Reetika Revathy Subramanian

Sharmila Joshi

Editor

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Every day at 10 a.m., Renuka
Pradhan’s one-room home in the Mina Nagar area of north Surat turns into her working
space. Bundles of colourful sarees, delivered at her doorstep, are placed near
the kitchen sink, the doorway, and even pushed under the khatiya. Pradhan swiftly unpacks
a bundle to pick out a bright pink-and-blue polyester saree that she hangs over
a water pipe outside her room. 

The saree has been brought here from
the fabric-manufacturing units located on the neighbouring Ved Road. During the
mechanised embroidery process, the machine work leaves behind loose threads at
the back end of the polyester fabric. These have to be
carefully pulled out before the fabric can be sent back to the ironing and
folding department in the textile units. This is where home workers like
Pradhan step in. 

Using her index finger and thumb,
Pradhan pulls the extra threads hanging out of more than 75 sarees in a day. If
the saree is made of the relatively more expensive polyester silk, she uses a
knife to cut the loose threads. “I spend around five to seven minutes on each saree,”
she says. “In case I pull too much thread and end up damaging the fabric, I
will have to reimburse the entire cost of the saree to the contractor. I have
to be very careful.” 

At the rate of Rs. 2 per saree, Pradhan
earns up to Rs. 150 every day. An error is likely to cost her nearly five days
of her wages. “By the end of the [eight-hour] day, I can barely feel any
sensation in my fingers,” she says.

As a migrant from Sanabaragam village in Polasara
block of Odisha’s Ganjam district, Pradhan, 35, has been living with her
husband – a powerloom worker – and four children in Surat for the past 17
years. Rough estimates suggest that there are nearly 800,000 Odia migrants in
Surat (see <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/synthetic-fabric-authentic-despair">Synthetic
fabric, authentic despair</a> and <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/living-in-the-rooms-by-the-looms">Living in the rooms by the looms</a>). Most of them
work  in the powerloom and textile
industries of a city often considered the country’s textile capital – it has an
estimated Rs. 50,000 crore annual industrial turnover, according to a  July 2018
report by the by the Federation of Gujarat Weavers Association  and its subsidiary the Pandesara Weavers
Association, 

Pradhan is one among the thousands
of invisible home workers – most of them are  the wives of the Odia powerloom workers – who
live and work from spaces that are located close to or within the industrial
corridor in north Surat. Their labour includes dhaaga cutting (cutting extra threads) and sticking diamonds
(colourful sequins) on fabric. They are provided with no protective gear to
undertake their work and are offered no compensation benefits for any physical
discomfort, such as eye strain, cuts and back pain they may arise in the
process. They have no wage contracts or social security, and usually lack any
bargaining power. 

“I have worked for nearly 15 years,
but I don’t even know the name of the company or its owner. The bundles get
delivered every morning, and I get paid in cash for my work every fortnight,”
says Pradhan. 

Only a few metres away from Pradhan’s
home, Shanti Sahu is also engaged in the same work. She came to Surat from Buduka village of Brahmapur Sadar block
in Ganjam district. Sahu, 40, wakes up at 5 a.m. to join her friends from Mina
Nagar on the way to the nearby pay-and-use toilet. The next few hours are spent
in completing numerous household chores – including collecting water, cooking,
washing clothes – and attending to her husband, Arijit Sahu, who has just
returned home from his night shift at the powerloom.

Her daughter Asha, meanwhile, begins
to undo the bundle comprising the sarees. “We work together as a team,” says
Sahu, pointing to her 13-year-old. Asha had to drop out of school as her Odia-medium
school, run by the Surat Municipal Corporation, taught only till Class 8 and a
private-school education was beyond their means. The mother- daughter duo works
on the relatively more expensive sarees that have intricate threadwork, earning
between Rs. 5 and Rs. 10 per piece. The burden of errors is also consequently
heavier. “The ceiling height of our room is low and there is limited light,
which makes it difficult for us to work indoors. We pin the sarees at a height
outside and remain standing for nearly the entire day. Any stain on the fabric
would also be cut from our wages,” says Sahu. 

Considering their very marginal
position in the textile industry and complete invisibility in official records,
there are no clear estimates of the number of women engaged in home-based work.
“None of them have signed any written contracts, they might not even know the
name of the immediate contractor,” said Sanjay Patel, programme coordinator,
Aajeevika Bureau, Surat, an NGO working with Odia migrant labourers in western
India. “In several cases, their work is not even recognised as labour by the
women and their families because it is done inside the house. Children are also
pulled into the work considering the strict every day piece-rated targets. That
is why they don’t even negotiate their wages.” 

