Playing with fire in Sivakasi

“I heard the sound of a heavy explosion and ran in its direction, following the smoke clouds. Some of the factory walls had collapsed in the blast. I saw Lingasamy emerge from the rubble, running half naked, with clothes all burnt. He kept asking me if he was alive, whether he had survived, as we arranged to take him for treatment. He wasn’t able to sit on a two-wheeler, so we had to take him to the hospital lying on a push-cart .” Mareeswaran, a local reporter is speaking to me a day later. He lives at a walking distance from the firecracker factory in Sivakasi where the explosion happened on July 1, 2025.

I am back at the site a day later. The gates of the factory are locked, the structure of one of the units has been destroyed, and the surrounding area has no paved roads. I had a tough time manoeuvring my two-wheeler up here. I wonder what it must have meant to take people from here to a hospital 25 kilometres away.

About 20 people had reached the workplace in the morning on the day of the blast. Eight of them died on the spot, two succumbed to injuries a few days later, and three others have been hospitalised for a long time with serious injuries.

I have been scared of firecrackers since I was a child. I fear burning myself. But that day in the Sivakasi Government hospital, I knew I was facing a nightmare worse than any of my fears. The emergency ward of the hospital is full of burnt bodies. How does one speak with the victims or even their heartbroken family members? I spend the afternoon there.

Lingasamy, 47, is critical. His entire body is covered in burns, what the doctors call a 100 per cent burn. I try to speak to him, but he cannot say much. He repeatedly asks only one thing: whether or not he will survive. In the evening after I leave the hospital, I get a call saying he is no more. His last words from the hospital bed still echo in my mind. This was the man who played with fire all his life to make sure his daughters had a good education. Both of his daughters are merit-based double degree holders.

"My father told us that he worked as a driver in the firecracker factory, but we didn't know that he prepared explosives there. This has been unbearably painful for us," says Krishnaveni, his elder daughter. A year ago Lingasamy, then a bus driver, had joined the Kamal Kishore firecracker factory in Sivakasi, Virudhunagar district. “He was a driver but also worked as a chemical mixer. The wages from driving alone were not enough to feed the family. Now I am left alone with our two unmarried daughters. Don’t know how I will manage their wedding,” says his wife Rajammal.

The factory owned by Kamal Kumar, Mayakrishnan, and Selvam, all three from Chinnagamanpatti village in the district has a 100 people working on its floor. All of them Dalits, working in unsafe conditions, without proper training or safety equipments while handling hazardous materials, and many without proper Employees State Insurance or other benefits they are entitled to under the labour laws of the country.

It is easy for us to ask: Why do you choose to do this work?

“This is our fate,” says 48 years old Muruga Lakshmi, also an injured worker from the same factory. “To earn 500 rupees a day, I come here to work.” She stays in the census town of Soolakkarai, about 25 kilometres away and takes a transport tempo arranged by the factory owners from a pick-up point near her house to reach work every day. She works from 7 in the morning till 12 in the night. Men in her place would get about 1,000 rupees daily for the same hours of work.

“I have lost my husband. I am the only bread-winner of my family. I have two children to look after," says Muruga Lakshmi, "I was working in the paper mill for 200 rupees, but the money wasn't enough. I joined the firecracker factory for Rs. 370 a day. When I began mixing chemicals, for fancy firecrackers I started getting 500 rupees a day," she says.

Muruga Lakshmi was working for a year when the blast happened. "I was doing things correctly," she says, "It was someone else's mistake and I nearly lost my life. I ran but I slipped. I burnt my leg and arms in the explosion. I didn't even know what to do afterwards. I poured water on my arms. Already I have had an operation for elephantiasis. My legs are swelling up again. So I wasn't able to run at that moment. I took this job because of my family's hardships. Who are we supposed to blame?"

We always think of Diwali as lights and crackers. Until now even I had never thought about the dark realities of the people behind the lights, whose struggles remain unnoticed, and stories are unheard of. How do we forget to celebrate those who work in the dark all though the year?

A sculpture, unveiled by finance minister Thangam Thennarasu at Karanesan junction for that very purpose “to honour the iconic firecracker workers of Sivakasi” – only adds to the irony of the situation. The sculpture of a disjointed, larger than life palm of a factory worker holding a miniature figure of a young boy with a sparkler sheds little light on the number of worker deaths the town has seen. That sculpture has certainly borne witness to three more explosions, the first one in July, barely a month since its installation.

The district known as a match and cracker manufacturing hub has more than 1,000 licensed units and almost 3 lakh people depending on the unsafe work they do there. About 55 per cent of these workers are women, labouring for less money than their male counterparts. In the year 2025 alone, Sivakasi has seen about 18 explosions leaving 30 dead and 29 seriously injured. According to the numbers from the district collector’s office, between 2011 and 2023 another 190 fire accidents killed 337 workers in this town, when factory owners were boasting of competing with China in cracker manufacturing.

The industry with a history that goes back to colonial India has seen huge growth in the 78 years since Independence. According to the Tamil Nadu Fireworks and Amorces Manufactures Association almost 80 per cent of the fireworks in India today are made in Virudhunagar that has a market share of about Rs. 6,000 crore – and rising every year.

The association with its eye on expanding into international markets has recently applied for a Geographical Indication (GI) tag under “manufactured goods” category for Sivakasi fireworks. The state on the other hand, concerned about air pollution, is drawing up policies for 'green' crackers, banning the use of barium nitrate.

The euphoria around the GI tag application and the green crackers idea is only matched by the apathy towards workers who continue to manually mix dangerous chemicals on the floors of the factories. Many of these are unlicensed, designed flouting the rules, and operational in the absence of modern machinery that reduces the risk to the life of workers.

It is only when I spoke to the workers I realised that in Tamil Nadu there is a firecrackers owners’ association but there is not one for the workers. No union to take up the fight and grievances of those who live and work on the edge of life and for whom Diwali after Diwali brings little light.

What is the point of getting a GI tag when the workers are denied their basic rights?

This piece honours the memory of the 10 workers who died in the factory explosion on July 1, 2025 in Sivakasi.

Vairamani,35, from Soolakkarai
Nagapandi, 28, from Servaikaranpatti
Ramajayam, 27, from Meenampatti
Mahalingam, 46, from Meenampatti
Chellapandi, around 30, from Anupankulam,
Ramamoorthy, 55, from O. Kovilpatti,
Punniamoorthy, 47, from Virudhunagar
Lakshmi, around 25, from Madhya Senai
Lingasamy, 47, from Sevalpatti
Azhaguraja, 28, from Sewakaranpatti