[Reader-list] family and work

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                                              Family and Work


The coal mining industry in the Jharia coalfield started working from the 
decade of the 1890s. The laboring masses, in an increasing number, began 
pouring for colliery work from different parts of South Asia. The Mazdoors 
who initially joined colliery came mainly from the contiguous areas and 
neighbouring districts.  The males, females, and the children of these 
Mazdoors families worked together in the collieries. This was true by and 
large for both the underground and the surface works.
I have elsewhere discussed the nature of streams of mining classes taking up 
colliery work between the 1890s and the 1970s. From the early years of the 
decade of the 1900s, the migration began to flow from relatively distant 
areas into the colliery work . They also joined colliery largely as ‘Family 
Mazdoors’/family labour. Some of them were, though, single male workers. The 
latter category of labour swelled in number during the boom period of coal 
trade (1915-19) and its aftermath . The single female workers also came to 
occupy a small proportion of the total work force in the decade of the 1920s 
and the 1930s. They were largely widow woman workers

The mining community lived broadly in three kinds of houses in the 
coalfield. One- those miners who lived in their Bustees in the nearby mines. 
Second, those who lived in the Dhowrahs obtained from the coal Companies . 
Third those who lived in self-built huts of mud and straw . The second and 
third types of homes constituted the predominant forms of the colliery 
bastis/pada/neighborhoods and grew around each colliery . This relocation 
around collieries meant the ‘re-organisation of their lives’. They had to 
cope with the ‘colliery working and living contexts’ (at the work place and 
the Dhowrahs).  For instance, the mining people who worked in a “family 
gang”, had to habituate to the situation when women workers were withdrawn 
from underground work from the decade of the 1920s onwards . In reaction 
there was at times an exodus from collieries. Some miners protested. 
Similarly, Mazdoors’ families had to struggle and devise ways for sustaining 
and maintaining the combination between the tasks of production and 
reproduction (of physique as well as generation). While, the industrial 
regime worked to redesign the organisation of their lives and scope of 
familial- social obligation (family/home lives), workers sought to maintain 
their own conception of family life.
This paper is intended to study the following set of questions. What was the 
form of organisation of ‘socio-familial relation’ of mazdoors? How did they 
apprehend the ‘socio-familial time’? In what ways and, how far the 
labour/time regime in the mines affected the organisation of mazdoors’ 
socio-familial relation? How did the mining community react to the 
challenges? What extent and why only to that did they succeed in resolving 
the tension? And what were their experiences of the struggle of adaptation? 
I explore these issues of the lives of the mining community in the period 
from the decade of the 1920s and largely till 1940s/60s. In this period, 
they witnessed the phenomenon of the reorganization of the production 
process and work force, the gradual removal of the woman workers and the 
child labour, the consequent subsistence crisis, the precariousness of 
disruption of the “family/home” life in the coalfield, the adamant and 
adverse attitude of the coal-proprietors/employers and the state before 
their demands and, the larger vanility/vanity of their struggle.

                                                  I

What do I understand by the term ‘family’? We have at least two sets of well 
acknowledged definitions of ‘Family’.
1.	A group of people tied with each other along the blood- line and sharing 
one household.
2.	A group of people who share a marital and generational bond between each 
other. And, they are a part of a household economy .
The third conception of the family is as follows: the social grouping of the 
people that is formed through the particular form of sexual life of the 
human kind and, the system of the consanguinity .
I see some limitations in the former two conceptions. They heavily emphasize 
on  ‘biological ties’ & ‘legal relation’, and household economy. In 
contrast, a family of a group of people may exist, whose members feel a 
sense of ties/attachment with each other. And the feeling is both 
substantial and concrete. I should emphasise here the contention to make a 
distinction between the household on the one hand and, the family on the 
other. The former refers the family of the procreation /reproduction as an 
economic unit; while the family is of orientation /feeling/belief . I have 
deployed this meaning/ understanding of a family and at places juxtaposed 
with the historical forms of the family in the subsequent analysis.