According to the provisions of the
Gujarat Minimum Wages (April to September 2019; revised every six months to match prevailing
inflation rates),
unskilled workers employed in ‘manufacturing readymade garments or its
accessories and tailoring establishments’ are entitled to earn around Rs. 315
per day for an eight-hour shift. However, the home-based work done by Pradhan,
Sahu and other women from Odisha, is tallied on a piece rate and they typically
receive nearly 50 per cent less than the state-stipulated minimum wage rates. Women
working in factories here who undertake the same dhaaga cutting work earn an
average of Rs. 5,000-7,000 per month, and might even get social security
benefits such as overtime pay and workers’ insurance, whereas the home-based
workers earn not more than Rs. 3,000 in addition to bearing the working costs. 

“Even 10 years ago, I was earning
only Rs. 2 per saree. Every time I have tried to negotiate with the contractor
to increase my wage, he tells me that I am anyway working from my home, and the
work requires no real skill. “But what about the light bills and room rentals
that I have to pay?” says Geeta Samal Goliya, 32, whose husband Rajesh is a
powerloom worker. The family lives in Vishram Nagar, around four kilometres from
Mina Nagar.

A February 2019 University of
Berkeley, California, study titled Tainted Garments: The Exploitation of Women and Girls in
India’s Home-based Garment Sector states
that nearly 95.5 per cent home workers in the Indian garment industry were
female. The report, led by modern slavery researcher Siddharth Kara, further
notes that none of these workers received any sort of medical care when injured
at work, belonged to a trade union or had a written work agreement.

The work of the women in Surat’s
textile industry who operate from their homes – which becomes their worksite – is
not identified as formal employment. This means they are not under the purview
of any labour laws, such as the Factories Act, 1948, that safeguard the rights
of industry-employed workers. 

“The home-based work agreement is only a civil
relationship [not a employer-employee relationship], wherein labour laws are
not applicable. “Moreover, work is sub-contracted, there&#39;s no real compliance
verification mechanism,” says GL Patel, Assistant Commissioner of Labour, Surat
region. 

“Insurance
and compensation benefits can only be provided to those workers who have
sustained injuries inside the registered factory space,” adds Siddheshwar
Lombe, assistant director, Powerloom Service Centre (set up by the Union
Ministry of Textiles), Surat, “Even though it is known that the women workers
are a part of the industry, it is very difficult to document their work hours,
conditions and injuries since they work inside their households for flexible
time periods.”

In the absence of any institutional
safeguards and social support mechanisms, 30-year-old Ranjita Pradhan, a
migrant from Bhogoda village
in Buguda block, Ganjam, has earned the title of the only “woman Odia
agent” in Vishram Nagar. “It was very difficult to work with male contractors,
who would not pay us in time. They would even cut our wages without any
reason,” says Pradhan, who started as a home-based worker 13 years ago. 

In 2014, Pradhan directly approached
the owner of a garment factory on Ved Road and promised him “good quality work”
if he could directly contract the work to her. Ever since, she has sub-contracted
diamond-sticking work from three garment factory owners to nearly 40 women in
the neighbourhood. As per their unwritten work contract, Pradhan delivers one
kilogram of sequins and fabric glue to the women workers every fortnight. The
dress materials reach them every morning. Each home worker ends up sticking up
to 2,000 sequins per day, earning an average of Rs. 200 every day (one rupee
for every 10 sequins). 

“They trust me because they know
that even I am one of them,” says Pradhan. “The work requires the women to bend
their backs and work for hours together to fill up the intricate patterns. They
end up with back pain and eye strain. And yet, if we complain, even our
husbands tell us that it is just ‘time-pass’ and not real work.” 

It
is 7 p.m. and Pradhan is waiting for her husband Bhagwan to return from the
powerloom. She has repacked the bundles with her day’s work. It’s been the same
every day for the last 13 years. “We came to Surat thinking that we would
return to Ganjam to build a house for our family there someday,” she says. “But
we haven’t been able to save and barely manage to run our everyday here.”

Pulling out threads for 500 minutes every day

നൂൽ വലിച്ചെടുക്കുന്നു, ദിവസവും 500 മിനിറ്റുകൾ

টানা আট ঘণ্টা কুড়ি মিনিট সুতো টেনে দিন কাবার

நாள்தோறும் சேலைகளை அலங்கரிக்க 500 நிமிடங்கள்

प्रतिदिन 500 मिनट धागे खींचना

روزانہ ۵۰۰ منٹ دھاگے کھینچنا

প্ৰতিদিনে ৫০০ মিনিট সূতা কটা কাম

ପ୍ରତିଦିନ ୫୦୦ ମିନିଟ୍ ଧରି ସୂତା ବାହାର କରିବା

दर रोज ५०० मिनिटं धागे काढण्याचं काम

Surat

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Pulling out threads for 500 minutes every day

Women from Odisha who work from home for the multi-crore textile industry in Surat, Gujarat, are not covered by labour laws, are unable to negotiate better rates, and are seen as unskilled workers

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