India: women beedi rollers seek new ways of earning a living - Reports from: Asia and Pacific - reprinted from'THE WORLD OF WORK', THE MAGAZINE OF THE ILO - Reprint

WIN News, Summer, 2003

FROM 'THE WORLD OF WORK', THE MAGAZINE OF THE ILO fax: 4122/799-8577 INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION (ILO) DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION CH-1211 Geneva 22, SWITZERLAND; website: www.ilo.org/communication

"Rolling beedis, an indigenous, hand-made cigarette, has provided employment for millions of Indians--most of them women--over the centuries. Now, the anti-tobacco movement is cutting demand--and the process threatening their economic health.

Kiran Mehra-Kerpelman visited two beedi-rolling villages in Mangalore, South India, where the International Labor Organization (ILO)is offering these impoverished women new and better ways of earning a living ... 'I've been rolling beedis for years, but now I have little work,' says Jalaja during the meeting of a beedi workers' self-help group held recently in a south Indian village. 'The government has banned tobacco smoking in public places' ...

The women have gathered here to discuss the challenges posed by an increasingly anti-tobacco movement. While declines in smoking are a way to improve public health, the women rolling the little brown tendu leaves into slim cigarettes and tying them with filaments of bright red cotton thread worry that they are losing their only work.

Once a livelihood for some 4.5 million rollers--90 percent of them women--the little cigarette's decline is posing big problems for them. Most are illiterate, in poor health and socially marginalized. They have no assets of any kind. 'Over the last years their work has been by half,' says Arun Kumar, the National Coordinator of a new ILO project established here to help beedi rollers find other jobs.

In fact, unions of beedi workers are eager to learn other ways of earning a living ... In response, the ILO Area Office for India, together with the Organization's Gender Promotion Programme and the Government of the Netherlands, has launched a new programme to promote other work for women workers in the beedi industry ...

BEEDI HAZARDS, ILO SOLUTIONS

Still, loss of income isn't the only problem faced by beedi rollers. Although most of the women don't smoke, working conditions threaten both their physical and economic well-being. Few of the illiterate women are aware of their legal rights as workers ... As home-based workers, they are often short-changed by arbitrary rejection ... Their health is also threatened: inhaling tobacco dust can cause as many problems as smoking ...

So, it's an uphill battle for the mostly women workers who are jobless or see a significant reduction in earnings. With no alternative employment or income opportunities and no access to credit for self-employment ventures, many communities fear loss of livelihood.

The ILO programme works in cooperation with trade unions, employers' organizations, the Labour Ministry, local authorities and community organizations, as well as with the women directly. One of the first activities of the programme was to organize self-help groups, allowing the women to meet to discuss problems and collectively seek solutions.

INDIA

They are organizing workshops to assess their opportunities and resources at a local level. Working from home isolates women from the rest of the working world. Through group meetings, they receive basic education, become aware of their legal rights and find out how to effectively claim these rights. They are also taught alternative skills, including entrepreneurship development, health, and family and child welfare.

To show ideas for self-employment, the ILO project supports so-called 'exposure visits' to income-generating activities in other areas ... Thanks to an exposure visit, Jalaja is now thinking of starting her own laundry business in an area where there is no such facility ... Aside from that, she may also find a patch of land using micro-credit facilitated by the ILO project and grow vegetables to sell in a nearby market.

The programme works with established local organizations to provide training and other support services to the women. To enhance the capacity of these organizations, the ILO is encouraging networking, helping them strengthen their institutional structures, and improve their training and awareness-raising materials.

Providing technical assistance to local grassroots organizations means that the ILO builds capacity and leaves behind sustainable activities, after the programme comes to an end ... With the cooperation of a local NGO, semi-literate women in Ulal Village were trained in alternative trades, such as paper recycling and making paper products, farming of herbal and medicinal plants, bee-keeping, food processing, vegetable selling and more.... Sustainable and socially empowering interventions need to focus on livelihoods but also on improving literacy health, rights awareness, family and child welfare ..."