Ahead of the Lok Sabha election, the crisis of unemployment unites India as few things do. Why are important sections of India out of work? How do unemployed Indians live? Why is the work available not enough to earn a livelihood? How do Indians secure employment? How long is the wait? With India out of work, The Wire unveils a series that explores one of the most important poll issues of our time.Bhatapara (Bengal): Premchand Mondal says he does not exist.Mondal works at the Jagatdal Jute Mill at Bhatapara of the North 24 Parganas district in West Bengal. He is a contractual worker. Every day, he weaves raw jute into sturdy sacks which are the mainstay of the packaging industry. He earns roughly Rs 350-400 per day when work is available.The jute mill where Mondal works does not contribute to his provident fund account. It does not pay him gratuity. He does not have an employees’ insurance corpus towards which a part of his salary goes. Mondal, thus, says that he does not exist.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty. Photo: Intifada P. Basheer and Azam Abbas“If an accident happens, they won’t even help me get treatment, I think,” he says.The jute mills of BengalThe number of permanent workers engaged in the jute mills of Bengal – once a flourishing industry – have been on the decline for the past 10 years. The scores of workers whom The Wire spoke to in the district and outside say that out of permanent, special and temporary classes of workers, mill owners are keen on employing the most number of new people in the last category alone. Such workers are known as “zero number” workers – their employment identity number is effectively zero because they are not registered with the mill. Such workers are often sent to mills by agencies, which are controlled by layers of politics.With 75 out of 104 jute mills located in the state, Bengal is still the hub of the Indian jute industry valued at Rs 10,000 crore. According to the Jute Commission of India records, as of December 31, 2022, there are approximately 46,487 permanent workers and 1,08,461 contractual workers working in the jute industry in India. However, beyond the record books, over 3 lakh people are associated with the jute mills – unofficially. Two in three workers are working contractually in jobs that give little other than a basic income when there is work.Bharat Ram says his grandfather left Uttar Pradesh and came to the jute town of Bhatpara to work at a mill during the British rule. A third-generation jute mill worker, Bharat still works in the factory where his grandfather did. But he is one of the lucky few with a permanent job at the mill.“Almost all jute mill workers stay in slums – which should give you an idea of how they are paid. Contractual workers get as low Rs 200 per day in some mills, much lower than the minimum wage for unskilled workers in Bengal. But officially, there is no record of most of them,” Bharat says.He was “it was different earlier” and every worker was eligible for provident fund contributions, gratuity, and employees’ state insurance benefits.Shame, cleanliness ‘distant’ conceptsHarendra Prasad Yadav, another generational jute mill worker, points to the rot in the system and claims that while news is made when jute mills are closed due to workers’ agitations, government incentives all go to the mill owners. “Our condition doesn’t improve,” he says. Retired for years now, Harendra is yet to receive his gratuity benefits.A gutter run through a workers’ colony in Bhatpara, Bengal. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar.Harendra shares his quarters with his son, two grandsons, and a daughter-in-law. On both sides of the narrow lanes that lead to his house, there are rows of similar cramped rooms. A foul-smelling sewer gutter cleaves the alley in two. This is a playground for children by day, and a shared toilet by night.There are around 60,000 jute mill workers in the North 24 Parganas district alone. Nestled within the shadows of towering jute mills are the workers’ colonies in which almost all of them live. Within each workers’ colony is at most a single common bathroom without any doors or curtains. For Janki Ram, a mill worker, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan – the Union government’s flagship cleanliness drive – seems a distant dream.“Although we have a ditch right at our doorstep, even the [mosquito-borne] dengue is afraid to come here,” jokes Janki.Kamli Devi’s son works at the factory. She says that for women in the colonies who struggle with the concept of a single shared toilet, shame is distant concept too. “We can’t even afford to raise your voice against the mill owner, otherwise we will be driven away,” she says.A jute workers’ colony. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar.Workers out of workThe local member of parliament, Arjun Singh, says that he has spoken to many jute mill owners about the problem, “but no one has done anything.”