Who of the following was sent as representative of labourers by Government in the Washington Summit of I.L.O. in the year 1919?

Correct answer: B (N.M. Joshi). The first International Labour Conference met in Washington in October-November 1919, after the ILO was set up under Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles. India sent a tripartite delegation: the Government's nominees, an employers' delegate (Sir Atul Chatterjee), and a workers' delegate nominated by the Government, who was N.M. Joshi, the Bombay trade union leader and founder of the Social Service League. He was the labour voice at that session.

• A) V.P. Wadia is wrong. He was a labour and trade union figure in Bombay, but he was not the workers' delegate at Washington 1919.
• C) C.F. Andrews is wrong. He was a Christian missionary and an Indian nationalist who worked in South Africa and Fiji. He had no role as a labour delegate.
• D) Joseph Baptista is wrong for this session. He was a Bombay labour leader and later took part in ILO sessions, but he is not the 1919 Washington representative.

The core concept is tripartism in the ILO: governments, employers and workers each get their own delegate. For Mains, this links to labour reforms, the Royal Commission on Labour, and India's early engagement with international labour standards.

Trap: candidates pick Joseph Baptista or Wadia because they are better known as Bombay labour figures. Remember that the question asks about the 1919 Washington session specifically, where the Government's workers' delegate was Joshi.