UPSC Prelims 2017 · Question 90 of 99
UPSC Prelims 2017 question on Trade Disputes Act 1929
- ExamUPSC CSE
- Year2017
- PaperGeneral Studies Paper I
- SubjectModern History
- TopicPeasant and Tribal Movements
- DifficultyHard
- TypeDirect
The Trade Disputes Act of 1929 provided for
Show answer
Answer: D. a system of tribunals and a ban on strikes.
Verdict
The answer is a system of tribunals and a ban on strikes. The Trade Disputes Act of 1929 provided for compulsory inquiry machinery and outlawed strikes in public utilities.
Analysis
The Act made compulsory the appointment of Courts of Inquiry and Consultation Boards for settling industrial disputes, and made strikes illegal in public utility services such as posts, railways, water and electricity unless each worker gave a month's advance notice. It also forbade trade union activity of a coercive or purely political nature, including sympathetic strikes. It therefore combined a dispute resolution mechanism with restrictions on the right to strike, and offered nothing on worker participation in management or intervention by British courts.
Source
Bipan Chandra, India's Struggle for Independence, and Spectrum, page 346.
How to crack it
Colonial labour legislation was almost always restrictive in intent, framed to contain a rising labour movement rather than to empower it, so options describing worker participation should be rejected on the spirit of the period alone. Then attach the Act to its political context: the Trade Disputes Act and the Public Safety Bill of 1929 together provoked the Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt bombing of the Central Legislative Assembly, which is the memorable hook.