2. May 15, 2010
i n s i d e
Rs. 15
continued on page 2
Together, we grow!
Journal of the Press Institute of India
Taking on sugar
Migrant’s nightmare
How several women found their
foothold with the help .............. 7
They come here with the hope of
leading a better life .................. 2
Volume 2 Issue 5
Devoted to Indian Journalism and
Mass Communication since 46 years
RIND Premises Second Main Road, Taramani CPT Campus, Chennai - 600 113
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The story of how technological
advances and local ................... 4
Tune in a positive
change with Meena! ... 6
T
o look at Pramod Kumar’s
face requires some measure of
courage and acceptance. The
33-year-old realises that, and keeps
his face covered and his eyes shielded
by black glasses.
Five years ago, Kumar fell into
the furnace of a brick kiln at a village
near Haridwar, where he had been
employed for eight months. Those five
minutes when his body was roasted in
the 1000 degrees-plus temperature
in the furnace before fellow workers
responded to his cries and pulled
him out with a fork, left him with 80
percent burns, complete loss of vision
in one eye and the disappearance of
four fingers of his left palm. The brick
kiln owner, who Kumar is reluctant
to name, paid Kumar his wages (Rs
3,500 per month) after deducting
all the imagined loans and advances
Kumar had taken, but never came to
visit Kumar who had by then been
admitted to a Delhi hospital as no
hospital in Haridwar was willing
to treat him. Since Kumar’s family
preserved no medical records and no
police report was lodged, the brick
kiln owner had nothing to answer for,
choosing perhaps to ignore, the most
basicsafetymeasureofputtingalattice
over the mouth of the furnace so that
there was no fear of workers falling
in. Kumar’s case is not unique.
Every day, thousands of workers
employed in the country’s vast
unorganised sector undergo hardships
and have little by way of security to
protect them despite the ambitious
Unorganised Workers’ Social
Security Bill, 2008 that offers health,
life and disability insurance, old-age
pension and group accident schemes.
In Kumar’s case, that translates into
a monthly pension of Rs 300, paid
every six months as a lump sum of
Rs 1,800 and arriving typically two
months after it is due.
According to a survey carried
out by the National Sample Survey
Organisation (NSSO) in 1999-
2000, of the total workforce of 397
million, only 28 million workers are
employed in the organised sector
and the remaining in the unorganised
sector. It also reveals that over a
decade, the employment in the
organised sector has been almost
stagnant or slightly declined. The
55th Round of the National Service
Scheme (NSS), 1999-2000 which
covered non-agricultural enterprises
in the informal sector, found out that
there were 44.35 million enterprises
and 79.71 million workers employed
in this sector. Among these, 25.01
million enterprises employed 39.74
million workers from the rural areas
whereas 19.34 million enterprises
with39.97millionworkerswereurban
based. Among the workers engaged
in the informal sector, 70.21 million
were full time while 9.5 million part
time. The number of women workers
worked out to be 20.2 percent.
Brick kilns are part of this
A burning issue
In our country’s vast unorganised sectors, accidents are an
everyday occurrence. Remedy though is nowhere near.
Puja Awasthi, Uttar Pradesh
Nathu Saroj’s
leg took the
brunt of the
accident while
working at brick
klin in Siwan,
Bihar.
The little revolution
When the students became
teachers ................................... 6
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3. May 15, 2010
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unmanaged sector and according
to estimates by The Energy and
Resource Institute (TERI), in
2003, over 8 million workers were
employed in the 100,000 brick kilns
in India. In UP and Uttaranchal, this
figure stands at 1.9 million workers
toiling in 13,000 kilns. In UP, most
brick kiln workers are concentrated
in Allahabad, Kaushambhi, Fatehpur,
Pratapgarh and Rae Bareli.
In Kumar’s district, there are 400
brick kilns where 50,000 workers
(most of them from outside the
State) work. Of the 140 billion bricks
produced in the country every year,
48.8 billion come from the two
aforementioned States.
At Baansgaon village of the
Kaurihar Block, Allahabad, where
Kumar lives, many men still go to
the same brick kiln in Haridwar to
work. Kumar’s own elder brother
Vinod works in a kiln in far away
Bihar where horror tales of dacoits
bringing their captives to be roasted
in the furnaces abound. But, when
your own block offers little by way of
employment opportunities and local
brick kiln owners fear to employ
you due to unionism, there are few
alternatives.
Just like how they did not exist for
Nathu Saroj, a 60-year-old who was
working at a brick kiln in Siwan, Bihar
when he slipped into the furnace,
with his right leg and left arm taking
the brunt of the heat. Saroj’s brick
kiln owner was much kinder and
promised him medical help, while
sending a message to his family of six
(which included daughters aged 12
and 14 and sons aged 10 and 16) that
Saroj was dead. After Saroj realised
his master was not serious about the
medical treatment part, he left for
home after being paid for just 20 days
for the three months of labour he had
put in.
Today, the almost complete
absence of treatment has left Saroj
with weak muscles and an allergy to
the sun. The only task he is suited for
is watching over other people’s fields
in his village Pipron. He has no land
of his own. His elder son deserted him
as soon as he found a private job and
wife. His wife Dharma Devi earns a
bit by working in the NREGS. “On an
average, she gets 10 days of work in
a month and Rs 100 is deducted from
her salary,” says Saroj.
