Who knows what a Sumangali means? Neither did I. Sumangali in Tamil means an unmarried girl becoming a respectable woman by entering into marriage.
In some parts of India, the bride’s parents have to provide the groom’s family with a dowry (gift of money); they also have to pay for the wedding. If the bride’s family cannot do all of this then she will be treated badly after marriage. If she then get’s married at all because some families will just say no.
One way for families and girls to get around this issue is for them to get into a Sumangali scheme aka ‘marriage assistance system’. Under the Sumangali scheme, poor families are encouraged by brokers to sign their daughters up to work in a garment factory for three years. After the three years the family get money to help pay for the wedding costs and dowry.
Some girls get treated well but for most this ‘scheme’ is like a trap. The girls are seen as the property of the factory or the broker. According to research by the Centre for Education and Communication in India, girls are often forced to work up to 12 hours a day, live in hostels with few facilities and are paid a very low wage.
The worst thing is some factories fire the girls just before they are to complete their contracts so they don’t get the money they were promised at the end.
The money is usually around 30,000 to 50,000 rupees which is between £400-700. The legal minimum wage is 140 rupees. Which means the workers should be receiving 80,000 rupees – not including over time.
One of the reason factories are trapping young women into forced labour like this is because factories can’t produce the volume of clothes that is demanded from shoppers from the developed part of the world. This has created a labour shortage and factories need to keep workers longer, whether they like it or not.
You can change all this, it’s simple. Just find different ways of wearing clothes so we don’t increase demand. If its new clothes you want, pop down to a vintage store or see how you can make something new out of something you already have. There are plenty of ways to do something different. There is currently a huge campaign to get Asian countries to unite against low wages and poor working conditions. It’s called the Asia Floor Wage campaign.
Our clothes don’t have to be made from the hands of trapped and pressured women.
Image Credit- Nishant Lalwani for The Asian Foundation for Philanthropy
What's the alternative for these women? Is this scheme better than the alternative, being sold into a marriage or entering the sex trade? Or is it all just the same?
ReplyDeleteIn a sense it is better than being entered into the sex trade but they're still being exploited no matter where they go or what they do.
ReplyDeleteAbout the increasing demand from the west, that is not the consumers fault, it is simply because people are trying to fit in and stay on trend. Maybe it's the 'trend-setters' i.e. the celebrities who should be targeted about this issue more than the average consumer.
Definitely think celebrities have a lot to do with it, but at the end of the day we don’t have to listen to them. Do we?
ReplyDelete