SubaGomathi Muppidathi

Author

Pratishtha Pandya

Editor

M. Palani Kumar

Photo Editor

large_Playing with fire in Sivakasi cover images.gif

medium_Playing with fire in Sivakasi cover images.gif

small_Playing with fire in Sivakasi cover images.gif

thumbnail_Playing with fire in Sivakasi cover images.gif

Playing with fire in Sivakasi cover images.gif

“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.

Playing with fire in Sivakasi-09 .jpg

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&nbsp; Ramajayam, 27, from Meenampatti&nbsp; Mahalingam, 46, from Meenampatti&nbsp; Chellapandi, around 30, from Anupankulam,&nbsp; Ramamoorthy, 55, from O. Kovilpatti,&nbsp; Punniamoorthy, 47, from Virudhunagar&nbsp; Lakshmi, around 25, from Madhya Senai&nbsp; Lingasamy, 47, from Sevalpatti Azhaguraja, 28, from Sewakaranpatti

Playing with fire in Sivakasi-18 .jpg

Playing with fire in Sivakasi

پٹاخہ مزدوروں کی زندگی میں اندھیرا

শিৱকাশিত জুইৰ সৈতে খেলা

শিবকাশী: আগুন খেলায় জীবন বাজি

શિવકાશીમાં આગ સાથે ખેલ

लोगों की दिवाली की ख़ातिर धमाकों में जलते पटाखा मज़दूर 

ಶಿವಕಾಶಿ: ಜೀವ ಪಣಕ್ಕಿಟ್ಟು ದುಡಿಯುವ ಕಾರ್ಮಿಕರು

ശിവകാശിയിൽ തീകൊണ്ട് കളിക്കുന്നു

ਖ਼ੁਦ ਸੜ ਕੇ ਹੋਰਨਾਂ ਦੀ ਦੀਵਾਲੀ ਰੁਸ਼ਨਾਉਂਦੇ ਰਹੇ ਸ਼ਿਵਕਾਸੀ ਦੇ ਪਟਾਕਾ ਮਜ਼ਦੂਰ 

ଶିବକାଶୀରେ ନିଆଁ ସହ ଖେଳ 

शिवकाशी: अंजोर के पीछे अन्हार जिनगी

उजियार बर, अंधियार मं परे जिनगी  

சிவகாசியில் தீயில் வெந்து மடியும் மக்கள்

शिवकाशीतील विस्तवाचा उद्योग!

Sivakasi

medium_MOBILE-COVER-IMAGE.gif

small_MOBILE-COVER-IMAGE.gif

thumbnail_MOBILE-COVER-IMAGE.gif

MOBILE-COVER-IMAGE.gif

At present, we can only accept donations in Indian rupees by Indian citizens. All donations made to the CounterMedia Trust are eligible for exemption under Section 80G of the Income Tax Act, 1961. Here is a copy of our exemption certificate.


India is bigger than New Delhi. And people need to know more about the rest of this vast nation.


Younger, media-saturated generations are growing up knowing little about their country, but a lot about the elites of a few metros and towns. For a narrowly-owned, commercially-driven media, the dumbing down of a nation is part of standard operating procedure. The last available data of the Centre for Media Studies (CMS, Delhi) show us that reports from New Delhi account for 66 per cent of news on the front pages of major dailies. The CMS data also found that just about 0.24 per cent of front page news came out of rural India. The TV channels are not much better.PARI exists to change that.We are a non-profit organisation. We publish under creative commons, and do not charge readers a subscription fee or put-up advertisements. Nothing is behind a paywall and we are completely free-to-access by anyone. We guard our independence and receive no direct grants from governments and corporations, nor any funding that could dictate our content. So, we are dependent on volunteer labour, donations from individuals, foundations and institutions that see value in independent and free media.PARI is changing the way Indian journalism reports and documents the rural.India is more than the elite of a few metros and towns. We report on rural lives and livelihoods, languages, communities, migrants and more. We need your help to pull off this most ambitious of Indian journalistic endeavours. The scale of this effort costs money. Donate generously - and spread the word about PARI.&nbsp;

Donate FAQs


चला, पारीची एक सफर करूया

पारीवर तुमचं मनापासून स्वागत

आमच्या वेबसाइटवरील सर्व मजकूर सर्वांसाठी मोफत आहे आणि तो कायम तसाच राहील. जर तुम्हाला आमचं काम आवडत असेल तर तुमचा वेळ द्या आणि आमच्यासाठी काम करा. या कामासाठी निधी गोळा करायलाही मदत करा.

Want to republish this article? Please write to <a href="mailto:zahra@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">zahra@ruralindiaonline.org</a> with a cc to <a href="mailto:namita@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">namita@ruralindiaonline.org</a>

Playing with fire in Sivakasi

The dark realities of the lives of the workers who light up the Diwali for many

Related stories

A rain-scented walk in Sivagangai

Living on ravaged land

Biswas and the bamboos on his bike

Recycling energy, Godda style

Bhadels of Goa

Pookadai: still throbbing with morning life

Koli Kadlas

Malnourishment high among children of migrants: study

Wheels of the rural Indian West

Living Under a Red Cloud in Bellary

Vedla – earrings of the Maher community

Dreaming of water, drowning in debt

Kali: the dancer and his dreams

Farmer's diet worse than a convict's

In Yavatmal, life goes on

Suicides are about the living, not the dead

Death of a carpenter

Hoisa Shigmo!

Women farmers: weaving a life in Anantapur

Defiant in Dhinkia

Spice and all that's nice

Kerala's Green Army

The ‘jugaad’ not-a-mobile

Health as someone else's wealth

Calibrating in a Kudumbashree assembly unit