Beedi workers: a tale of exploitation

Beedis (hand-rolled cigarettes made from tendu leaves and a pinch of tobacco) are commonly known as the ‘poor man’s smoke’ in India and are in the main produced by impoverished women working in their own homes in poor conditions for very low wages. Beedi sticks have a market share of 85 per cent of all smoking products in the country, and therefore the home production of the immensely popular low-cost cigarettes is a major source of livelihood for millions of women in India.

Meriam, 27, who now works in a garment factory in Delhi’s Okhla district, was previously a beedi roller in her village in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district. The district is home to 25 per cent of India’s beedi workers, and the beedi industry dominates the local economy.

Meriam started to roll beedi as an eight-year-old to help her mother meet her daily target of producing 1,000 pieces of beedi. “The work is so tedious, monotonous and demands a lot of attention to detail that I had to help her out as a young girl,” she recalls.

Photograph: Public.Resource.Org

Although Meriam found the work physically punishing and hated the constant smell of tobacco dust created by the process, she was effectively forced to continue with the hazardous home-based work as her father was unable to secure enough work to support the family.

“For decades, I saw my mother working in a dark, ill-ventilated room,” recalls Meriam. “She would sit in one position for 10–12 hours a day rolling beedis robotically. Since she rolled beedi all day long, she had a persistent cough. But there was little she could do about it. It was her livelihood.”

Health problems

Miriam’s mother suffered from backaches, poor eyesight, breathing issues and abdominal pain as a result of the beedi-rolling work. The poor working conditions of beedi workers often result in posture-related ailments, such as cramps, muscle and nerve pain, say public health advocates, and research has also linked beedi-making to a higher incidence of pulmonary issues and even tuberculosis.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) says many beedi workers experience a burning sensation in the throat, coughs, asthma, bronchitis, excessive bleeding during menstruation, irregular and painful menstrual cycles, anaemia, anaemic body aches and dizziness from constant exposure to tobacco dust.

Meanwhile, research published in the British Medical Journal concluded that studies on the health of female beedi workers showed decreased fertility, increased frequency of miscarriages and higher risk of cervical cancer. The BMJ research paper also concluded that pregnant beedi workers appear to be at an increased risk of anaemia and pregnancy-induced hypertension, and have a higher frequency of neonatal deaths, stillbirths and premature births in comparison with non-bidi workers. It also found evidence that babies born to beedi workers reportedly have lower birth weights.

Public health advocates say because the beedi workers are from low-income backgrounds they struggle to afford nutritional food, and these nutritional deficiencies further aggravate the ill health that arises from their work, including a negative impact on the reproductive health of female workers.

In West Bengal’s Murshidabad district where Meriam’s mother makes beedis at home, anaemia among women in the 15–49 age bracket in the district is an alarming 77.6 per cent, much higher than what it was four years ago, when it stood at 58 per cent. Children of mothers who have anaemia are much more likely to be anaemic, say medical experts. In fact, the recent National Family Health Survey (NFHS–5) shows rising anaemia levels for all women and children in Murshidabad. Also, in this district, 40 per cent of children under the age of five have stunted growth and worryingly, there has been no real change in this figure since the earlier NFHS that was carried out four years ago in 2015–2016.

Inhaling tobacco dust

A 2020 study into the health of female beedi workers conducted by Delhi-based research consulting firm AF Development Care (AFDC) found that at least 92.5 per cent women workers reported suffering from bronchitis, 90.5 per cent experienced body ache, 80 per cent reported lower back pain, 75 per cent felt weak, and 77 per cent had breathing difficulties.

The study, Knowledge gap in existing research on India’s women beedi rollers and alternative livelihood options, exposes the poor working conditions and various health problems faced by the industry’s workforce, which is mainly female.

“The health problems are due to two reasons – inhalation of a huge amount of tobacco dust during beedi rolling and sitting in the same position for eight to 10 hours a day,” says Sachi Satapathy, principal investigator and director of the AFDC, who conducted the study along with Gagan Bihari Sahu, an associate professor of economics at the Centre for Social Studies in Surat, and others.

Meriam says: “I knew about the health hazards associated with beedi rolling. I did not like the smell of tobacco dust but, like my mother, spent all my waking hours rolling beedi for years as I had no other option.”

For years Meriam wanted to obtain a safer and more rewarding job but one of the main hurdles preventing her making the transition was her poor standard of education. 

“For years, I wanted to quit, but could not, as I did not know how else to make a living.” Meriam earned a meagre Rs 3,600 per month for rolling 1,000 pieces of beedi a day. Her day began with moistening tendu leaves by soaking them in water. After this, she dried the leaves and cut them before rolling and filling them with tobacco dust and then tying them with a thread into little bundles.

It was only when Meriam’s husband found work as an office boy in Delhi that she decided to quit beedi rolling for good and move to the capital city.

For the first two years, Meriam worked as a vegetable seller before finding work in the garment factory. “While working as a beedi roller, even if I fell sick, I still had to continue with the task seven days a week, but here in the factory I can take sick leave. I am very happy in my new job,” she said.

Poor wages

In West Bengal, over two million people work as beedi rollers. In the Murshidabad district, where 1.7 million are employed in the beedi industry, the minimum wage has been fixed at Rs 178. However, the actual wages received by beedi workers are generally much lower, at anything between Rs 100–140. 

According to media reports, the West Bengal government’s labour department has admitted that beedi rollers are among the most vulnerable workers in the state’s informal sector. Although the department’s stipulated minimum wage is Rs. 267.44, beedi workers in West Bengal generally only earn Rs 150 per 1,000 pieces of beedi rolled, which is even less than the national minimum wage of Rs. 178 set by the Code on Wages 2019.