                                                 II

There was more than one form of ‘social- familial organisation’ amongst the 
colliers. [The latter lived and conceived those organisation at different 
levels]. One form of socio-familial organisation was a ‘family gang’. They 
lived in Dhowrahs, allotted to them by companies. The Santhals from 
Hazaribagh & Santhal Pargana, the Bauris from Burdwan, Bakura & Manbhum, the 
Rajwars from Manbhum, the Bhuiyans from Monghyr worked in family gangs . 
These families included the husband, the wife, the children, and even some 
other kith & kin.
But, some of the family miners preferred to live in their houses in bastis, 
and did not live in ì¥Á G 	     ¿               ÝÏ
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  dozen people lived in a small room.  The workers preferred to live with 
fellow workers of their kith or same caste/ territory/  jila 
(district)/ilaka/gaon- group . I would call these forms of social 
organisation as a communitarian-family. Some of them were socio-familial 
group, which did not maintain regular links to the kin living in their 
bastis of origin. The proportion of this form of labour was very small till 
the 1920’s. It was around 15% of the total work force .
An overwhelming majority of miners maintained their contact with their kin 
and homes in villages. They were located within an ‘extended family’. Chitra 
Joshi has shown largely similar phenomena in the case of Kanpur textile 
workers.  These were Mazdoors from both adjacent and distant areas. The 
single male workers, who constituted a large section of the miners by 
1920’s, were largely of this category. Some of them had to bring their 
female-folks. It was done for obtaining work of malcuttas, a job with better 
pay . A great number of male workers could not bring their female 
counterparts and children.  They preferred to work as a trammer, 
timber-mistri and other surface works, where a family gang did not work. 
They lived in dhowrahs, in which a group of single male workers lived. They 
preferred a fellow worker of own kith & kin, of the same Gaon/ elaka 
(socio-cultural territory, and not essentially administrative one).
Over time the para/ dhowrahs developed along the line of caste/ elaka 
community. We hear of Bhuiya Dhowrahs, Bauri, Paschima Dhowrahs etc. I want 
to explore whether employers planned such type of housing/ spatial 
arrangements. This form of configuration of socio-familial relationship led 
the formation of different cohesive circles of miners.
This socio-familial relation was manifest even at the workplace. A sizeable 
number of miners worked belowground as a family gang. They were not always 
linked to each other through marital and parental ties.  The pairs of 
malcuttas and loaders of family gangs contained the males and the females of 
broad socio- familial groupings. Workers preferred to be paired with the 
colliers of their kin/ caste/ tribe/bastis/elaka.  The Kamins, working 
belowground in the 1910’s and 1920’s, declined to work along side the male 
workers other, than the members of their ‘socio- familial groupings’. The 
Kamins of the social group like, the Santhals, the Rajwars, the Mahtos, the 
Bhuiyans, the Bilaspuris, some of the Bauris, etc refused to accompany 
Paschima male miners, as loaders.

