Pathetic 'Slave Work Of Beedi Labourers' in AP

Extreme poverty, lack of education and scant livelihood opportunities have for generations forced hundreds of families in the nondescript arid town of Kadiri in India’s Andhra Pradesh to rely on beedi rolling as their only means of survival. 

Slum clusters have become open-air factories of domestic tobacco industry where women and young girls daily roll tonnes of tobacco into beedis with bare hands and sharp knives. They live in crammed, unhygienic conditions; work in oppressive heat; inhale harmful tobacco vapours; and absorb large amounts of nicotine through skin contact.

Five-year-old Aliya thinks it is some kind of a game she must soon master to be a winner. From the time she wakes up till she goes to bed Aliya watches her mother and all the girls and women in her neighbourhood consumed in a frantic race. They all make beedis – the traditional hand-rolled Indian cigarettes.

For each beedi, the roller painstakingly places tobacco inside a dried tendu leaf, sourced from a local ebony tree. Then they tightly roll and secure it with a thread. Then they close the tips using a sharp knife. They work like this between 10 to 14 hours. Regardless of how long it takes, Aliya’s mother and others must all roll at least a 1,000 beedis to earn a ‘paltry sum’ of less than 2 dollars USD. The middlemen and beedi manufacturers, however, make billions of dollars.

After they are produced beedi cigarettes are taken to the warehouses of large manufacturers, packaged and then sold in the market for a much higher price. Beedis cigarettes are so popular on the global market today that they make up nearly half of India’s entire tobacco market. But behind the country’s unorganised domestic tobacco sector lies the ‘invisible’ millions who are trapped in modern-day economic slavery.

“Child labour in the bidi industry is common,” said the Journal of the Association of Physicians of India in a comprehensive report on the use and production of Indian tobacco in 2006. India is a nation that has had pervasive child labour problems.

“There is no room for complacency when 215 million children are still labouring to survive and more than half of these are exposed to the worst forms of child labour, including slavery and involvement in armed conflict.” said ILO – International Labour Organization Director General Juan Somavia. “We cannot allow the eradication of child labour to slip down the development agenda – all countries should be striving to achieve this target, individually and collectively,” he added in a statement made for the World Day Against Child Labour.

According to 2008 estimates by the ILO there are 215 million child-labourers working worldwide. ILO figures in 2010 show that 153 million of these children are under the age of 15. Two thirds of these children also work under hazardous conditions.

In Aliya’s town of Kadiri in the Andhra Pradesh region of southern India, hundreds of families have for generations relied on beedi rolling as their only means of survival.

The labyrinthine congested lanes of Kadiri slums are home to an assembly line of humans functioning like robots. Young girls and women alike can be seen rolling cigarettes in groups out in the open. Some sway; some rock back and forth appearing entranced; while others have developed odd muscular motions as they push their work speed to the edge of human limits. For most, if they do not roll enough beedis every day, there simply will not be enough food on their plate.

“The pressure to keep up with the speed and meet the target [in beedi production] is so intense that many skip their meals and even avoid drinking water so they do not need to go to the toilet,” says Shanu, a community advocate and volunteer.

“Beedi making inherently poses tremendous health risks for the workers who are constantly exposed to tobacco dust and fumes,” outlines the India Centre for Women’s Development Studies of the ICSSR – Indian Council of Social Science Research. “The risk is even more in the case of children, both as workers and as household members, since the living and working places are the same for homebased workers,” continued the ICSSR.

Almost all beedi workers in the town of Kadiri, much like other beedi manufacturing pockets in India, are female. A large of number of them are young girls. Getting women and girl-children involved in the home-based process for beedi work is preferred by men, as the decision makers of their households, compared to sending women and girls ‘outside’ for work. Aliya has already started her lessons early and is practicing rolling beedis using cuttings of plain paper.

“I want to roll beedis and give money to my mother,” she explains.

But the generosity of children to work for their mothers can often place them in a direct line with dangerous health consequences inside the beedi tobacco industry. Girl-children and women workers can develop compromised respiratory health, as well as other negative reproductive impacts on their health later in life, due to their exposure to toxins in their work producing beedis. “Loss of [a] first child in a large number of cases and still births are also reported [by beedi workers],” continues the India Centre for Women’s Development Studies, a organization that has worked to chart labour practices with beedi production in India.

The ingredients inside beedis is not considered necessarily safe for contact, especially when smoked. Smoke from beedis can produce a mix of highly toxic chemicals including high levels of ammonia, phenols, hydrogen cyanide, cresols and benzopyrene, a polyaromatic hydrocarbon.