India’s informal beedi industry is thought to employ over seven million workers, around five million of whom are believed to be women who are employed by small contractors to make beedis at home for wages as low as Rs 50 a day, mainly because there is no other available work.

In addition, an earlier study by AFDC revealed that, among workers employed by beedi firms which were registered at a national level, there was a daily wage gap of up to Rs 140 between women (who earned an average of Rs 126) and men (who earned an average of Rs 266). 

Beedis rejected on ‘quality’ grounds

In the unorganised sector of the Indian economy – where most of the beedi workers are employed –
94 per cent of women are not eligible for any social security benefits, compared to 47 per cent in the organised sector. Commentators say the female beedi workers remain outside the scope of factory laws because they work from home, rather than a fixed factory. The beedi workers are given the work by contractors, who pass the finished beedis onto larger beedi suppliers. However, many of the beedis are arbitrarily rejected by the contractor on the grounds of being poorly made, which means the workers do not receive payment for the rejected ones.

Meriam says many times the contractor would separate the beedis into acceptable and poor-quality ones for which no payment would be made, but would retain both. “With the good ones, they would take the bad ones as well, but we were paid only for the good pieces,” she said.

Commentators say contractors often sell the rejected ‘poor quality’ beedis on the black market, despite failing to pay the workers for producing them. 

However, the beedi manufacturers earn huge profits. In 2017–18, the domestic consumption of beedi was 260 billion sticks, or 10.4 billion packets, which was worth Rs 156 billion and earned the government a revenue of Rs 25 billion. However, beedis, which are the most common tobacco smoking product in India, remain largely untaxed.    

According to the Business Standard news website, the beedi industry made $1.4 billion more than the cigarette industry in 2016. However, commentators say this figure is likely to be an underestimate as the lack of regulation provides the industry with the opportunity to underreport its profits. They allege that because smaller beedi manufacturers are not subject to high taxes, companies have been closing larger beedi plants and running smaller ones under different names, therefore avoiding the need to pay higher taxes.  

Lack of social security benefits

In a paper on the working conditions of beedi workers, the ILO warned that beedi contractors and sub-contractors are meant to issue identify cards to beedi workers to enable them to access government-run welfare schemes providing health, education, maternity and housing support for themselves and their families, plus insurance cover for lump sum payments in the event of the worker’s death. However, in practice, trade unions say that significant numbers of workers are not provided with the cards by the contractors, making it impossible for them to access the social security support schemes.

The ILO adds that the average actual earnings and minimum wages in the beedi industry vary widely from state-to-state, which allows beedi manufacturers to quickly switch production from one favourable state to another, particularly if they come under pressure from workers and unions to improve wages and working conditions for the home-based workers. 

The ILO also warns that, while strictly speaking, the main beedi manufacturers do not formally employ children to roll beedis, the system of sub-contracting to home based workers and the logic of the piece rate system of payment (the more the worker produces, the more they will earn) leads to the involvement of children.

“The children, whether they go to school or not, end up helping out the family in rolling beedis,” it says. “Legally, India’s child labour law does not cover children who help out as family labour and this loophole creates the scope for employment of children in many home-based activities. The labour department officials have difficulties in taking any action against the employers/ contractors who claim that they have given work to only the adult members.”

The ILO says that, despite the health hazards posed by beedi rolling, trade unions and NGOs in India recommend the government takes measures to support the survival of the beedi industry in the medium term due to the lack of alternative employment options for the home-based beedi workers.

However, trade unions, NGOs and the ILO say more needs to be done to improve the working conditions of beedi workers, such as providing specific ‘work sheds’, or workplaces, for the production of beedis, ensuring all workers have access to the benefits available under the Beedi Workers Welfare Fund, and developing a plan so beedi workers can switch to alternative occupations and income generation activities in the long term.

The ILO says the government should take steps to ensure “the systematic identification of beedi workers, especially home-based workers; this is important if the benefits under the Beedi Workers Welfare Fund (BWWF) are to be availed. The access to and improvement of benefits under the BWWF needs to be ensured.”

The ILO also calls for the introduction of a uniform, national minimum wage for the work in the beedi industry, to stop manufacturers shifting production to states where they can pay lower wages. The ILO also recommends action should be taken to prevent contractors arbitrarily rejecting finished beedis on the grounds of quality, warning that while the government recommends that workers should not lose more than 2.5 per cent of their wages due to rejection of beedis on quality grounds, contractors often fail to follow this.

The ILO adds that “the system of subcontracting of production and labour to intermediaries/ contractors and the non-implementation of the labour laws by the contractors… needs to be regulated to ensure application of basic labour standards”.

Call for regulation of beedi manufacturing and sales

Meanwhile, earlier this year, a study conducted by the School of Public Health, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Jodhpur stated: “For the betterment of the beedi workers and society at large,  the beedi business should lose cottage industry benefits.”

The study called for a new framework for the regulation and tracking of beedi tobacco, from cultivation to processing and manufacture, possibly by bringing beedi tobacco under the purview of the Tobacco Board of India.

The study said that greater taxation of beedis would grow government revenue, while bringing down beedi consumption and tobacco-related diseases.  It said the regulation of the beedi industry may help save nearly 10.5 million lives a year.

“Considering the health, environmental, and economic burden due to the consumption of beedis, the beedi business should lose the status of a cottage industry and the associated regulation and taxation benefits it enjoys,” the report said.

The study added that existing laws applicable to cigarettes, such as a ban on the sale of loose sticks and enforcement of tobacco vendor licensing norms to reduce black marketing, should be extended to beedis.

The ILO report can be found here.