                                                                  III

The ‘family labour’ and the family working system remained a predominant 
form of the work unit (if not the production unit)-like in the Assam tea 
plantation, agrarian society and economy in South Asia-in the coal-mining 
industry in Jharia till the decade of the 1920s, likewise in the Raniganj 
coalfield . They were employed in two ways in colliery works. One, they 
worked belowground in the form of family gangs . Second those working 
families whose members worked un-unitedly at surface and underground. The 
family gang included the male, female and the children. They were not always 
linked to each other through marital and parental ties.  The pairs of 
malcuttas and loaders of family gangs contained the males and the females of 
broad socio- familial groupings. It has been usual to see that the two woman 
workers loading coal for the four to six persons. Workers preferred to be 
paired with the colliers of their kin/ caste/ tribe/bastis/elaka.  The 
Kamins, working belowground in the 1910s and 1920s declined to work along 
side the male workers other, than the members of their ‘socio- familial 
groupings’. The Kamins of the social group like the Santhals, Rajwars, 
Mahtos, Bhuiyans, Bilaspuris, Mushahrs and some of the Bauris refused to 
accompany Paschima male miners, as loaders.  Some Kamins of the Bauri social 
group stepped over time to work as loaders with the Paschima male miners. 
The female-folks was found in higher number than the male-folks between the 
Bauri social group in 1921 .
The male members worked as malcuttas and the female members and the children 
largely worked as loaders, trammers, water-bailers, etc. in the family gangs 
in the case of belowground works . They in numerous gangs/Dangles extracted 
the coal. Each dangal was of 6 to12 colliers. It included mulcuttas, 
loaders, trammers, mining sirdars etc . 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 then pushed the tubs forward to the pit bottom. They 
sometimes, carried them on head at the surface. This form organisation of 
production process was predominantly in vogue till the decade of the 1920s, 
when the shift started to take place. A pair of mulcuttas and loaders was 
found cutting and loading coal on an average, in normal condition, 2 to3 
tubs  in a day.
In the case of the surface work the family working system was involved in 
the earth cutting and removing works. The toiling people from the regions 
like Orissa and Nagpur and Bilaspur preferred this work. If the family 
members worked separately, the male-folks usually worked belowground as 
timber-Mistries, railway line Mistries, etc.; while the female-folks and the 
children worked at surface as loaders, wagon loaders, shale-pickers, wooden 
ginners, and the jobs such as, raising coal from the pit-mouth.
They slogged to carry the combined tasks of production and reproduction even 
at the colliery workplaces. They took their babies and elder children there. 
The latter members also worked as loaders or shale-pickers along side of 
their parents. The attempts of combining production and reproduction tasks 
such as, in minding their babies seem took some time out from work . The 
employers, however, not only allowed but welcomed the family system of 
working. This system was the guarantee of acquiring a maximum number of 
labourers at the lowest wage rate and the fringe benefits. The coal industry 
continued to struggle for obtaining adequate cheap labour till the early 
years of the 1920s . The mining condition that characterized by the over all 
absence of the automated production process and the mechanical power driven 
machinery, the employment of the family system was to have hardly been 
non-desirable. While, it helped the employers to secure the labourers only 
by paying individual wage than paying the family wage to the breadwinners. 
The colliery employers were, that is why, opposed to the any legislation 
that restricting the recruitment of the female-filkes . A few big European 
coal companies, nevertheless, started to bemoan the family system of mining 
from the early years of the 1920s. The external observers such as T R Rees, 
Noyce and Foley in the 1920s noticed the ‘wretched condition’ of mining 
population. I am not informed whether the labour ever waged the battle for 
or asked for the ‘family wage’. They entered the colliery work as the family 
labour. There was, of course, a long tradition of system of family labour in 
the agrarian fields in the 19thc and the early 20thc among the social groups 
the miners were drown from . The imperialist colonial state in the disguise 
of the policy of the laissez faire helped the colliery employers in keeping 
the wage rate repressed for instance during the period of the 1915-1920.
          The mining families, nonetheless, never saw the practice of 
combining the production and the reproduction works as anomalous. For them 
those tasks were organically associated . L.Barnens in her fieldwork noted 
that the women workers often narrated with joy ‘the work they did below 
ground, the people they worked with, members of their gang- and how they 
used to sing and work’. Mostly, kamins used to revert back to their village 
during the period of child bearing and rearing (initial years of it) . The 
[Santhal] women loaders in the later 1920s revealed that “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, Kamins could combine production & reproduction /familial tasks in the 
