Exploring the concept of belonging among migrant garment workers.
Every year, thousands of aspiring young men and women in India migrate from rural to urban areas in the hopes of turning their lives around.The bustling garment industry in Bangalore — a city in Karnataka, India — is one such popular destination. These young adults move out of their hometowns primarily due to the lack of opportunities for non-farm paid work, in the hopes of better prospects in the city or a promise of higher wages.
The COVID-19 pandemic and it’s subsequent lockdown has brought attention to the plight of migrant workers in cities and the abysmal support systems in place, such as the lack of inclusive social protection and policies that ensure job security. The pandemic-induced circumstance has limited ongoing conversations to the loss of livelihood. But there is little understanding of the informational, psychological and social gap faced by migrant workers in a new city.
Not knowing the local language can be tough at best and traumatizing at worst. This not only makes it difficult for them to understand what their supervisors expect of them at work, but also limits their interaction with people outside of work. The alienation felt in a new city, both at individual and social level, further adds to the causes for the high attrition in companies that employ migrant workers.
In this piece, we explore the story of Sarita, a persona created by the authors based on the multiple interviews we conducted with migrant workers from our partner, Shahi Exports, factory; someone who left her remote village in Cuttack — a district in the state of Odisha — to work at a garment factory in Bangalore, at the age of 20.
Squeals of laughter can be heard from room 214 at the hostel, as Sarita mimics the floor supervisor’s gait. She pauses and steps into the corridor to answer the call from her mother. Did she have her dinner today? And was her brother able to withdraw cash from the bank? Sarita probes, concerned.
As the youngest of five sisters (having one younger brother), Sarita was compelled to migrate by circumstance — to provide for her family. In many parts of India, a household predominantly consisting of daughters is still considered a liability, especially in the rural and poorer sections of society. Getting a daughter married is an expensive affair — not only does the ceremony cost a lot of money, there are additional expenses in the form of jewels and gifts to be offered by the bride’s family. In Sarita’s case too, getting her four older sisters married made quite a dent in the family’s meager savings. To make matters worse, her father passed away around the same time, leaving them with no regular means of income. The family, though dependent on Sarita — the only able earning member — could not make sense of how her migrating to another city will make their lives any better.
It is not uncommon for families to turn down job offers that require their daughters to move 1,500 km away from home. ‘Log kya kahenge?’ (What would others say) is one such fear that prevents them from letting their daughters of marriageable age move out. If Sarita’s father were still around, he too would have refused to let her take up a job, despite their desperate need for additional income. But with a peek into what the future held for her, through the looking glasses of her sisters, Sarita had her mind made up. Though shy and timid, Sarita tackled the naysayers head on. “Let them say what they want, they don’t understand our situation”, she had argued. She had received unconditional support from her younger brother, Rameshwar, who found a job for her through a local mobilizer (who recruits candidates for the garment factory training center), and advocated for their family to let her go. While Rameshwar stayed back to care for their aged mother, Sarita moved to Bhubaneswar — the very first city she had ever visited — 3 hours away from home, by train.
This was in 2012. Her brother and mother often telephoned the mobilizer who had recruited Sarita, to make sure that she was doing well. Sarita herself did not own a mobile phone back then.
Sarita and 74 other girls stayed at a hostel in Bhubaneswar while they trained for a role they would take up in Bangalore after 3 months. They learned to sew, use a computer and honed their soft skills. Sarita breezed through this training having had some experience with tailoring before, but remained cautious to avoid getting into any ‘trouble’ and didn’t venture out to explore the vast city. Not many Indians in 2012 owned a smartphone with GPS to make navigation easier, especially in new cities. Interestingly, our interviews with rural migrant women working in the cities show us that this attitude of steering clear of ‘trouble’ and stepping out only to get ‘zaroori saman (vital supplies)’ remains prevalent among migrant workers even today.
