56 SOCIAL SCIENTIST ILC Norms The new norms agreed upon at the 15th ILC postulated a standard working class family as consisting of three consumption units for one earner, and recognised their minimum needs as a net intake of 2700 calories as recommended by Dr Aykroyd for an average adult of moderate activity; per capita consumption of 18 yards of cloth per annum which would give the average worker's family of four a total of 72 yards; two-room housing at minimum rent under the subsidised housing scheme for low income groups; and, miscellaneous items constituting 20 per cent of the total minimum wage. The ILC recommendations form a landmark in that it provides a standard for wage bargaining. But despite the tripartite agreement the demand for need-based wage has not so far been implemented by the Government. None of the wage boards appointed by the Government has incorporated ILG norms in their recommendations. Soon after the 15th ILC and in the context of the accelerated tempo of the movement of the Central Government employees and the threatened all-India strike by the Post and Telegraph employees in August 1957 for wage increases to meet the rapid and high rise in the cost of living, the Government was forced to appoint the Second Pay Commission. The employees demanded adherence to the norms of the 15th ILC while fixing their minimum wage. But on the specific advice from the Finance Ministry to regard them as mere recommendations of the Indian Labour Conference and that 'Government have, at no time, committed themselves to taking executive action to enforce the recommendations5, the Second Pay Commission, true to its character, threw to the winds the norms of need-based minimum wage as recommended by 15th ILC. Basing its report on the invented formula of a "vegetarian diet", scaling down the calory consumption and substituting animal protein by groundnut protein, the Second Pay Commission offered a paltry increase of Rs 5 for class IV employees and raised the minimum wage from Rs 75 to Rs 80. Against these developments, which resulted from the political decision of the ruling Congress party, despite the tripartite agreement and collective bargaining, the protests of the employees spread far and wide. All this makes it amply clear how the wage policy of the Congress Government was heavily loaded against the working population in general and the industrial workers in particular whose contribution to increasing productivity had been rapidly adding to the mounting profits of the employers, the superprofit hunters. This marked bias of the ruling Congress in favour of the monopolists makes the truth abundantly clear that those who hold the commanding economic positions also wield the political power. And it was this political power which manifested itself in a crude form when the Central Government crushed the employees5 strike in 1960 and again in 1968. This is how the 15th ILC agreement, which remained a pious