, some workers contrived to propitiate management. They were largely 
distant immigrant family workers who often worked as spies of management 
between mining communities . They maintained and exploited their primordial 
ties with contractors and managerial staffs. These relations sometime 
extended to familial relations. One worker reported to me: “the staffs were 
fascinated with the female folk of those families, thus they got permanency 
of their jobs as a reward of their subordination and loyalty to the 
management. A few women worker also adopted this way of achieving their 
aims”.
The majdoors involved in and witnessed the popularization of some new form 
of entertainment and rituals. These were Ramlila, Nautanki, Laundanach etc. 
The congress leaders towards the late 1940s started temple construction and 
Ramlila as a social work activities, reported kedeshwar Singh (a leader of 
INTAC/ Congress in Bhowra colliery). Nautanki and Laundanach etc were 
organized by labour contractor and/ or workers collectivity . The programmes 
happened in some part of the coalfield, throughout a year except a few 
months in rainy season. These, albeit, happened to be more extensive during 
festive calendar of peasants of north India such as during December, 
January, February, march, April, October, &n November. One Ramlila would go 
for a month. Similarly Laundanach would continue for ten to fifteen days in 
one spell. Colliers participated in a large number in leisure programs. Some 
of them attended it even at the cost of work . Though comrade Vinod Roy 
contended this fact .
This new form of leisure overtime also included cinemas. The cinema halls 
were gradually emerging in the 1960s and the 1970s. I was told  “those days 
cinema halls run house full. Definitely the unmarried male workers 
entertained these programs even by getting off from their work”.
They started the public worship of collieries. They used to pray for the 
security and safety of their lives even on the occasion of Dashahra and 
Kalipuja. But the new ritual had imbued with new meanings and pattern. A few 
workers by grouping together could organize it. They instituted the Hanuman 
jhanda at the entrance of colliery and idols of kali. They considered 
colliery the home of kalima since the darkness and blackness in both was 
common. The miners gave sacrifice of a goat to invoke kali-ma, so that ma 
would not become angry and save the lives of their devotees and mines(?)as 
well . They would thenceforth go for feast. They held sometime this ritual 
in their free-time, and sometime even after half day of work. Mostly, these 
were done on Saturday. I am informed that from the 1950s the trade union 
leaders were at the forefront of these rituals. I am not informed, how 
owners initially responded to it? But they overtime recognized it and began 
to give a little financial aid to respective groups. They also began to 
promote and aid for Ramlila & temple construction etc. All workers were 
definitely not involved in carrying these rituals. Among the latter type of 
workers the communist trade unionists and workers of such political 
orientation were in particular.
Some majdoors continued taking break to visit their family and, attend some 
festive occasions such as Holi, Dashahra, Sohrai etc in their bastis . The 
frequency of such visit decreased according to increase in distance of 
villages. They visited though by informing the managerial staffs or sirdars 
but, usually revert to colliery late than the time they would have promised. 
Now they used their community nexus (along caste, bustee or friendship line) 
for getting into work. They sometime bribed or requested to trade union 
leaders for these purposes. In contrast, the casual workers continued to go 
back their villages during agrarian season. But, these workers could not be 
regarded temporary/ migratory/seasonal workers. They used to revert to 
colliery after plantation of paddy crop or sugarcane etc. The study group in 
1967-68 noted: “these workers were in fact regular workers who used to 
return back to colliery after agricultural seasons”

I will further explore these issues and the fourth section in particular. 
The sources I will look at are as follows:

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