Dangers to smokers can also include dangers to anyone who handles the ingredients that make up a beedi, especially for beedi production workers. “Increased cancer rates and chromosomal aberrations are seen in bidi rollers, who are exposed to toxic tobacco dust through nasopharyngeal and cutaneous routes,” says an in-depth Oxford Journal report on toxicity and beedis coming from the United States based CDC – Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

A study released nearly three years ago inside India has now estimated that over 1.7 million children are currently working in India’s beedi rolling industry. Children are especially being engaged to work by manufacturers due to the belief that children’s ‘nimble fingers’ are more adept at rolling cigarettes. Under current laws in India, beedi rolling is defined as “hazardous work.” But there is a loophole in the law. Children who assist their parents at home in their work do not come under the protective jurisdiction.

“Formally, it is the women who take on the orders from the contractors. However, behind the scenes given the pressures these women face in terms of delivering on huge volumes, invariably children, mainly girls,  get pulled into this to support their families in beedi rolling,” outlines Anita Kumar of Plan International India.

But mothers who pull their children into working along with them have another concern. “…the overwhelming majority of beedi workers are in the clutches of contractors and sub-contractors. The contractors are the suppliers of raw materials as well as collectors of final products,” says a 2007 report by V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, an ‘autonomous’ organization working with India’s Ministry of Labour and Employment. These middlemen often work in any way possible to get profits, not workers, to be the ‘prime directive.’ This leaves most beedi workers who work at home with ‘too much work, too much hazard and too little pay’ under work conditions.

“Exploitation, poverty, dirt and diseases seemed to be living in absolute harmony with the beedi roller,” continues the 2007 study by V.V. Giri National Labour Institute.

As part of its global campaign to stand up for the rights of the child, Plan International India has launched the “Because I am a Girl” programme which will be focusing on girl-child labour in Andhra Pradesh, including girls involved in beedi making. The project is expected to collectively impact 1,500 girls over 3 years, but children trapped in beedi work will need to receive rescue efforts on a much larger scale.  “We are aiming to create a model by working with communities and the local government structures ensuring that children are prevented from falling into this cycle of labour,” added Kumar of Plan International India.

From unhealthy living conditions to exploitative wages and ‘slave-like’ working conditions, severe health consequences for beedi workers involve a violation of their fundamental human rights and freedoms on many levels. The majority of girls are pulled out of education by the time they complete primary [4th grade] school to support their families’ income.

Youngest among four siblings, 11-year-old Salma dropped out of school last year when she completed grade 4.

“I wanted to continue going to school but we are very poor and have been struggling to pay the rent,” she says as she struggles to draw breath. Salma is suffering from jaundice and is so frail she can barely sit straight. Yet she rolls up to 1,500 beedis a day to support her family.

Squatting on the floor and hunched up, Salma rolls cigarettes for over 12 hours every day. Even with this intense amount of effort she still earns just over two dollars a day. In addition to jaundice, Salma has also developed a ringworm infection on her wrist, quite common in the area due to poor hygiene and sanitation. She is in dire need of medical attention, but visiting a local hospital means a day off from work with the loss of a day’s wage in transport.  Her parents cannot afford either. The health impact on beedi workers is visible on all age groups.

Tuberculosis, asthma, body pain and postural problems related with hips and joints are most common. Continuous beedi rolling also leads to the absorption of high doses of nicotine directly through the skin. Due to the hours of work, the skin on a child’s fingertips can begin to thin progressively. By the time most children reache their 40s they cannot roll cigarettes any more.

Mahboobjaan, a mother of three girls, is currently in her mid-30s. She is already losing sensation in her hands due to her work. ”My hands often swell up. I don’t know what I will do if I can’t roll beedi anymore,” she says.

The worst thing for adult beedi workers is the feeling that there is no protection, no welfare, no State support in India.

They vote but have no power or effective representation. For all development indicators they remain at the bottom of the ladder all their lives.

Among them, girls suffer the most. Throughout their life-cycle their basic human rights are violated over and over again; as children, as child brides, and as young mothers, they continue to fight for survival under what can often be seen as a level of extreme labour and economic slavery.

In summer as the temperatures reaches 45 degrees Celsius, the streets in town of Kadiri are often engulfed in a stifling cloud of tobacco dust. Infants play among heaps of tobacco leaves. Covered in a pool of sweat, young girls roll beedis with their eyes transfixed on their tobacco tray. Older women, who cannot roll any more, help with trimming the ebony leaves. The work continues ’til late in the night, just to secure the next day’s meal and to keep a roof above their heads. Next morning and for almost every single morning for rest of their lives, their work-day covers exactly the same routine. The breathless race to producing 1,000 beedis a day starts with 1 beedi all over again.