For many of us when we hear about karkhana (factory), we assume a fixed structure with walls and a roof under which workers collect to make some goods. We assume that they have a fixed time to enter and a fixed time to leave the karkhana, regular payments and payment for overtime. This is not quite how it works out.
In a beedi karkhana however, there is usually no fixed structure for the production or making of beedi. It operates from the home of workers. A middle-class urban person may think ‘work from home’ is pandemic-specific. Here it has always been ‘work from home’ though the nature of both work, remuneration and home would be very different. The unorganised, informal sector makes up the majority of the workforce in South Asia. And home-based workers (HBWs), particularly women, form a vital part of informal economies in the region. By definition, home-based workers are a category of informal sector workers who carry out remunerative work from their own homes or adjacent grounds or premises.[i] It is estimated that there are over 67 million home-based workers in just four countries of South Asia alone. These include Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. Millions go unaccounted for in national statistics.
Since most of the production is undertaken in homes, production is widely dispersed, and it is difficult to plot a clear-cut employer-employee relationship. The maze of contractors and sub-contractors effectively serves to provide a serpentine chain of production which is tantamount to circumvention of labour laws at several levels. In this system of karkhana, workers get raw materials at one of the worker’s homes in the village and weekly wages according to the number of beedis they make and not hours of work. Workers and the supplier mutually decide the venue to meet to collect beedi and raw materials, and this venue is nothing but the home of one of the workers. This venue works as a site to meet once or twice a week, and this venue can be changed as convenient. If the Supplier is from the same village, then workers have to go to his home to deliver the beedis and collect the raw materials. There is no concept of overtime, and there is no official weekly off compared to the conventional system; workers even work on Sundays.
Unlike other manufacturing factories, beedi making requires no machines or high-end equipment. Beedi making only needs Kainchi (scissors), Kochni (tool to press Beedi after filling of tobacco), dhaga (thread to tie up bundle) and a cup of water to wet fingers while rolling Beedi.
In beedi karkhana, raw materials reach the home of workers through a chain of hierarchy, where workers do not know for whom they are working exactly. They only know the person who gives them materials and wages, and they call him thekedar. This thekedar is nothing but a supplier or small contractor who supplies the materials, collects the finished product, and gives wages according to the number of beedis. The supplier who collects the beedi from majdoor (workers) does not submit beedis directly to the company. Instead, they submit to the big thekedar. So, the company give manufacturing unit to the big thekedars according to the region, and then these big thekedars have small suppliers, and these suppliers works as a link between big thekedar and majdoor, and big thekdars works directly with the company.
In the beedi industry, most of the workers are women who work from home after completing their household work, which is an unending series of tasks. It is under such pressure that they make beedis. And for many homes, beedi making is like household work which should be done every day because many families depend on the weekly wages to get at least vegetables and other things from the weekly market.
In this system of beedi-making, workers are not divided into different units to do different sets of work. Instead, they have to do all the work by themselves. Workers mainly get two materials from suppliers, tambakh (tobacco) and tendu patta (tendu leaves). After getting both the materials, workers start their work by cutting the leaves in a particular rectangular shape and then, the leaves are wrapped in wet clothes for some time to moisturise so they can be rolled. Workers usually wrap the processed leaves at night, which will be used the following day. So, from cutting the patta to making beedi a finished good and tied up as chungdi (bundle), it is done only by a single worker in her home rather than by a unit of workers under a common roof. The materials provided to the workers also have a flow, the company provides materials to the thekedars, and thekedars give them to suppliers. Then suppliers pass them on to the beedi maker, located at the bottom of the hierarchy.
A beedi worker I spoke to said:
“Subah utho, apna muh-hath dhulo, pani-bartan-jhadu karo, chay banao, fir beedi ke chungdi banate hai. Fir khana banate hai aur agar beedi vala aata hai to fir beedi patane jate hai aur vaha se patta-tambakh late hai. ghar akar fir nahao-dhow, fir patte bhigane dalo, kuch der ke bad unhe kato. Katne ke baad unko fir ek patti me dabakar rakho, chikne ke liye aur chikne ke baad fir beedi banao rat tak. Ye din bhar chalte rehta hai, ghar ka kam or beedi. Bas pushata kuch nahi” (wake up, freshen up, bring water, clean home and dishes, then make tea. After tea, tie the bundle, and if the supplier is coming, we go to submit the beedi and come with leaves and tobacco. After coming home, take a bath, wash clothes, and then start the process of beedi making by putting the leaves in water. After some time, cut the leaves in shape and then again put them in a piece of cloth to moisturise the leaves. After the moisturisation, we start making beedi until we sleep at night. And the whole day, this work continues along with household chores. Still, after putting in this much effort, beedi making does not give the deserved money).
This is the story of a woman beedi worker from a village in Madhya Pradesh and I believe that this tale is more or less true and reflects the condition of other women beedi workers from different parts of the country.
[i] https://hnsa.org.in/home-based-workers, accessed on 9th March 2023.
***
Nishant Kumar Dongre is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Pondicherry University.