collieries at this time, as in the pre colliery days.  While’ male members 
could largely continue their work. It has been the conventional conception 
that the industrial economy created a disjunction between the temporal 
organisation of productive task and reproductive/ familial –obligations at 
the work . In the case of Jharia collieries the mineì¥Á G 	     ¿            
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d the work force, and the consequent changes in the working and the living 
contexts of the coal miners. I will just critically brief those expositions. 
The coal industry underwent through the progression of the investment in the 
technological form of the capital  such as, coal cutting machines, 
underground railway lines, use of the explosives, ventilator fans, 
electrification, etc . The coal proprietors had fetched a huge profit/ 
surplus during the boom period between the 1914-20 under the impact of the 
coal driven war machinery. A great share of it, though, went into the 
enjoying of the dividends. A small of it was invested in the technological 
upgrading for reducing the relative cost of labour payment and raising the 
productivity. The kind of technology was installed that rendered the woman 
workers in particular redundant for instance from the works of the 
water-bailing, pushing the tubs from the work face to the pit mouth or at 
the surface, from the screening and the shale-picking work, etc.
L Barnes argued that the installation of the particular verity of the 
machinery for some job in-itself does not explain the entire story of the 
removal of the woman workers and the reduction in their number. The 
selection of machinery for a particular work and for other is in-itself a 
gendered policy biased against the female-folks. Second the latter were 
actually replaced by the male-folks both underground and at the surface . 
The jobs on the newly installed machines were allotted to the male-folks 
such as on the haulage engine, tramming, water-pup-pumps, line mistry, 
channak, etc. The male workers also intruded the job of coal loading into 
the tubs belowground. They were largely distant immigrant miners. Employers 
adopted a policy of removing woman workers from a certain jobs. These were 
carried out especially at the big mines-predominantly owned by Europeans.
The family majdoors underwent a number of new developments during the 1920s 
and the 1930s/40s. The changes in the organisation of the production 
process, means of the production and the organisation of the labour forces 
were accompanied by the phenomenon of the over arrival of the toiling 
people, relative slump in the coal trade, the reduction in the number of the 
operating mines and in the scale of the job opportunity in the Jharia coal 
field .
They mining classes were subject to the process of regidification of labour 
regime/work regime during second half of the decade of the 1920s.  These 
took place especially in big mines (European owned). These mines had gone 
through the progression of investment in technological capital. Colliery 
owners wanted quick and greater return from their investment in 
technological upgradation, so they also wanted their miners to use maximally 
those machines and organization of production. Mazdoors, thus, witnessed and 
experienced the increasing demand from their employers for  ‘greater 
regularity’ at work and greater attention towards it.  This resulted in 
intensification of work for respective miners.
This change (business strategy) influenced and was manifest on the 
employers’ discourses of time routine. Employers, managers and supervisory 
authorities, towards the late 1920s, began to bemoan vociferously against 
the ostensible ‘irregular, irrational and non-disciplined/non-efficient 
working pattern’ of Indian miners. From 1925 onwards CIMAR (D.P.Denman), 
European and big colliery owners 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”.
Now, the Kamins suffered from their forceful gradual removal from 
belowground works.  It had begun to take place even before the stipulation 
of the Act of 1929 (seeking the withdrawal of Kamins from belowground). 
Their withdrawal increased from 1929-30 onwards in all collieries favoring 
such replacement or/and retrenchment. The small and medium sized collieries- 
largely owned by the Indian coal proprietors were opposed to the Act. These 
were the collieries where very low level of technological means of 
production were installed and the traditional mining techniques based on the 
manual labour with picks, hovels and baskets were predominant. The women 
workers continued to carry strenuous work in the quarry mines. But the 
industrial slump and the subsequent depression in the coal trade during the 
1923 and 1936 further aggravated the problem. It caused the gradual closure 
of the increasing number of the small and the quarry mines in particular. As 
a result the spaces for the family mining system further shrank. Meanwhile, 
the presence of the family system of mining swelled owing to two 
institutional and socio-cultural reasons. The employers also adopted the 
policy of replacing the old “local – peasant/ tribal workers by the distant 
immigrant labourers. The replacements of the local– the Santhals, Bauris, 
and the Ghatwals coal-cutters were accompanied by the resignation of the 
respective female-folks .