Light in the end of the tunnel
Some hope has however come
through the Self Help Group (SHG)
of which Dharma Devi is a member,
a loan from which has allowed the
couple to buy four goats. These
SHGs are part of a larger effort by
a local organisation called PEPUS
(Pariyavaran Evam Prodyogiki Uthan
Samiti) to empower women and
generate livelihood options. Since
the brick kiln problem is a large
part of the overall picture, PEPUS,
which draws 75 percent of its funds
from the European Union and the
remainder from The Innocent Drinks,
UK, via the UK-based Find Your Feet
(an organisation working with the
marginalised in Malawi and India),
has started to devise ways to ensure
the rights of brick kiln workers are
protected wherever they work. Some
of the ways in which this has been
achieved is through photo identity
cards, signed contracts with the
middlemen who take labourers from
Allahabad and information sharing on
their rights under the allied banner of
Bhatta Parivar Vikas Sewa Sangathan
(BPVSS). In addition, a practicing
advocate of the High Court sits at the
PEPUS office to help workers with
their queries and resolve disputes.
PEPUS director Hariram knows
these efforts will take time to bear
results. “We are hopeful, that given
the variety of livelihood options we
have managed to generate, migration
will stop,” he says.
For Pramod Kumar however, it is
a case of too little, too late.
Sakuntala
Narasimhan,
Karnataka
R
evathi is from Andhra Pradesh,
Shanti lives in Tamil Nadu,
Madhu is from Rajasthan,
and Malasri is from Karnataka’s
Chitradurga District. Their languages
and customs are different, but
what they share is their status as
migrants from rural communities.
Their families decided to move to
Bangalore, the ‘booming metropolis
of South India’, because the city
seemed to promise a better life.
Revathi’s husband’s family owned
an acre of land near Chittoor (Andhra
Pradesh) on which he, his brother
and father cultivated food crops to
eke out a living. The produce was
not enough to feed the joint family,
especially after Murugesh (Revathi’s
husband) became the father of two
daughters. Hearing that Bangalore
offered the promise of good earnings,
Murugesh migrated to the city with
his family two years ago, and found
work as a watchman at a construction
site. The family lived in a tiny, six
by six room with a corrugated metal
sheet for a roof, on the site, spending
most of their time in a corner of the
basement and using the room only
to sleep in. The older daughter soon
developed respiratory illnesses due
to pollution and dust at the site, there
was no money to spare for medical
treatment, and Revathi decided
to send the child back to Chittoor
to be looked after by her in-laws.
From his earnings of Rs 3,000,
Murugesh sends Rs 1,000 monthly
to his parents, for expenses
Migrant’s nightmare
They come here with
the hope of leading a
better life only to see
it turn worse!
incurred while looking after his
daughter, which leaves very
little for Revathi to manage on.
Shanti, another migrant lives
with her two school going sons in a
village near Salem in Tamil Nadu.
Her husband Chinnasami too owns
a small piece of land on which he
grew rice, cholam and vegetables.
His hut is flanked by guava, mango
and amla trees. The land did not yield
enough to live on, and he wanted
to send his sons to English medium
schools to ensure a better future for
them. English medium schools, being
private institutions, are expensive.
Chinnasami has therefore migrated to
Bangalore, to become a construction
worker on daily wages, and sends
part of his earnings home to Shanti.
“Running two establishments
costs money, so I live in a tin shack
on the site that the contractor I work
for owns. There is no bathroom, or
water connection, and just going to
my village by overnight bus once a
month to see my family takes away
all my savings,” he says. He cooks
his own meals but his grocery bill is
high. He and Murugesh have no ration
cards because they have to first get
their names cancelled at the registry
back home before applying for a fresh
one, and that involves too much paper
work and harassment. Ration cards
are meant for low income people
like Murugesh and Chinnasami,
but the administration makes it
difficult for them to obtain one.
Is Shanti better off because her
husband makes more money now
in the city? She pauses awhile
before replying. “Money cannot
compensate for other deprivations,”
she says. “The boys are growing up
without the presence of a father. I
live alone, and every now and then
someone from the Taluk office will
come to demand money claiming
that our water pipe connection has
not been properly sanctioned, or
something. They know I live without
a male escort and make trouble.”
According to GDP calculations,
these families are moving up in terms
of money incomes but their lives are
marked by ‘collateral deprivations’
- loneliness for the women, reduced
security, fractured family ties, loss
of community links and support
systems. GDP does not measure these
dimensions of human well-being.
Madhu sells baubles and bangles
near a busy intersection in south
Bangalore, with an infant on her
lap. “Kay karen? Pet ka sawal hai,”
she says, explaining why she left
Rajasthan. The small export business
for which she used to do home-based
block printing in Jaipur folded up,
thanks to export orders shrinking
after the global financial meltdown.
She doesn’t speak the local language
(Kannada) and many customers walk
away because they can’t understand
her Rajasthani dialect. Her husband
roams around north-Bangalore
hawking mirror-work mobiles. They
manage two meals a day but are lonely
and alienated in an unfamiliar region.
“Our child will grow up rootless. We
do not qualify for rural employment
generation schemes, because we don’t
have papers, or address,” they explain.
For Malashri and her husband,
rural life near Chitradurga was hard
so they moved to Bangalore two
years ago, and now sell second-hand
or pirated books by the roadside.
They eat and sleep on the pavement
and use a public toilet. When it
rains, they have no shelter, and
nowhere to safeguard their books.
Has moving to the city given them
a better life? ”What choice do we
have?” she retorts. “If the Sarkar
brought facilities to the villages, it
would help, but who do we tell?”
The Jawaharlal Nehru National
Urban Renewal Mission pours
thousands of crores into flyovers,
a/c buses and underpasses for the
convenience of the urban elite, the
car owners and IT professionals.
For migrants, there is nothing, in
fact, they are blamed for adding to
the slum population and ‘messing
up’ the metropolis. They come
with expectations, but soon
drown in pure disillusionment.
Pramod
Kumar(left) was
burnt alive when
he fell into a brick
kiln. His scars tell
it all! (inset).
Photos:KamalKishorKamal