The hard hitting facts about the brick kiln women workers : Can CSR support?

YOU CAN TELL THE CONDITION OF A NATION BY LOOKING AT THE STATUS OF ITS WOMEN -Jawaharlal Nehru

As per Census 2011, the population of India is 1210.19 million comprising 586.47 million (48.5%) females and 623.72 million (51.5%) males. Females have a share of 48.1% in the urban population and of 48.6% in the rural population.

If we go by the numbers, then in India 360 million people currently live in poverty. Out of these 120 million are women. This is a stark reality that many of us were ignorant about. They are malnourished, illiterate, subject to poor health and various forms of physical and mental torture.Overworked, mistreated and above all powerless, they are constantly subjected to exploitation at the hands of the patriarchal society. This vicious cycle of alienation begins even before birth, when the foetus is subjected to the most heinous test of amniocentesis. The process of gendered expectations that begins at the family gets aggravated as the girl grows older. It is manifested in their day to day life style in the form of lack of education and training. Poverty and gendered social conditioning forces her to opt for  a semi skilled job. The only alternative left to them is to work as an unskilled labourer and they are further cornered.

Today the position of women in the Indian society is very marginal. Massive transformation brought about by India’s pursuit of economic development through the process of free markets has resulted in the growing commodification of labour force and households have slowly been taken over by the markets. Though one had perceived massive economic growth would be brought about by the process which would percolate at the bottom of the income hierarchy, but with the first decade of implementation of the New Economic Reforms the ” trickle down ” theory has already been invalidated. Consequently women and children have become the soft targets and are increasingly being forced to enter the market as wage earners as they are considered to be ‘cheap labour’.

Brick making in India is one of the significant industries of the unorganised sector confined mainly to rural and semi rural areas and are spread all over India-north, south, west and east. The brick industry employs large percent of women labourers for unskilled work while the semi skilled and skilled labour is strictly restricted to the male workers. Women are chiefly employed for carrying unburnt bricks from the field to the kiln and also assist the male members in the process of moulding.

Brick kilns are seasonal manufacturing units which attract seasonal migrant labourers from surrounding rural areas of either the same state or neighbouring states and in some cases even from tribal zones. The season of migration depends on the time when the brick kilns start operating and generally the October to June cycle is followed all over India. The kilns remain closed during the monsoon because it is a business best suited for the dry season as the rains would not allow the wet bricks to dry. Hence, the brick making season is wound up before the monsoon sets in, similarly the brick kilns in the Vidarbha region are supposed to wrap up their business by the first week of May.

The Indian brick industry is the second largest producer in the world, next to only China and has more than 100,000 operating units, producing about 100 billions bricks annually, yet there are hardly any studies being done to relate to lives of these “silent voices” and its workers are languishing in abject poverty and are entitled to extremely low wages, with total lack of jobs security and social welfare benefits, long hours of work, unsatisfactory working and living conditions and are not protected by any government labour legislation. The workers do not get any benefit, including those ensuing from enactments such as the Minimum Wages Act, the Employees Insurance Act and the Maternity Benefit Act. All  this is simply because the Brick industry is not considered an organised sector, rather the traditional disorganised sector largely rests on the migrant labourers who give in to the monopolistic market forces and are often exploited.

All across the brick kilns industry in India, the condition of women workers are worse. The discrimination is much greater. Women are employed exclusively for carrying head loads, while all skilled and semi skilled work such as moulding, shaping and stacking is restricted to the men only. As a result, the women’s wages are very low compared to the men and even in cases where the men and the women are involved in the same job there is large scale discrimination. The women workers merely manage to earn only 60 percent of the amount earned by the male workers.

The brick kilns in Akola district are one such areas in Maharashtra where the industry thrives and paradoxically its workers languish and gradually perish under the immense work load and exploitations. The women labourers trying to make ends meet have internalised the struggle and made it a part of their day to day lives. The study tries to capture the lives of few of these ‘Silent voices screaming soundlessly for freedom.

From the above literature one can witness the process of continuous exploitation of the women in the workplace in general and also in this particular context. This process of marginalisation of women in the workplace and the gradual institutionalisation of the process has been a concern for many scholars and writers across the globe. Various schools have emerged theorising the route of gradual subordination of one sex by the other. In this research an attempt has been made to look into some of these theories which are appropriate for the current study.

The role of working women today, according to some studies, is done through examining the feminine ideal or ideals in South Asia. According to A.V.Jose (1990) the economic position of women in a society is determined by her involvement in income earning opportunities outside the household. This process is closely related to the course of economic growth within the country. It has an unique cycle.

