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Passage 8
Read the following passage and answer the questions 36–40.
Though top leaders of the nationalist movement were the policymakers, the immediate day-to-day leadership was provided by the middle-class intellectuals. The rural origin of the industrial labour force together with rampant illiteracy and their simplistic docility attracted social workers, mainly drawn from the middle-class intellectuals. They had an obvious advantage. Not being employees, the leaders were free from fear of victimization and immune towards the risks of leadership. Being generally well educated, they had a better perspective and sense of organization. They could see the issue in a broader context. They belonged to a higher social plane than the workers and with good education intellectual development comparable to the best among the employers they could meet the employers on their own plane and carry on negotiations on an equal footing. According to Royal Commission on Labour in India, ‘the effect of this surge was enhanced by the political turmoil which added to the prevailing feelings of unrest and assured to provide willing leaders of a trade union movement’. But outside leadership had led to the politicization of the movement.
Politicization of the labour movement in India contributed both to its strength and weakness. While economic hardship was present all along as a latent force, the major impetus for growth of unionism was primarily provided by major political currents, particularly the movement for national independence. For the zeal and the organizing ability, which the leaders of the nationalist movement brought to bear upon the Indian Trade Union Movement, it would not have gained the dimensions and the position it had by 1909 within a decade of its formal start.