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Excerpts from TOBACCO TOILERS; INDIAN WOMEN WORK LONG HOURS MAKING CIGARETTES

By Miriam Jordan of the Wall Street Journal in Chicago Tribune [09/29/99]

Surekha Suram sits on the floor of her one-room shack, rolling a reddish-brown leaf filled with tobacco flakes and then tying one end with a thread. On a good day she makes about 1,000 of these mini-cigarettes, or bidis, earning about 80 cents.

Smoking bidis has become a hot fad among young American hipsters. Exports to the U.S. of the cheap, fruit-flavored cigarettes (pronounced "beedees") have doubled in the past year. Behind the trend is a global supply line that starts half a world away, in impoverished homes in rural India where underpaid women labor long hours to keep the goods flowing.

Since the turn of the century, when Indians began smoking handmade cigarettes in large numbers, illiterate women have eked out an existence much as Suram does today. Nowadays, bidi-making employs about 5 million Indian women, making it second only to farming. It is often carried out under exploitative conditions, and the cigarettes may pose health risks for the rollers as well as the smokers.

Bidi manufacturers say they are performing a national service by providing work for the women.

Labor activists accuse manufacturers of keeping wages low and turning a blind eye to exploitation. Since most rollers work at home, it is tough to enforce worker-protection laws or prevent child labor.

Though there is no proof that rolling causes respiratory diseases, the incidence of tuberculosis and bronchial asthma among bidi rollers is higher than that among the general population, according to research by the Factory Advisory Services and Labor Institute in Bombay, a unit of the Labor Ministry. Suram and her colleagues in this western Indian town complain of back strain and neckaches, and they cough from the dust they inhale.

The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says bidis are more harmful than regular cigarettes because they contain at least three times more tar and nicotine. Some U.S. lawmakers are concerned that bidis are being sold illegally to minors.

Sable Waghire pays its 60,000 women rollers, including Suram, about 80 cents per 1,000 bidis, according to co-owner Sanjay Sable. That wage is stipulated by Maharashtra, a relatively prosperous state where he operates.

It's twice as much as some competitors in states with lower minimum wages or more lenient supervision, Sable says. He also contributes to pension and welfare plans for his workers, a federal-government requirement fulfilled by fewer than half of India's bidi employers, according to the union.

Twice in the past three years, Sable and other manufacturers in Maharashtra have closed their operations to protest a state order to raise wages. The government backed down both times. "The bidi sector offers work to such a large number of people," says S.K. Das, director general of the Labor Ministry. "We have to make sure it keeps going."

For rollers, much of the trouble is caused by middlemen, who are contracted by big firms to keep track of the far-flung labor pool. Bidi rollers and human-rights groups say middlemen sometimes dodge the minimum wage, paying as little as 30 cents a day. Another ploy is to undersupply tobacco, leaves or thread and then make deductions for shortfalls in production.

What's more, as much as one-fifth of a roller's daily production is typically rejected as defective, with the value cut from the worker's wages.

Suram and some colleagues recently took to the streets to protest the poor quality of leaves they receive, to no avail. All told, women often end up earning "half their entitlement," says a 1999 report prepared by the International Labor Organization.

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