Reetika Revathy Subramanian

Sharmila Joshi

Editor

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“In the past one year, I have conducted 27 funerals,”
says Pramod Bisoyi, 45, a loom master from Ganjam district in Odisha, who works
in Surat. “The workers’ families are often too poor [to travel to Gujarat] to
attend the funerals.”

Bikash Gouda’s father and brothers were right next to
him though when he died. It had barely been 24 hours since 16-year-old Bikash entered
the gruelling world of loom work. The teenager had travelled more than 1,600 kilometres from his home
in Landajuali village in
Ganjam to work in a
powerloom factory on Ved Road
in Surat. On April 25 this year, just as he pushed the starter on a machine, a
high voltage current passed through his body – killing him instantly. His
father and two older brothers were working on adjacent looms.

“Everyone knew the
machine was faulty. We had experienced minor shocks previously… but we never
expected it would kill my son,” says his father Charan Gouda, who has been working
in Surat for nearly three decades. “Our condition back home is very difficult.
I thought by bringing even my youngest son here we would be able to save some
money for the family.”

Two weeks later, on May 10, in a loom unit in the
Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation area in Sachin (in the Surat
metropolitan region), Rajesh Agarwal was sucked into a machine. The young
migrant from Maharashtra was killed on the spot. “The machine was old. It would
not stop unless there was a power failure,” said a co-worker in the crowd that
gathered outside after the incident. “He may have inserted his hand to fix the
thread… and got pulled in.” Since then, the unit has been locked down.

Electrocution and burns, asphyxiation and falls, loss
of fingers and crushed limbs, and death – the workers and masters say that a large
number of such accidents in the powerloom units of Surat go unreported or
uncompensated “nearly every day.” 

Hanging by a polyester thread  

In a unit spanning around 1,000 square feet in the Mina Nagar area in north Surat,
more than 100 loom machines operate right next to each other. There is no alley
way, and workers – 80 to 100 per shift – 
don’t have the space to even stretch their arms in between their 12-hour
shifts from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. or 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Multiple closed circuit
television cameras monitor their every act. The closest public toilet is a few
blocks away. It is 41 degrees Celsius outside in May, but there is no provision
for drinking water and the men carry it in from nearby chai stalls.  There are no windows.

The workers continuously move their feet and legs at
great speed to ensure that the thread gets woven quickly. “Every minute counts
in here… actually every second,” says loom master Bisoyi.  The workers get paid on a piece-rate basis –
Rs 1.10 to Rs 1.50 for every metre. So, Bisoyi adds, they “cannot afford to
waste any time or relax.” Their only days off in a year are because of
“electric power failures.” After clocking in nearly 360 hours a month, a worker
earns Rs. 7,000 to Rs. 12,000, of which at least Rs. 3,500 is spent on rent and
food.  

Over these 360 hours a month, the loom workers of Surat produce around
90 per cent of the polyester used in India – churning out nearly 30 million metres
of raw fabric and 25 million metres of processed fabric every day, says an August 2017 report titled Labour
Conditions in Surat Textile Industry by the People’s Training and Research Centre (PTRC), a
Vadodara-based non-governmental organisation.

The
looms they labour on are spread across Surat and its outskirts – in small
factories in Pandesara, Udhna,
Limbayat, Bhestan, Sachin, Katargam, Ved Road and Anjani. The city has
around 1.5 million loom machines, estimates Aajeevika Bureau, an
organisation working with migrant workers in Gujarat, Rajasthan and
Maharashtra.  

These looms are the site of a high number of minor,
major and fatal injuries among  workers –
very many of them migrants from Ganjam.  The PTRC study says 84
fatal events that killed a total of 114 workers were reported between 2012 and
2015 in registered textile processing units in Surat. During the same period,
375 workers were seriously injured. This data was obtained after filing Right
to Information applications at the Directorate of Industrial Safety and Health,
Gujarat. The city also houses many unregistered powerloom
workshops, and the number of deaths and accidents could be  underestimated.

No comprehensive official data is available on any of
this.

Most of the looms are registered
under the Shops and Establishment Act, points out Jagdish Patel, director, PTRC, and
not under the Factories Act which at least mandates that workers or their
families must be paid compensation if there is an accident or death.

The workers don’t get any
contracts. Recruitments are finalised verbally. “Every time they go back home
for a break during a festival or the marriage season, they are not sure that they
will have the job when they return. They are so easily replaceable,&quot; says Prahlad
Swain, a member of the Pravasi Shramik Suraksha Manch (PSSM), a loom and textile workers’ collective
in Surat and adjoining areas, established in January 2016. &quot;There is no guarantee that our jobs will remain when we return,&quot; adds Simanchala Sahu, 36, a migrant worker from Badakhandi village in Ganjam. &quot;The workers have to let go of their pay for the days they are away.&quot;

With no bargaining power, in cases involving accidents
and deaths of migrant loom workers, very little progress is made, says J.K.
Gamit, assistant sanitary inspector at the Surat Municipal Corporation. “The
workers’ families are far away in their villages and their friends in the city
are also workers employed in the looms. They are too busy to keep visiting the
police station or following up,&quot; he says. “There is no official
documentation of the number of injuries and deaths. The case gets closed almost
immediately.”

Usually, if there is a death at the loom, a police case is registered.
But this is a legal and medical formality, and arrests are very rare. To claim compensation, the family has to
approach the labour department. If it’s for an injury, the worker’s job is at
stake since this can antagonise the employer. Most resign to an out-of-court
settlement. 

So four days after young Bikash Gouda died, on April
29 his employer paid the family Rs. 2.10 lakhs as compensation, clearly stating
that no further claim could be made. Usually, employers pay at most Rs. 50,000 only
so that they can close the case – and the process can take months. In this
instance, because the PSSM and Aajeevika Bureau intervened, the amount
was increased and disbursed speedily. 