On arriving at the railway station in Bangalore, after two days of laughter-filled travel, Sarita and her friends felt more alert than ever, eager to take in all that they could. They boarded the company bus and were shown to their new hostel rooms.
Almost immediately upon arriving, the entire batch realized their biggest hurdle: not only did the group barely understand Kannada (the language primarily spoken in Bangalore, Karnataka) but they also had trouble communicating in Hindi (a common language used pan-India). Over the next few days, Sarita and her batchmates were given a tour of the neighbourhood by senior members of the hostel, whom they called didi (big sisters). In the initial few days, when Sarita used to go shopping, she would point to the fruits or vegetables to ask for their prices. She took in new flavors, as she tried to adjust her palate to the pungent gravies (such as sambar) popular in the city and went on a weekend quest looking for boiled rice (the staple in Odisha), which was eventually found.
After completing a few weeks of on-the-job training, Sarita and friends were slowly absorbed into the garment factory floor’s production line. The girls were intimidated by the bigger and fancier machines that they hadn’t trained with back in Bhubaneswar. The supervisor madam patiently showed them the ropes and helped them untangle the chaos of working in a garment factory.
Despite first impressions, Sarita has come to despise the role of a supervisor over the years. When offered a promotion from ‘operator’ to ‘supervisor’, Sarita turned it down, because to her, more responsibility meant more stress and badgering her fellow workers in the line to keep up the pace — not something she saw herself doing.
Over the years, Sarita has made several companions who have helped her at various stages. At first, her only friends were the girls from her batch. They would cook dinner together and laugh about the ramblings of their stressed-out supervisors. She had bonded with a didi from the hostel who went on to quit her job when she got married. This was the case with most of her friends from Bhubaneswar — only seven of the 75 girls from her training batch now remain in Bangalore. Sarita tries to stay in touch with the friends who have left, and learn about the happenings in their lives. “A friend recently had a child,” she giggles as she says this. Another endures an abusive husband. If it were up to her, she would never get married. But she could never tell her family that — she feels that if she did, they wouldn’t be able to relate to her anymore.
Having made many friends and losing them to a variety of circumstances, Sarita finds herself feeling lonely as the years pass. There are many family and financial issues she wishes to talk about with someone, but holds back, because she thinks, “you can only share so much with someone” and “what good does talking about it do?”.
Now, after nine years of living in Bangalore, Sarita understands Kannada and comfortably converses in Hindi. She has grown to love her idli-dosa-sambar breakfasts, a staple of the city. She knows the Kannada names of all the leafy greens. But the Odia (a person from Odisha, India) in her still prevails — she needs her boiled rice. Although Bangalore feels more and more like home, her village in Cuttack doesn’t feel any less than home. She visits Odisha once in six months, and while there, she feels as though she never left. Having lived in Bangalore for a third of her life, she introduces herself as a migrant from Odisha and will continue to do so because, “wahi mera sab kuch hai (that [Odisha] is my all)”.
When asked about future plans, Sarita tells us “Only God knows.” She imagines that she will marry someone from her village, from the same caste, and move back to Odisha. For now, Bangalore is a means to feed and clothe her family. Bangalore is what kept them alive during the pandemic. Bangalore is where she lives, but where she isn’t from. Bangalore is where her friends are but where her family isn’t; she might never have a permanent address here.
Many migrant workers who move across the country face this very same perplexity. They establish a sense of belonging to the place they migrate to, but the place they migrate to never truly belongs to them.
Sarita is one of the many migrants whose journey from a ‘source’ to a ‘destination’ city and their life therein has inspired the framework of the Migration Support Center (MSC) we are designing — a space for those who come to a new city with hopes of staying. Good Business Lab is collaborating with Shahi Exports Pvt Ltd and H&M to establish a model MSC in Bangalore in order to fill the informational, social and psychological gap faced by migrant workers in a new city. To this effect, we are undertaking a human-centered, service design approach to learn what assistance the migrants seek, and how best to provide it.