WOMEN WORKERS AND DEVELOPMENT 15 rector does nothing to reduce poverty and contains within it the seeds of a state of increasing misery. It is not claimed here that anything like a proper substantiation of this thesis has been achieved. To start with there is very little data available in this field and, unfortunately, detailed information is available only about the relatively more organised and vocal groups. The groups that we have been concerned with, especially the women, are silent and the nature of the problem is generally ignored by the academics and by politicians. Of course, there is no dearth of anecdotal reportage making a sob story of it all. That women are mainly concerned in it is supposed to, and probably does, pluck at the heart strings more poignantly. It has been the purpose of this paper to pursue the logic of the economic situation, not to indulge in tear jerking but if tears are to be shed let them be shed for the whole of our society. The women concerned deserve, indeed demand., our utmost admiration. 1 I C S S R, The Report of the Committee on Status of Women in India, Chapter on Roles Rights and Opportunities for Economic Participation. 2 Labour Bureau, Ministry of Labour, Government of India, Indian Labour Statistics 1975, Table No 2.3, "Employment of Public and Private Sectors 1962-74", p 54. ' 8 The index number of real earnings of factory workers with 1961 s= 100 was 103 in 1963 and 101 in 1971. Labour Statistics 1975, op.cit.. Table No 4.5, p 85. 4 C S 0, Government of India, Annual Survey of Industries. 6 OP Vig, India's Population, Sterling Publishers (P) Limited, 1976, pp 88-89. S Chandrashekhar, India's Population—Facts, Problems and Policies, Meenakshi Prakashan, 1970, p 24. 6 Rev T R Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, Vol II, sixth edition, p314. 7 This survey was financed by the I C S S R for the Committee on Unemployment. 8 Between 1947 and 1963, about 1.5 million refugees settled in the Calcutta urban area. 9 Calcutta's organised employment outside the public sector grew by 18 percent between 1960<1971, while the All India figure grew by 38 percent in that period. 10 Dhndekar and Rath, "Poverty in India: Dimensions and Trends" in Economic and Political Weekly, January 1971. 11 See the forthcoming report on The Survey of Unorganised Women in Calcutta, 1915-76 by Nirmala Banerjee. 12 This is excluding workers who live with the employers^ families. 13 We tested the two hypotheses that different age groups earn significantly different wages and that more experienced people earn more: but the results were insignificant in the case of each kind of job for both the hypotheses. 14 All interviewees were asked whether their mothers and mothers-in-law had ever worked and if so at what kind of jobs. 15 Such workers are called Thika workers. The hypothesis could not be tested for other kinds of workers, because a number of them had complained about their inability to find as much work as they would like to do. ^ S Mukherjee, Survey of Pavement Dwellers in Calcutta, G M D A 1975. 17 AN Bose, Calcutta's Informal Sector, World Employment Programme Research Working Paper. 18 Ingrid Palmer and Victoria Goddard have pointed out to me that in their work in Indonesia and Italy respectively they found that there also, such activities were widespread.