Three jobs were at stake. The family agreed.

From Ganjam to Gujarat

Surat is
home to at least 800,000 workers from Ganjam, estimates Rajesh Kumar Padhi, a
member of the Surat Odia Welfare Association. Around 70 per cent of them work
in the city’s powerloom sector. “The migration corridor between Odisha and
Surat opened up around 40 years ago,” he says. “Although Ganjam is considered a
developed district in Odisha,” the PTRC report states, “shrinking natural
resources, decreasing agricultural land and regular floods and drought have
impelled the migration.”

The Ganjam migrants though are not employed in Surat&#39;s
other big industry – diamonds – points our Jagdish Patel. “Those jobs are
usually reserved for local Gujarati workers because the employers recruit only
people ‘of their confidence’. The Ganjam workers have remained at the lower-end
of the loom units, undertaking the monotonous task of running the machines the
same way every single day for years.&quot;

Still, this the workers say is better than
the situation back home. Simanchala Sahu, who is also a member of the PSSM, says “The
condition in Ganjam is very challenging. 
A few workers might have migrated in the beginning, and then they have
been coming in large groups, some with family members and neighbours.”

Most of the migrant workers in the powerloom sector
are men. Women from Ganjam are few in Surat, and they usually work in
embroidery or cloth-cutting units, or from home on a piece-rate basis. A few of
the women come to Surat after their husbands are well-settled in the city. Mostly
though, the male workers live away from their families, visiting home once a
year or once every two years for a few weeks. (More on this in the next story in this
series.) 

A large number of the migrants are Dalits from the Kewat caste, who work as
fishermen or boatmen in their villages. Some workers such
as Sahu belong to OBC communities. Most of them don’t own any land. “The main source
of income is agriculture, which is 
highly dependent on the weather and flood situation. There are no other
opportunities,” says Swain. “This has driven many all the way to Surat. At
least they earn money to send back home even if it comes at the cost of their
overall health.” 

It is this helplessness that has normalised the high
levels of exploitation in the factories. “For every worker injured or killed, there
are many more young and desperate workers coming to the city every day,” said
Rushikesh Rout, 38, a powerloom worker from Berhampur town in Ganjam, who lost three
fingers in an electricity pole accident in February 2017. “Even the owners
know well that no injury or accident could be as bad the circumstances at
home.” Rout now works as a security guard in Surat with little hope of being
compensated for his lost fingers because the accident happened at his one-room home
in the Pandesara
industrial area of Surat.

Daily struggles,
permanent effects

In addition to the gruelling schedule and low wages, a
growing number of powerloom workers are becoming deaf because of the constant
loud noise in the workshops. “The average sound level inside the loom unit is
more than 110 decibels,” says Sanjay Patel, centre coordinator at Aajeevika
Bureau. In January this year, the organisation conducted audiometry tests on 65
loom workers employed in different units. The 
results – certified by the Christian Medical College and Hospital in
Vellore –  show that 95 per cent had varying
levels of deafness. “Even as loss of hearing is becoming increasingly common
among the workers, the fact that it doesn’t come in the way of their everyday
physical labour means it is not taken seriously by the owners. They are not
given any protective gear… and the workers cannot question,” says Patel.

A ‘hierarchy’ of machinery within the unit adds to the
workers&#39; vulnerability. A powerloom owner at the Anjani Industrial Estate, who
employs nearly 80 workers at his looms, tells me that the “Ganjam lot” is not
allowed to work on the higher-grade machines imported from China, Germany and
Korea. “These workers are allowed to use only the cheaper locally-produced
machines. These are hard [to work on] and make more noise.” These khat khat machines, so called because of the noise they
make, do the same job as the expensive ones, but produce inferior quality fabric
sold in the local markets. The higher-grade machines produce material that is
exported or sent to the bigger cities. 

&quot;The owners usually do not want to spend on
safety measures such as sensors on machines. It is expensive, and the industry
has not been doing well for the past four years,&quot; says Nitin Bhayani,
founder member of the Loom Employers&#39; Association in the Anjani Industrial
Area&#39;s B-4 sector.. 

Bhayani though believes that in most instances the
workers are themselves responsible for the accidents and injuries. &quot;They
get drunk and do not concentrate on the work,” he says. “The employers are not
in the units to monitor the workers during the nights. This is when most
accidents are reported.&quot; 

Those who survive the loss of limb and other injuries continue
to work the same machines over and over – some for as long as three decades –
with almost no chance of learning new skills or getting promotions. “It is not
easy to rise higher in this industry. Even 65-year-old workers continue to work
on the same machines,” says Shambunath Sahu, 40, who runs a workers’ mess in Fulwadi, and has migrated here from Polasara town in Ganjam. “And the workers age
quickly…”

Synthetic fabric, authentic despair

നെയ്തെടുത്ത വസ്ത്രങ്ങളും സത്യസന്ധമായ നിരാശകളും

துயரத்தை நெசவு செய்யும் கரங்கள்

কৃত্রিম কাপড়, অকৃত্রিম হতাশা

कृत्रिम कपड़े, असली निराशा

کپڑے مصنوعی، مایوسی اصلی

कृत्रिम कापड, अस्सल हिरमोड

ଆଘାତ ଆଉ ମୃତ୍ୟୁ ଏଠି ଜୀବନର ଧାରା

Surat

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Synthetic fabric, authentic despair

Lakhs of migrant workers from Ganjam in Odisha who operate powerlooms in Surat, the country’s polyester capital, risk serious injuries and accidental deaths every day. But desperate for work, they continue

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