EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 62 of 120

Correct — C, (c) Child labour. The Indian Factories Act of 1881 was the first factory legislation India had, and it is remembered as a child-labour statute because every substantive protection in it was written for children. What it actually did: it prohibited the employment of children below seven years of age altogether; it capped the working day for children under twelve at nine hours; it gave children four holidays in a month and required intervals of rest; and it required dangerous parts of machinery to be fenced and accidents to be reported. Its scope was narrow — it reached only factories that used mechanical power and employed 100 or more workers — and its enforcement machinery was thin. But the point for this question is what it left alone. It fixed no limit on the working day of adult men. It made no separate provision for the hours or the night work of women. It said nothing about wages, housing, sanitation or hours of rest for adults. Strip out the fencing-of-machinery clause and what remains is a code for children between seven and twelve. That is why the standard description of the Act — the one the stem is quoting almost word for word — is that the Indian Factories Act, 1881 dealt primarily with the problem of child labour. The Act was passed under Ripon, against the background of the Bombay cotton mills and the agitation of reformers who had been pressing since the 1870s for an inquiry into conditions in them; but the legislature answered that agitation with a children's measure and left the adult workforce to the next Act. Women's work reached the statute book only with the Factories Act of 1891, which cut the coverage threshold to fifty workers, raised the child band from seven-to-twelve to nine-to-fourteen, reduced children's hours from nine to seven, introduced a weekly holiday and brought in restrictions on women's work including night work.

• (a)Women labour — This is the Act of 1891, not the Act of 1881. The 1881 Act contains no provision addressed to women as a class; the working hours of women and the restriction of their night work enter Indian factory law only with the second Factories Act, ten years later. This is the single most common confusion in this topic, because most candidates remember 'the Factories Act protected women and children' as one phrase and then cannot say which Act did which. Learn the two as a pair: 1881 = children, 1891 = women plus a better deal for children.
• (b)Living conditions of factory workers — Nothing in the 1881 Act touches how workers lived. The Act regulates what happens inside the factory gate during working hours — who may be employed, for how long, with what breaks, behind what fencing — and it has no clauses on housing, sanitation, water supply or welfare. Statutory welfare provisions of that kind arrive much later, through the twentieth-century Factories Acts and their welfare chapters, and are today found in Chapter V of the Factories Act, 1948.
• (d)Textile workers — This confuses the setting of the reform with its subject. The agitation that produced the Act came out of the Bombay cotton mills, and cotton and jute mills were where it mostly bit in practice. But the Act was not written for textiles: it applied by its own terms to factories using mechanical power and employing 100 or more workers, whatever they made, and its operative clauses single out children rather than any industry. A statute confined to one industry's adult workforce is a different and later thing — the regulation of adult hours in textile factories came with the Act of 1911.

Indian factory legislation begins in 1881 and grows by accretion, each Act widening the last. The 1881 Act is the narrow foundation: mechanically powered factories with 100 or more workers, protection for children between seven and twelve, four monthly holidays for them, fencing of dangerous machinery and reporting of accidents. The 1891 Act cut the threshold to fifty workers, moved the child band to nine-to-fourteen, cut children's hours from nine to seven, added a weekly holiday and brought women's work — including night work — under regulation for the first time. The 1911 Act reached the adult male worker in textile factories. Later Acts in 1922, 1934 and finally 1948 built the modern structure. Reading the series in order shows the logic of the whole subject: protection extends outwards from the least defensible case — the seven-year-old in a mill — to children generally, then to women, then to adult men, and only then from hours to safety, health and welfare. The Factories Act, 1948, which the rest of this paper tests section by section, is the last term in that sequence.

This is the paper's history block reaching into the ground the rest of the paper occupies, and that is not an accident: EPFO recruits enforcement and accounts officers for a labour-welfare organisation, so the origin of Indian labour law is fair game in the history section and the current statute is fair game in the labour-law section. The habit rewarded is holding the chronology of the Factories Acts as a single ladder, because almost every question on this theme is answered by knowing which rung a given protection sits on rather than by knowing any detail of the Act itself.

• Indian Factories Act, 1881 — the first factory legislation in India; applied to factories using mechanical power and employing 100 or more workers.
• 1881 Act: employment of children under seven prohibited; children under twelve limited to nine hours a day; four holidays a month for children; rest intervals required.
• 1881 Act: dangerous parts of machinery to be fenced, and accidents to be reported — the only clauses in it that are not about children.
• The 1881 Act set no limit on the hours of adult men and made no provision for women's work.
• Factories Act, 1891 — threshold cut to fifty workers; child band raised to nine-to-fourteen; children's hours cut from nine to seven; weekly holiday introduced; women's work, including night work, regulated for the first time.
• The Factories Act, 1911 brought the hours of adult male workers in textile factories under regulation.
• The current statute is the Factories Act, 1948, now subsumed with twelve other Acts into the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020.

• Attaching women's hours to 1881. Women enter Indian factory law in 1891; 1881 is a children's Act.
• Reading 'first Factories Act' as 'comprehensive Factories Act'. The 1881 Act reached only powered factories with 100 or more workers and left adult hours untouched.
• Treating the fencing-of-machinery clause as evidence that the Act was about safety generally. It is one clause in an otherwise child-centred statute.
• Confusing the age numbers of the two Acts: seven-to-twelve and nine hours belong to 1881; nine-to-fourteen and seven hours belong to 1891.

The Factories Acts appear in EPFO EO/AO twice over — once as history, where the question is which Act introduced which protection, and once as labour law, where the question is which section of the 1948 Act says what. Both are answered by the same preparation: a single dated ladder of the Acts with the age limits, hour limits and coverage thresholds written against each rung.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following was introduced for the first time by the Indian Factories Act of 1891 ?

  • (a)Fencing of dangerous machinery
  • (b)Regulation of the working hours of women
  • (c)Prohibition of the employment of children below seven years
  • (d)A limit on the hours of adult male workers in textile factories

  Answer(b) Regulation of the working hours of women

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Indian Factories Act, 1881, the working day of a child was limited to :

  • (a)Six hours
  • (b)Seven hours
  • (c)Nine hours
  • (d)Eleven hours

  Answer(c) Nine hours