The course of the removal of female-folks and the replacement of the old 
family majdoors predisposed the preponderant family working system to 
tremble through the reduction in the number of wage earners in their 
families and the consequent subsistence crisis (?). The condition of the 
majdoors was further aggravated by the onslaught of the curtailment of the 
wage rates, and the working days during the period of the 1930-36, a period 
of coal trade depression in particular. It was around 40% reduction in the 
wage rates, while between 40to 80 percent in the overall earning of an 
individual on an average. B R Seth critically overhauled the deteriorating 
condition of these working class families. I will here just brief it. More 
than one investigator like T R Rees (1919), Noyce (1920), Foley (1925), 
Whitely (1930), BLEC (1938) and BR Seth (1934) noted the ‘pitiable material 
living condition’ of the mining classes during the 1920s and the 1930s. An 
average real earning of miners was inadequate even to the ‘minimum basic 
subsistence needs’ of mining household-family consisting on an average 5to 6 
persons . It disposed them to the enslaving cycle of indebtedness, observed 
Royal Commission on Labour in 1930. The condition further deteriorated and 
the proletariat household families were crippled by the unrecoverable budget 
deficit and sapping physical and biological existence like relative high 
child death rate, maternal death rate, etc., owing to the reasons above 
discussed and some other, noted BLECR and BR Seth.
One nevertheless must note that the all these industrial context 
differentially affected the different segments of the people engaged in the 
coal mining industry. The coal proprietors continued to reap rather 
ironically ‘high percentage of dividends, noted Burrows coalfield committee 
in 1937. Similarly the managerial and the supervisory staffs-including the 
sirdar continued to fetch rather a higher wage rates than the real producers 
like coal cutters, loaders, trammers, timber-mistry, line-man, and the 
wagon-loaders. The women labour, in general, and the single female 
breadwinners such as, widow women labourers were disposed to at-most 
financial hard hit. They were subject to receive rather lower wage rates 
compared to the male counterparts for the same works . Likewise the 
different segments of the beneficiaries of coal industry were availed fringe 
benefits such as, housing, water supply, extra-allowance, medical benefits, 
etc. The corrupt and the predatory managerial and the supervisory authority 
favored one group of the miners against other in regard of tub distribution, 
fines and the deduction, bribes, etc. The ‘local-tribal’ people were 
predisposed to the loss from this form of function of the mining-regime . 
Indeed, the colliery employers, stuck with the ‘mercantilist and 
‘hierarchical’ labour economy’, were far short of paying ‘family-wage’ in 
the Jharia coalfield.
	These changes- the route of the removal of female-folks and the grip of the 
proletariat household financial predicaments, made the family majdoors 
liable to the trembling and ‘disorganisation’ of the old form of the 
‘family/home life’. They could hardly afford the non-working/non-earning 
members in existing economy of households. On the other hand the delicate 
order between the colliery works and the reproduction obligation was made 
liable to ‘unmanageable’. The child labour of below the age 13 in the 
colliery was prohibited from 1923 by the mining Act . While, the predatory 
‘social wage policy’ of the colliery employers neither provided the 
financial and housing scope for maintaining the non-earning members for 
minding the children in the coalfield nor the crèche facilities and 
accessible schools .

