HEALTH TAKES A BACK SEAT

August 15, 2010




Photo: Purusottam Singh Thakur


Almost all the families are beedi workers in this
dalit basti of Rengali village.

Health

takes a

backseat

When getting three meals a day is a problem, who will bother about
proper medication!

Purusottam Singh Thakur, Odisha

Eighteen-year-old Sulochana
Bag of Rengali Village in
Sambalpur district has spent
half (nine years) of her life in rolling
thousands of beedis, but earning a
decent livelihood or contributing
to overall income of her family
remain a distant dream even today.

If you ask Sulochana as to when
she relished her last luxurious meal
out of her income, the experienced
beedi roller would surely fail to
answer. But what she has earned out
of nine years of grinding in filthy
and disease-causing conditions is
evident. She often gets suffocated
and coughs up intermittently.

Like in case of most beedi workers,
her induction into the industry
happened when she turned five.

Being the cheapest ‘pleasure’
available to the low income group in
rural and urban areas, this product has
got a vast potential in the market. And
this labour-intensive industry does not
find any difficulties in getting young
recruits like Sulochana from poverty-
stricken western Orissa region.

In fact, beedi manufacturers of late
have distributed contracts of beedi
making to individual households
and are collecting finished products
from them. Rolling of 1000 beedis
fetches Sulochana a paltry Rs 45.
After toiling hard for whole week,
the entire family earns just Rs 360.

If the story of Sulochana Bag
sounds depressing, middle-aged
Rajkumari Mahanand’s miseries are
interweaved with the growth of beedi
industries in her area. Her father, a
beedi worker, had died about three
decades ago, she lost her husband
who was involved in the industry
and mother who brought up her by
rolling beedi is now bed-ridden.

"Although rolling beedis
increases health risk, I don’t have
the other options to get out of the
sector," says Rajkumari. In the
beedi rolling units, people of all
ages could be found. Most of them
look older than that of their age.

People engaged in the sector
are often deprived of actual wages.
"When the beedi making wage was
just 14 ana (0.87 paise) per 1000,
I learnt beedi making without any
wage. When they started paying me,
the rate was Rs 2 per 1000 beedi.
By the time I left the sector, it was
only Rs 10 per rolling out 1000
beedis,” says 60-year-old Bhimsen
Bag who worked 33 years with a
well-known beedi manufacturer.

General Secretary of Beedi
workers’ union affiliated to Centre
of Indian Trade Union, Orissa,
Satyananda Behera, said that although
the State Government had ordered
Rs 65 to be paid for 1000 beedis, it was
rarely implemented on the ground.

“Beedi workers are always living
on the edge of poverty. What they get
from the sector as wage just fulfils
their food needs. We need to think of a
drastic reform to make their lives look
better,” says Ranjan Panda, an activist
who works on the livelihood issues.

About 25000 beedi workers are
engaged in Rengali alone, which is
blessed with dense forest, the number
swells to one lakh in Sambalpur
district. Five companies are enjoying
the flourishing business in the region.

While beedi workers are forced
to toil at paltry sum and struggle to
make both ends meet, addressing
health concerns takes a back seat.
Beedi workers have common ailments
like respiratory and skin diseases.

"Workers are very poor. Most of
them live in single room houses and the
average family size is about six. They
are prone to tobacco related disease
such as tuberculoses and cancer,”
said Dr S N Mohanty, a government
doctor working in the dispensary run
by Bidi Shramik Kalyan Sanstha.

Poor health conditions and low
wages of Beedi workers never
improve due to fewer number of
inspections carried out by Labour
department. As many as 440
establishments are covered under the
Beedi and Cigar Workers (Condition
of Employment) Act, 1966 and 416
establishments have obtained licences.

Inspector declared under the
Act conducted 59 inspections
during the year 2008-09. Number
of inspections is on a declining
trend in the preceding three years.

While 94 inspections were
done in 2006-07, it came down
to 65 in the subsequent year –
2007-08. Lack of sticks from the
government agencies has made
workers more vulnerable to health
hazards in the beedi-making sector.