It is, therefore, absolutely necessary that trade unions should charge from members a minimum of Rs. 50 per year as membership subscription. Unless that is done, trade unions cannot have resources to enable them to provide the minimum services to their members. We have seen that the infiltration of trade unions by political parties, infiltration of whole timers of political parties into trade unions, does not help them. Trade unions to be healthy should have their own whole-time functionaries. How can a trade union, which does not charge from its members even a minimum of Rs. 50 per year, ever hope to provide an office, some staff and some whole-time functionaries to lead the union? Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that such a provision should be made. I would like to confine my remarks to some of the issues that have come before us for some time past. I would like to refer to the tendency of monopoly, the policy of the government and the distribution of governmental partonage to newspapers. Before I do that, I would like to make one general observation. The press commission was constituted some time ago by the government and it had made various recommendations which were partly accepted and partly not but today the situation has changed considerably. In their report every year, you find new trends developing in the Indian press and new forces coming into play. I feel the situation has changed considerably now since the first press commission was constituted and I would suggest that there should be a second press commission to make a thorough enquriy about the various problems confronting the Indian press. I feel that that is a necessary step to be taken in view of the fact that many of the recommendations made by the press commissions have become outdated and some of them have not been accepted by the Government of India.