Reasons for Employment

• Poverty  
• No Negotiating Power
• Illiteracy
• Caste Hierarchies
• Gender Discrimination
• Lack of alternative Livelihood Opportunities 

Socio economic Conditions

• Poor Wages 
• Poor health facilities
• Unpleasant working conditions 
• Bondage  
• Discrimination  
• Sexual and Psychological Exploitation

What is bonded labour?

Bonded labour – or debt bondage – is probably the least known form of slavery today, and yet it is the most widely used method of enslaving people. A person becomes a bonded labourer when his or her labour is demanded as a means of repayment for a loan. The person is then tricked or trapped into working for very little or no pay, often for seven days a week. The value of their work is invariably greater than the original sum of money borrowed. Millions of people are held in bonded labour around the world. Bonded labourers are routinely threatened with and subjected to physical and sexual violence.

Debt bondage is a specific form of forced labour, in which the element of compulsion is derived from debt. The UN Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, 2 WP43 – Bonded Labour in India. Doc the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (1956) defines debt bondage as “the status or condition arising from a pledge by a debtor of his personal services or those of a person under his control as security for a debt, if the value of those services as reasonably assessed is not applied towards the liquidation of the debt or the length and nature of those services are not respectively limited or defined” Article 1(a).

India has ratified International Labour Organisation (ILO) Conventions No.29 and No.105 on Forced Labour, but it has not ratified ILO Convention No. 138 on the Minimum Age nor has it ratified ILO Convention No.182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour.

ILO’s strategy seeks to address root causes of forced labor both by empowering vulnerable people to resist coercion at work and by addressing the factors that allow unscrupulous employers to profit from their exploitation. Eliminating forced labor is therefore an important contribution to the achievement of the millennium development goals.

Article 23 of the Indian Constitution prohibits trafficking, bonded labour and forced labour. The 1976 Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act and the 1976 Bonded Labour (Abolition) Rules outlawed all debt bondage and were intended to free all bonded labourers, cancel their debts, establish economic rehabilitation measures, and punishment (through fines and imprisonment) for those who employ bonded labourers.

In the workplace of the migrants   

• Low wages in brick kilns with a rate of payment about Rs 80 for 1,000 bricks renders our legislature ineffective to deal with the social issues of poverty and gender discrimination.
• The work is heavy and the hours of work are long for instance 12 to 15 hours, sometimes 18 hours a day to get the wage (around Rs 70 per day). 
• Hostile host community.
• Inadequate working conditions.

At home

• Access to PDS is low.
• Payment for work is inadequate to ensure food security.   
• Frequent droughts make agricultural productivity low. 
• Availability of work throughout the year is low.   

Migration affects women in different aspects depending on the category to which the Women belong such as:

1. Married women who migrate along with their husbands.
2. Unmarried women who migrate alone or with other unmarried girls.
3. Married women who stay back while the husbands migrate (both short
4. Term or long term).
5. Women who have migrated in the past but are back now to their own village.
6. Old women.’

Issues that affect women in the context of migration 

• Low wages
• Non payment of wages
• Gender disparity in wages
• Forced sex work & trafficking
• Violence, domestic violence
• Exploitation of single women
• Lack of education & neglect of children’s education
• Lack of health services for self as well as children

Seasonal and circular (also known as cyclical, oscillatory) migration has long been part of the livelihood portfolio of poor people across India. Seasonal migration of labour for employment has become one of the most durable components of the livelihood strategies of people living in rural areas. It is now recognized that migration is a part of the normal livelihood strategy of the poor and does not occur only during times of emergency or distress. Migration reduces the poverty.

The reasons for migration generally, are traced to various socio, economic, cultural and environmental determinants. An analysis of such factors is necessary as it helps us to interpret the migration of women. The most distinguishing feature of female migration which makes it different from male migration is marriage. Although marriage continues to be the predominant reason for the overwhelming presence of women amongst the migrants, the increase is also due to economic factors. Various micro level studies (Saseen-koob 1984; Shanti, 1991; Ghosh, 2002; Sundari and Rukmani, 1998; Sardamoni, 1995) highlight that females also migrate individually for economic reasons.

“Our vision of feminism has as its very core a process of economic and social development geared to human needs through wider control over and access to economic and political power ”

              -Gita Sen and Caren Grown

It is very clear from the above article that women’s position in society is not decided only by economic factors but include many other transformational elements which operate in the surroundings. Hence the CSR strategies looking towards improving the condition of the women workers will not only look at economic empowerment but also consider their cost of living, the extent of state provisions, the nature of the environment and access to financial and social infrastructure and envisage the state of social empowerment, so that they reach the stage of self actualisation.

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