                                                            IV

How did the ‘family majdoors’ experience and cope with the attempts by mine 
owners to intensify labour, the predisposition of the decimating 
‘subsistence predicaments’ and the onrush on their “household-familial 
organisation of lives? Mining community adopted more than one strategy to 
cope with the situation, and they responded in multifarious ways. They now 
evolved new tactics in order to maintaining a balance between the fulfilment 
of production and the familial obligation. They initially wilesly contrived 
to come to term with the regimenting work- discipline. The Kamins hid their 
children in mines, when white men visited, and left ‘older’ ones in the care 
of other retired/old women in Dhowrahs, [after the ban on child labour 
(below 13 years) in 1923].  They were known that they were being removed 
from the work because they carried their babies at the workplace. While, the 
white-man considered that practices an ‘un-civilised’ practice and were 
repugnant to that. The other strategy that some of the ‘family majdoors’, 
especially when they consisted only the wife and the husband and an infants, 
worked out was to put up other families in their in one room, so that when 
they go to work, they may leave their infant with the members of other 
families who will go to work in the next shift. Some other families drugged 
their infant with opium to keep it quiet and to prevent it from being too 
hungry when the mother’s milk is not sufficient. These option were explored 
at the cost of the resulting over-crowdedness or the congestion which does 
not fail to affect the health of the inmates of the room adversely. In other 
case, as Miss M. Read observed, “it is nothing short of a terrible race 
suicide because drugged babies seldom grow up to be healthy children” . But 
these escaping attempts to turn down the onrush of the marginalisation could 
yield for long in securing the ends. The structural and the institutional 
reasons responsible for their predicaments were located somewhere else. In 
contrast, there were three misapprehensions/delusions prevailed among the 
mining classes in the Jharia coalfield, which guided the formulation, the 
strategy of adaptation. Besides the one I have already discussed above the 
rest two were as follows: One, “the woman workers were prohibited from the 
underground work after an incidence of the women giving birth to a child at 
work belowground. This incidence officially took place sometimes in the 
period of the second half of the 1920s” . In the memory of the miners in the 
Jharia coalfield the incidence is placed at varied date with only common 
point of reference of the rule of Aungrej. But it has been the popularly 
well known factor behind the removal of the female-folks. Second, according 
to a folktale- “young miner used to take in flute belowground and that he 
plays music, and women would stop work (?), sing and dance, so no work was 
done. Hence, bosses stopped the women from going down the mine”.  Notably, 
these commonsensical reasons are imbued with the ‘moral legitimacy’. E P 
Thompson suggested that the industrial regime also works through instilling 
its disciplinary rationale in terms of the appealing ‘moral order’ . It will 
be a worth investigation that in what ways did the mining regime created 
such favorable order? How and why did the proletariat accommodate that 
economy of the moral order?
I would like to explore further, how colliers came to terms with the new 
rules and regulations?
The Kamins, nonetheless, could not successfully fight against and survive to 
the gradual process of marginalisation. [The conservative philanthropists, 
scholars, the “gender biased” labour economy of the employers and the State 
acted in collusion against the rights of the Kamins to employment].  Being 
witnessed the venilety at large of the escaping methods some hundreds of 
family Majdoors remonstrated. Several pairs of the Malcuttas and the loaders 
-from the Santhals, Bauris and the Bilaspuris social groups in particular, 
left the coalmines in the years 1930-31 in search of works, in the places 
they could work together.  Some of them concentrated themselves in quarry 
works in coalfield. A thousand of the male and the female Mazdoors organised 
a huge protest-demonstration in 1934 in Jamadoba. They asked a stoppage on 
the removal and retrenchment of the female-folks, and the reemployment of 
the removed ones.
One needs to explore into and analyse the politics of the resistance- the 
collective mass exodus at time and assertions. There was a tradition/custom 
of working together and the family migration among these ‘landless labouring 
poor’ for their sustenance . [They were accustomed to move from one place to 
another with their wives, who as their helpmates were considered valuable 
economic assets.] But this custom (and mediating role of it in contrast to 
the theoretical suggestion of EP Thompson- can not be comprehended without 
looking at the factuality that the custom) pertained with the dimension of 
the class relation, B R Seth argued. There was evidence that even if these 
labourers regarded their female-folks and the children as earning assets, 
they did not permit them to work so long as their own earnings are 
sufficient to maintain the family. For instance, a whole class of people, 
known as the Mahatas, of their own accord, prohibited the employment of 
their women workers in the post war boom period. When their own earnings had 
increased, although those women ever since the opening of the Jharia 
coalfield have been employed both at the surface and underground. Even among 
the people of other castes, for instances, the labour sirdars though they 
also belong to the same castes as others who cut, load and tram the coal, 
did not send their children and the women to work in mines because they 
earned more than enough to maintain them .
But Seth misconceively presumed the ‘patriarchal character’ of the poverty 
ridden proletariat family. In the latter form of the ‘household family’ the 
male–folk was hardly the sole or despotic agent of decision making. There is 
nothing to evince/allude that the female-folks were drawn into the 
respective collective struggle under the pressure of their male-folks. [In 
contrary, among the oppressed classes or proletariat all the foundation of 
the classical monogamy, and male domination are removed. As there was a 
complete absence of all property, for the safeguarding and inheritance of 
which monogamy and male domination were established.  Moreover, the women 
were transferred to the labour market and the mines and worked often as the 
equally crucial breadwinner of the household-family ]. Indeed, The male and 
the female members of those families used to share household-familial tasks 
at homes. One old women worker reported to L.Barnes that after returning 
back from work both she and her husband used to jointly do house works such 
as, cooking, child-caring etc.  Theme of joint work recurs from their joyful 
memories of working careers. It is also mentioned during the debate on the 
withdrawal of Kamins participants.  Some old Kamins informed me in Dubaree 
colliery that these Kamins also worked as pioneering architect to build 
their own houses of mud and straw. An inadequacy of Dhowrahs and of sharing 
rooms with sometimes more than dozen of members of a socio- family was a 
problem acutely felt by them . “Women are the manager of homes. The husbands 
only earn and it is their wives who spend that earning. In shopping their 
voice is supreme. Comfort and discomfort of the homes depends on the women”, 
observed Royal commission on labour and Seth . The old woman workers (the 
Bilaspuris, Bauris and the Santhals) of Dubarre colliery told me that they 
used to go for marketing to Jharia Bazaar by walking a distance of 2and ½ 
miles on the day of rest.
Thus the custom of family working system not only ‘Mediated’ in the process 
of struggle of habituation and reacting to the mining-historical context 
ridden with the subsistence crisis and the strain in the order of the works 
of reproduction of the mining classes. But, the latter also ‘affirmed’ the 
system as a ‘mitigating-solution’.
Furthermore, the male and the female counterparts could work separately at 
different colliery workplaces. Both had, of course, to take care of their 
children at the workplaces too. The female-folks felt themselves ‘unsafe’ 
and/or sentimentally undesirable in working along sides the male-folks of 
some negotiable community such as paschima, some old kamins reported to L 
Barnes. Why did the mining classes could not come to resist collectively 
that onslaught? [ A-(SETH p-100)- absence of the politics of working class 
solidarity and the geniune and strong labour union. B- detrimental 
differences and distances and division among the mining classes]
  They could not, though, succeed in securing a change in the employment 
policy. Some of the collieries were coaxed to provide alternative works to 
some withdrawal women workers at the surface . Thais alternative 
opportunity, though, fell far short compared to a huge number of the workers 
removed from the underground work in particular or in quest of work.

