The inner world of bidi workers

By Aloka Kujur, Ranchi

Bela bibi lives in a ramshackle mud-house in Kismatkadamsar village, district Pakud in Jharkhand.  Only 22 years old, when she first entered this house as a bride, Bela did not at the time know how to make ‘bidis’, nor was she at all familiar with what goes into this rather innocuous looking item.  Her lack of skill in this activity was anathema in a household where the source of livelihood was’ bidi making’ a cottage industry which spread out impressively across the region.  It was the economic foundation of the household.

Her status as ‘uninitiated’ into the bidi trade did not remain for long though.  She was quickly brought to speed by her mother-in-law grooming her in different aspects of the trade.   Soon Bela picked up and her fingers were flying.   So it was for hundreds of households in this village, largely Muslim families. Hasiba bibi, Kharijun bibi, Shahida bibi, Shayara bibi all came into their hushand’s home, learnt the trade and today full fledged workers in the bidi industry, contributing to their family income.  This is something they could easily do while attending to their other domestic tasks and earn an income sitting at home. Indeed, it was figuratively speaking; the ‘bidi’ that was lighting the ‘chulha’ (cooking stove) in many homes.  The hearth fires were kept burning through ‘bidi making’. 

What is interesting is that around the village, across the region, other avenues of earning a wage have opened up yet Kismatkadamsar remains cocooned in its traditional occupation. It is almost that the women do not want to venture out to explore their options.  Quizzing Bela bibi on this, she says, “We do not venture out of our homes. Our culture does not allow that.  We are aware of new opportunities to earn but for that we will need to step out of the house.”  Talking to her it becomes increasingly clear that it is a combination of factors that keeps women like Bela in their homes, tied to the trade. The all-subsuming poverty that young women like Bela grew up in deprived them of an education.  Thus they needed to opt for a trade, a skill that did not require the education, even the rudiments of it.  Then there is the social stigma against women moving out of their homes to work.  All of this comes together for numerous Muslim women in Kismatkadamsar village. It is like a collective consciousness, which keeps women at home, rolling bidis. 

However, the sad truth about this trade invariably makes itself apparent in the later years of these women. The close proximity to tobacco, inhalation of its fine dust, for years and years takes its toll and catches up with these women at a time, when their natural buoyancy and youthful energy is on a decline. They are plagued with various illnesses emanating from their physical connection with bidi ingredients. It is ironical that the very activity that these women undertake to improve their lives, in a sense destroys it. 

It actually has a domino effect.  The trade gets invariably passed onto the children who instead of going to school prioritise helping their mothers in the bidi making.  It almost exists as an unwritten law affecting lives of the Gen-Next.  The trade has thus entrenched itself into the lives of the community, partly due to their poverty and lack of income-generation alternatives but equally due to the social pressures that prevent people from breaking out of the mould, the social conditioning that surrounds it. They remain, generation after generation, bound by the same reasoning, the same need for an income and circumspect by societal norms and economic considerations.

Charkha Features