In Conversation with Dr. M M Rehman and Ms. Shashi Tomar
Dr. M M Rehman from V V Giri Labour Institute held a firm belief that providing an instantaneous alternative was not possible, one cannot do something about an industry that’s so old, that has known the nation before it’s freedom. What we know is that around 5 million people are employed in this industry, but the actuality of the number of people depending on it for survival exceeds the statistical data because population is growing rapidly in rural areas and all family members in a bidi-rolling household rely on it. We talked about how the welfare funds set up by the Labour Welfare Organisation for bidi workers ensures educational facilities, funding for different issues related to health, grants for housing and accommodation of the whole family, and other expenses for recreational purposes. Dr Rehamn and Ms. Shashi Tomar have worked extensively in this field, to help unionise workers and carefully assess and scrutinise the policies to make sure it caters to the bidi rollers needs and demands.
Ms. Shashi Tomar had her own share of personal experiences as an activist and grassroots level researcher- her stance on the bidi industry too is that it cannot be replaced in a short period, it is a dying industry, people are getting out of it, but still it traps the lives of a lot of women and we must keep trying our best to ensure they get the wages they deserve and move into better employment conditions. What she had discovered through field research was that often contractors were from higher castes and the workers from lower castes. Across the country, most of the workers are Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Castes and in South India, MBCs too. Through their mannerisms and position of authority, caste based discrimination proliferates among the contractor-worker dynamics. There is no proper channel for selecting workers, contractors do it randomly, they sometimes approach communities they can assert their power over more easily and earn more profits via them. When workers become aware of their rights and the opportunities they have under the special laws produced for them, the contractors abandon those communities and migrate to places where people are less aware, who are seen as easy targets. She had also come across two rape cases, one of a child’s. She fought against financially and politically powerful people to lodge an FIR against the rapist, stood her ground through their death threats to help the victim get justice.
In his book, Tobacco, Tendu Leaf and Bidi Workers in India: problems and prospects, [To learn more about the book click on the following link: https://www.worldcat.org/title/tobacco-tendu-leaf-and-beedi-workers-in-india-problems-and-prospects/oclc/645902157?referer=di&ht=edition] Dr Rehman lays out a convenient diagram to explicate the production process of beedi. Tendu Leaf collected often by tribal communities are sent to bidi factories along with tobacco, the bidi barons in the factories give these main raw materials to employers who employ the contractors. The contractors are responsible for employing bidi rollers from their homes in different areas in a district, often they hire sub-contractors to help them. Once employed, these rollers get registered with the factory and health benefits from the Bidi Welfare Fund, ESI and Provident Funds are supposed to protect them. Since the system is clearly laid out and under the Bidi and Cigar Workers Act, the rollers are protected from being displaced, loans are easily procured since their job is seen as a permanent one. It paints a picture of a regulated industry.
The convolutions arise when we try to understand the monetary flow.
[Diagram acquired through the discussion with Dr. Rehman and his literature]
From our conversations with all the field researchers and academics we learnt that workers from home are paid by per the number of bundles they produce, and each bundle is supposed to have a thousand bidis. The most popular forms of bidis right now are the number 10 and number 100. Number 100 is short and thicker, number 10 is slender and longer. Sometimes the contractors don’t provide sufficient amounts of raw material (there are no accounts prepared to record the materials thus no physical evidence) yet expect the rollers to produce a fixed amount of bidis, and when they are not able to do so, they start slicing down their per bundle salary. Very often, as the workers shared with us, the contractors take the liberty to reject as many bidis as they want under the excuse of them being imperfect or not of quality standard, thus again leading to cutting down their salary. Meanwhile they collect the rejected bidis and either sell them or add them to the factory’s account and procure their monetary gains. Sometimes the subcontractors are not officially hired, they are relatives and friends of contractors who aspire to earn money. They use more bidi rollers than the fixed number of workers they need to register under the factory’s name, they don’t give the workers id cards, but still make them work and pay them really low wages because poverty is so severe that they would work for any amount. Sometimes the contractors and subcontractors take advise the workers to give up the id card that avails them all their benefits because some Rupees from their wages are deducted to go into their bank accounts as Provident Funds savings, so they don’t get all their wages together. They are deceived into thinking that they will earn more if they give up their registrations which becomes another way for the contractors to cheat them.
It is a dying industry though, as Dr Rehman wanted to draw our attention towards. With each generation that comes and education spreads, some families do find the means to get out of this. It instills a sense of financial independence for women coming from lower caste and economically underprivileged backgrounds. One of the crucial things to look into is the narratives we build around this industry. The very intent should be to liberate them from terrible working conditions and not implicate that the industry should be demolished as soon as possible. It is a system that needs to be thoroughly investigated to ensure the security of the workers rights and facilitate skills development for them so they can grab opportunities for themselves.