Meanwhile, one of the ‘proletariat philanthropists’– Kamini Roy advocated 
the voice of such Kamins and the proletariat family, and also asked for 
maternity benefit scheme . The existing formal labour unions- Indian 
colliery employees association, Jharia; Indian colliery labour union; and 
Tata colliery labour association were not opposed to the removal of the 
female labourers and that of the ‘local-aboriginal and the peasant miners. 
They, in fact, voiced in favour of the 1929 Act  in order to bring about 
ostensible “social (safety and home life) and moral (sexual chastity) 
reforms in the life of the mining community and industrial progress” 
(productivity) . They, nonetheless, annually prayed, petitioned and on some 
occasions agitated for better wage rates, housing, water supply and the 
medical facilities; and the maternity benefit . The newly immigrant 
Paschhimas, predominantly single male miners, suggested L Barnes and R 
Ghosh, largely dominated these unions. Some of the participants in the 
discussion over the withdrawal of the kamins such as, Royal Commission on 
Labour recommended relative “wage increase otherwise, the poor miners might 
get away from colliery works”. It also recommended for the maternity benefit 
and alternative jobs at the surface to the kamins, so that they could 
stabilise themselves in the coalfield and become regular workers. One of the 
trade union leaders- M D Singh- from the second half of the 1930s demanded 
‘family wages’ to compensate the loss of income to miners- families. It 
became one of the core demands of labour unions, in response to withdrawal 
of Kamins. This in some way helped to de-prioritise the demands/voices of 
‘family-miners’.
	The provincial government of Bihar and Orissa, led by the Congress between 
1937-40 was far short of understanding the reality and real concerns of the 
coal miners in general and the family miners in particular. I will explore 
in detail somewhere else the question of the nature and forms of the 
relationship between the ‘raj’ of the Congress and the question of the 
labouring masses in the province of Bihar. The Congress government, like the 
direct British colonial govt. not only approved the so-called top to down 
imposed social reform policy but precipitated the sinister course of the 
removal of the kamins from the underground work and asked to be completed by 
October of 1937. It, however, additionally recommended the compensatory 25% 
improvement in wage rates. In order to check the retreat of the female-folks 
to the villages and consequent shattering of the family life, the provincial 
govt. of bourgeois and non-mining class orientation approved and initiated 
some ostensible “moral alternative means of livelihood” for the female-folks 
of the Indian society. The state funded a few weaving and spinning training 
schools were started in the Jharia coalfield for them. These centres, 
notwithstanding, could cater only around some hundred of women i.e. a tiny 
number of female job seekers compared to the thousands of the retrenched 
kamins. On the other hand, these centres in Jharia and Kustore reportedly 
suffered from the inadequate grant of the fund from the industry and 
employment department of the Bihar govt . Moreover, the whole politics of 
the discourse of the social reforms by the govt. kept itself confined to the 
hollow big talks and a few aforesaid shortsighted, inadequate and sometimes 
adverse initiatives. It’s measures- like the British govt, remained 
noticeable by its absence in the realm of provisioning education facilities 
to the children of the miners or setting up of the crèche facilities for the 
babies of the toiling families in the colliery settlements or recreational 
facilities such as playgrounds, parks, clubs, library, housing, etc. for the 
coal-mining population .
	The BLEC- appointed in 1938, surveyed the working and the living condition 
in the Jharia coalfield and condemnablly appraised the exploitative and the 
conservative profit making attitudes of the colliery proprietors. It 
recommended the state initiatives for the making of “living family wage”, 
adequate housing, education, crèche and the recreational facilities to the 
coal-miners that were engaged in the most hazardous work, while working and 
living in the sinister, squalor, unpalatable, disgusting, repugnant, 
sickening conditions. But, the Congress govt. allowed this proposal to fall 
in the dustbin and nor to be enacted. The 1935 govt. of India Act has 
granted the power to the provincial govt. for making legislation on its own, 
if necessary, for ensuring the ‘living wage or the family wage’. We will see 
latter that the govt. even refused to intervene in the matter of struggle 
for improving the wage rates by around 6000 mining people of 4 collieries of 
the managing agency Bird and company. While, the mining classes remained 
bravely and desperately on complete strike for round 150 days for demanding 
just and fair wage rates and treatment from the despotic managerial and the 
supervisory staffs.
	Meanwhile, the Jharia Board of Health, on the behalf of colliery 
proprietors in the light of the recommendations the RCL started the 
maternity benefits scheme from the late1930 and the early 1931 with an 
annual fund of 4000 rupees. Under the scheme the colliery proclaimed to pay 
some monetary aid as maternity benefit to an expected mother, arrangements 
of trained daies and doctor and the child welfare centres . However, all 
these were predisposed to fall short of even the liberal recommendations of 
the RCL or the demands and objective requirements of the mining community. 
Some of the collieries such as, Kustore started a program for alternative 
employment to the female-folks of the male miners in order to induce them to 
remain settled in their colliery and also escape the rising demand of family 
wage .