“Whatever allegations the workers are making are right. The condition of jute mill colonies is primitive. Jute mills never run at a loss. The owners usurp the rights of the workers from their provident fund,” says Singh.Singh, known for his strong-arm tactics in the area, was a longtime Trinamool Congress leader but quit the party in 2019 to win the Barrackpore Lok Sabha constituency as a BJP candidate. In 2022, he returned to his former party over the jute price-cap issue which led to the closure of about a dozen mills sending more than 60,000 workers out of work.With the majority of voters in the Barrackpore Lok Sabha constituency belonging to the working class, jute is an evocative issue that no political party can overlook. In its prime, the jute belt encompassing North 24 Parganas, Hooghly, and Howrah attracted thousands of workers from Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh. However, a considerable number have since returned, with hundreds of local labourers either choosing low-skill jobs or migrating to other states in pursuit of employment opportunities.Jiten Majhi, who used to be a worker at a closed mill, is all set to move to south India for better opportunities. “Bhai, the situation in Bengal has changed completely. We used to consider this place as one we could live out our futures in simply for the work opportunities it provided, but now there is not much hope,” Jiten says.Jute bags. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar.Price and fallIn January this year, the Bengal and union government, in a tripartite agreement with jute industry representatives and labour unions, revised the minimum daily wage for entry-level labourers from Rs 370 to Rs 485. The revision came after five years but did not fulfil the demands of a minimum monthly wage of Rs 26,000, the inclusion of all workers in the master roll, and the introduction of a system which would only have permanent and special badlee, or transferrable, workers.“The jute industry is controlled by the Union government. The government does not have the willingness to do anything. However, we’re not able to give it the required importance. In my opinion, there should be a workers’ movement against the gross neglect,” says former Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP and trade union leader Taritbaran Topdar.Jute is primarily procured by the Union government for food grain packaging. A government regulation mandates 100% jute bag usage for food grains and 20% for sugar. However, current government orders for jute bags (1.48 lakh bales in October-November) fell short of the previous volumes (3.50 lakh bales).Jute workers at a factory. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar.“Due to the high demand for wheat, farmers are selling through the open market, thus reducing the government’s need for jute bags for food grain storage. That is why despite a bumper crop, farmers are struggling,” says Raghavendra Gupta, chairman of the Indian Jute Mills Association.Synthetic bags have also flooded the market, alleges Ritabrata Banerjee, state president of the All India Trinamool Trade Union Congress.“This effort has been on for decades. Now they are trying to bring in a new variety called poly-jute which is also said to be environmentally friendly. A section of businessmen from western India is exerting influence on the Union government in this regard. The jute industry is not only suffering from the lack of action by the Union government but also from wrong policies,” Banerjee says.The government has set a minimum support price of Rs 5,400 per quintal for jute in the current year. However, reports indicate that farmers are often receiving less, averaging around Rs 4,200 or Rs 4,500 per quintal, with prices falling even lower in some areas. While the number licensed warehouses authorised to buy and store jute stand at 6,000, the number of unlicensed entities engaging in direct jute purchases from warehouses has reportedly risen above 32,000 in the current year.The frustration of the farmers is palpable. Sanuallah, a jute cultivator from Cooch Behar, expressed the challenge of finding fair prices after years of dependence on the crop. “For years, we have poured our sweat and toil into this crop. With current prices, the future of this cultivation remains uncertain,” he says.Samar Biswas, a jute farmer from Karimpur in Nadia district echoes the same sentiment. “Delhi’s orders have been slashed, so mill owners are now forcing us to sell our produce at Rs 2,500 or face dire consequences.” Biswas voted for BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha and the 2021 assembly elections, but the issue of fair prices resonates across political allegiances. “While we may remain loyal to Modi ji, loyalty cannot sustain empty stomachs,” he says.
