Ticking time bomb: The perilous lives of garment workers amid the pandemic

The garment industry has long been under the microscope for flouting labour codes, breaking environmental norms, violating human rights, pay structures and much more. The women garment workers who attended an orientation workshop at a hotel on Delhi-Gurugram road October 2021, headed by Society for Labour and Development (SLD), know about these flaws.

In many cases, they have protested and fought to amend many of those violations themselves. For the past year and half, their struggles have looked slightly different.

Under the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic, the poor suffered disproportionately. Their story is about poverty, hunger, curtailed education and lives lived in fear. 

There is no analysis of what has occurred so far during the pandemic and what is yet to come. The challenge, forever it seems, will be to consolidate the narrative and find ways to fix the future. 

‘It’s a ticking time bomb’

Rajeshwari, 50, shifted from her village in Chhapra in Bihar to Kapashera in Delhi 15 years ago. The reason was simple: Her husband, an abusive alcoholic, wouldn’t find work in the village and wreaked havoc on the family. 

To protect the children from his influence, the elders decided to separate the family. She shifted to the city with her husband, the kids stayed home with her mother.

Over the years, while her husband worked at a cotton mill, Rajeshwari took up a job as a tailor at a garment factory in Gurugram. He blew his pay on alcohol and gambling and the money she earned ran the two-person household.

Three years ago when he passed away after suffering from complications due to alcohol abuse, she was left alone, responsible now not just for her own wellbeing but also for her younger son’s education in the village. It wasn’t smooth sailing with a salary of Rs 10,400 as a migrant in a city but it soon got worse.

“In the first lockdown, the company closed its doors, and suddenly we couldn’t go to work,” she said, adding: 

There was a real fear about the virus, but there was also a fear from the police who wouldn't even let us out to get supplies. The company would give us Rs 2,000 every month as compensation, and I won’t deny that was more than many others I know were getting.

Rajeshwari’s ration card is registered in her village and his son is the beneficiary. Through the lockdowns, she took on a lot of debt just to buy supplies for sustenance and survival, in the absence of a ration card. 

It compounded the severe debt she was already under, undertaken during her husband’s treatment. Her only platforms for aid were via civil society. SLD partnered with Oxfam India under their Mission Sanjeevani initiative to provide ration and safety kits to vulnerable families. Around 220 families of garment factory workers received food kits to last a family for at least a month. 

One of the reasons Rajeshwari agreed to attend the workshop was to show her gratitude for the aid, without which, she reckoned, she’d have been done for. 

Despite the easing of lockdowns and getting back to her job, Rajeshwari fears the future. He is unable to think about what will happen if there is a third COVID-19 wave. 

“It’s like a time bomb strapped to our chests, ticking away,” she said. “The virus will never go away. But someone has to think about us, the people who have to live through the pandemic”

‘Who does anything for others these days’

In the weeks that followed the first lockdown, after the pots, pans and bluster came the reality. Images of migrant workers streaming out of cities, walking on highways, struggling to get home, away from an economy that had regurgitated them, started pouring out. They shocked many to tears. 

For Sangeeta Devi and her husband, the images were the manifestation of a Plan B, a brief thought given to the idea that maybe, just maybe, they should go home as well.

But then, clear thought arrived, and with it a reminder of their own reality.

Sangeeta and her husband are from a village in Sasaram in Bihar. They were forced to migrate to the city 12 years ago, once her in-laws passed away and her elder brother-in-law and his wife took charge of the property.

“I still remember, we were asked to leave the house on December 6. Jeth bole ki sheher mei naukri karo, yahan pe kuch nahi hai. I was heavily pregnant and somehow we took the train to come to Delhi,” she said. “My youngest son was born on December 12.”

Her husband picked up a job as a security guard at an insurance company. Sangeeta, meanwhile, joined a garment factory, making samples for production. She specialises in crochet. 

Sangeeta Devi, 38, participating in an orientation workshop for women workers in the garment industry. Photo: Vaibhav Raghunandan

Last year, living through the lockdown without pay, they used up their savings to survive and feed their children. Once that ran out, they started considering Plan B, before abandoning the thought completely.

“Wahan humara koi bhi nahi hai. Bus jeth aur jethani hai… kaun kiska aaj ke yug mei karta hai,” she says. “We decided to stick it out.” 

The couple started selling half the ration they got to get money for other supplies. Sangeeta would grind half the wheat into flour and sell the rest to her neighbours. As work trickled back, things got better, till they got worse. 

Sangeeta’s husband was hit by a taxi while cycling to work in June this year. He suffered a brain haemorrhage and multiple fractures. To finance the treatment Sangeeta, used a small bit of land they still owned in the village to get a loan. 

And then, she went back to work, an eight-hour shift that earns her Rs 11,000 a month — the only income for her family. 

‘I fought to get back my job’

The workshop’s main objective was to educate the women on their rights at their workplaces and their homes. Using theatre and interactive sessions, the group discussed the various problems women workers face at the hands of their employers. 

Stories of abuse, a lack of respect, leering, sexual advances and open discrimination came to the fore. A key picture that emerged slowly is the lack of job security among women workers in the industry. The SLD team members detailed out labour laws that can aid those who want to take their grievances to the public domain.

“The company sacked me as soon as the first lockdown was enforced. It’s almost like they knew how long it would go on and decided to cut their losses,” said Sarita, a thread cutter at a factory in Mullahera. This happened mostly to the women in the factory, she added. 

The few who survived did so because they were in the good books of the employees, she said. “They are forced to do bad things and they do it.” 

Her husband, a tailor at a leather factory, lost his job too. The company he worked for shut down and he has been unemployed ever since. Buoyed by SLD’s support, Sarita and her colleagues filed cases against the employers for wrongful termination and has only recently won her job back. 

It is a small success, in a long list of sufferings and failures. In the aftermath of all the devastation, there remains hope, but also a grim reality check that the battle has just begun. 

The pandemic, for all its ‘distancing’ messaging, is actually all encompassing. Small moves at one end have grim repercussions at another. People lower in the spectrum understand that, reliant on community and support groups to survive. 

From government and other power structures, apathy reigns. The neoliberal economy isn’t concerned about exiting the pandemic, but re-entering growth. Human lives are the collateral damage.

“People don’t think about what happens when people lose their jobs,” Sarita said. “The virus isn’t all there is out there to kill us. Landlords still want rent. Food still needs to be paid for. Water, electricity, education… Nothing is free.” 

“One has to fight to survive, if not for themselves but at least for their children,” Sarita said. If I give up, then what will they eat tomorrow, she asked.

Vaibhav Raghunandan is a photographer, journalist and designer. This story has been written as part of an assignment for Oxfam India, New Delhi. 

Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth

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