WHO CARES FOR WORKERS INSIDE DARK INDIAN FACTORIES?

Small and medium manufacturing establishments offer little physical or social security to their teeming workforce. They rarely followed the welfare provisions of old laws. With new labour codes in place, there is a mismatch between the government's ambition to make India a manufacturing hub and the material condition of its workers

- Rajat Mishra

UNDERREPORTED ACCIDENTS. Government data shows a low number of fatal accidents even in industralised states, even as activists dispute the veracity of this data.

Rajkumar, 29, belongs to the Basti district of Uttar Pradesh. He works with Meher Auto Parts Industries situated in the Pawar Vasti area of Pune. He shudders in fear when he recalls December 11, 2022, the day on which he lost three fingers while working in the factory. "It was 8 am. I was sitting on a supply line. Suddenly, my hand came under a power press machine and I lost three fingers. There were no sensors for the pressing machines, otherwise this tragedy could have been averted," he says. Rajkumar is not the only one who has met with such an accident at the worksite.

Ramesh Singh,* 36, has been working in Pune's auto sector since 2016. His hand came under power press machine on August 20, 2022. "None of the sensors was operational. I lost four fingers of a hand in the accident," Singh recalls. He grumbles about inadequate labour-safety standards being followed in small and medium enterprises in various parts of the country.

These two industrial accidents point to a darker side of informal factories mushrooming in India.