But, family majdoors desperately struggled to secure scope for continuing 
wage works. They steeped, in some collieries, to foster a little reprieving 
practice. The kamins who were laid-off competed for securing work at surface 
for a few days in a week . Here, they were sometimes predisposed to suffer 
from the sexual victimisation by Munshi responsible for distribution of 
works. B L E C in 1938, noted that munshi used to ask for sexual favour from 
Kamins in return of award of regular employment or maximum number of days in 
a week. There were a higher number of job seekers including women and men. 
Munshis tended to exploit this situation . Every one could not grease the 
palm of munshis. Some Kamins- from the Bauri, Bilaspuris and the Nagpuri 
social-groups in particular succumbed to this or/and succeeded in obtaining 
their ends by serving / making such nexus . The formation of such rapport 
did not essentially disrupt their household-familial relation. In some 
cases, it led the making of a household-familial relation between those of 
munshi and Kamins . Illyas Ahmad Gaddi discusses such cases of (live-in) in 
his novel ‘Fire Area’. This was also expressed in the folk-tales of a 
Kamins, I have quoted in chapter one (p-5-6, section-I). It is sometime 
portrayed in terms of intensified practice of relation of prostitution in 
the Jharia coalfield.  I would, rather like to suggest that one needs to 
make distinction between operation of ‘socio-familial’ relation, and, of 
prostitution. The former was beckoned aiming to make earning through tasks 
of actual production.

Now, family miners needed to assert them in one more way. The Kamins had to 
show their regular presence at work. It required a re-designing of relation 
between work and the time of child bearing and rearing. To practice the old 
form of its organisation i.e. to reverting to gaon for a period of ½ to1 
year was ‘costlier’. In this situation those who could secure jobs started 
increasing demand for maternity benefits.


                                                                         V
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