In Kolkata, alongside poll campaign, a parallel drive on for women workers

Alongside the election campaign, a parallel month-long poster campaign is going on in Kolkata to bring to light the unfair working conditions and salary that women labourers are usually subjected to.

Alongside the election campaign, a parallel month-long poster campaign is going on in Kolkata to bring to light the unfair working conditions and salary that women labourers are usually subjected to.

It is essentially a social media drive - that began on May 1 and will go on till May 31 - designed, according to the organisers, with the aim of bringing women labourer’s issues in public attention and help start a discourse on how their rights and demands can be met.

Called Nari Divas Udjapon Mancha (NDUM), it is a collaboration of three organisations: Anjali Mental Health Rights Organization, Azad Foundation, and South Asian Women in Media (SAWM) India. They came together after many participants at a Women’s Day event in Kolkata on March 30 - including workers at farms, tea gardens, jute mills, brick kilns, construction sites, prawn-seed collectors, ragpickers, and cab drivers - narrated heart-rending stories about their working conditions.  

“One of the women had turned into a ragpicker because the jute mill where she worked as a contract labourer did not have a creche. Her mother-in-law worked as a maid and there was no one to take care of her small children. So she got into rag picking for a couple of hours a day,” Ratnaboli Ray of Anjali Mental Health Rights Organisation told The Hindu.

“Another woman, working in a tea garden, said that they had to pick 24kg of tea per day or else their wages got deducted. We heard many such stories. That’s when we decided to organise campaigns to get public attention to working women’s issues, particularly the needs and rights of women labour at the grassroots,” Ms. Ray said.

The posters, designed by Metricfeed, are simple and have an old world feel about them, and all the facts and figures quoted are based on statements made by participants at the March 30 meeting and on data from reliable sources.

The response, according to the organisers, is quite overwhelming. The posters are being shared widely, particularly by women’s groups, labour rights’ groups, academics. There are sarcastic and negative comments as well, questioning the authenticity of data and their motive, but largely the reaction is positive.