ஒடுக்கப்பட்ட
மக்களின் கலைகளை கால நெடுகிலும் தீண்டதகாத கலைகளாக
புறக்கணிக்கப்படுகிறது.அதிலும் நமக்கு தெரிவதெல்லாம் தப்பட்டம்தான் ,இன்று
சினிமாவிலும் பார்க்கிறோம் ,ஆனால் அருந்ததியர் மக்களின் கலைகள்
மறைக்கப்பட்டு உள்ளது ,அதில் கட்வுமத்ட்டம் என்பது அருந்ததியர் கோவில்
திருவிழாக்களில்,எலவு வீடுகளில் அடித்து ஆடுவது வழக்கம் ,இது தவிலுக்கு
முந்தின வடிவம் ,இதை பற்றிய ஆய்வுகள் இல்லை.மேற்கு மண்டலத்தில் வாழும்
அருந்ததியர்கள் இதை வாசிக்கிறார்கள்.
READ working with Arunthathiyar (Dalit)
children education and Psychosocial care ,life skill education ,Student
enrichment programme with collaboration with NIMHANS(National institute
of mental health Nero science ) Psyhotric social work department ,READ
published book on our experience ,This book received by Dr.Sekar
(NIMHANS) ,Mr.William (Country Director) EveryChild India
Dear Friends ,My continues message Erode
district has 353 spinning mills ,among 172 spinning has new bonded
labour system ,37000 young girls are new bonded under sumangali thittam
60% are Dalit girls ,14th Oct 2013 ,Erode dist ,Sathyamangalam, PV .Spining
mill 47 sumangali /Bonded girls rescued ,They are from Assam
,Chatieshkar and Tamilnadu
Erode District has 353 spinning mills ,there
are 37000 young girls are under sumangali scheme ,Mills not pay minimum
wage per day 8 hours Rs.224,There is no proper PF,ESI and bonus .It is
like jail and it is modern slavery ,Therefore TPF@READ conducted Erode
dit level consulataion for this issue there are 65 participants from
different civil societies and trade unions participated this consulation on 12th oct 2013 at Gobi ,Erode.dt
Punitha was a Dalit gril ,She was rapped and murder at Sathyamangalam,Erode Dt.Tamilnadu ,She was 14 years old Her father is bonded labour working in agricultural farm ,But now he is leaved from farm .Parents are illiterate .She has younger sister ,2008 August 10th .She went to school ,She was late ,School teacher send back to her home ,On the way in agricultural farm ,so called upper caste youth ,rapped and murder to Punitha ...Therefore READ intervention ,our own capacity .Also we taken documentary film with support of Mr.Joe
Ms.Tamilselvi is a 19yeras girl ,Her father is
scavenger ,working at Puliyampatti municipality ,He is working last 16
years .She did marriage ,But her husband was died .Due to family
situation she joined spinning mill under sumangali thittam
.Her working condition is so bad ,She not able to continue .Last month
READ team ,we met her family ,We given counseling to her parents
.Finaly she came out mill .Today READ supported her education ,she
joined nursing course .Now she is now happy .Friends you can make change
to many Tamilselvi lifes ...Please contact to READ AND GIVE YOUR
SUPPORT AND DONATION ....Please visit our website ..www.readindia.org.in
Dear Friends !!!
READ started small vocational training centre on 2nd Sept 2013 ,At
Erode Dist for scavengers family and sumangali victims .READ provide
computer skill,Tailoring,Garment making ,hand work and other ...This
centre was opened by Mr.A.Jayakumar ,and Mr.Parthasarathy .
READ conducting every year motivation programme for Dalit(Arunthathiyar) 10th @12th class passed students .
This is the good experience for us motivation ,facilitation and guidance for higher studies .We believe education will break the caste discrimination and caste exploitation.
Please give your support and solidarity and hand for most marginalized students .
Date :30th June 2013 ,PV .Hotel ,Sathyamangalam,Erode District
Contact :9842090035
Workers in the textile mills and garment factories in Tamil
Nadu, South India, suffer exploitative working conditions. In ‘Maid in
India’, a report by SOMO and ICN it is documented that more than 100,000
girls – possibly up to 300,000 – work under employment schemes, often
referred to as Sumangali, that amount to bonded labour. Workers make
long hours, including forced overtime, under unhealthy conditions. Wages
in the spinning mills are far below the legal minimum. Sumangali
Thittam (wedding scheme) is when young girls are recruited with the
promise of a large payout (for their dowry) at the end of 3-5 years;
however, such payouts are often empty promises. Young Dalit girls are
most vulnerable – with more than 60% of the workers recruited under this
scheme being Dalit
READ had research study on 2010 with 250 samples says” 28% were
below the age of 14 and remaining was below 18 years. Besides 44% of
the respondents’ parents were engaged as agriculture coolie and all the
families having debt. The Sumangali Scheme workers were suffering from a
number of health issues which so metimestopped them from employment.
The respondents had poor facilities in food (23%), toilet (44%). All
the respondents were forced to work for 12 hours per day. 82% faced
verbal abuse and 5% attained sexual arrestment by co-workers. Only
12-14% of the respondents received bonus and provident fund from this
scheme. The girls were facing numerous problems in the workplace. Those
were all the girls were forced to work, having no rest at working time,
very short time for lunch / tea break. Besides, they faced verbal
abuse (82%), long working hours (86%), over lighting (57%), not allowing
for toilet at work time (48%), over speed machinery (44%).
Workers are housed in restricted access sites in poor conditions, are
paid low wages, from which housing and food costs are deducted. Girls
in the age group of 12-18 are most vulnerable to be recruited. Some of
the issues affecting the workers include forced labour, child labour,
long working days, mandatory overtime, caste discrimination and unsafe
working conditions are common.
You can sign my petition by clicking here.
Thanks!
Karuppu Samy
SATHYAMANGALAM, India—A landless female laborer from a
village in Tamil Nadu, India, has become the first woman in her
marginalized community to run for presidency of her local governing
body.
Kalamani, 37, won only threats from upper-caste landowners last year
when she ran for president of the General Panchayat (a local governing
body). She did not win in the polls, but she did inspire others in her
community.
Kalamani only goes by one name, as surnames denote caste and thus
make people vulnerable to discrimination. She belongs to the
Arundhatiyaar community, the lowest among the lowest castes in Tamil
Nadu State, known as the Untouchable caste. The age-old social practice
of untouchability holds that the upper-castes should not touch any
Arundhatiyaar.
In her village of Kondamathanoor, huts and tiny houses line both
sides of a narrow mud lane. Dogs and hens roam. A scantily clad old man
lies on a jute-knit cot. No upper-caste person ventures down the lanes
of this Arundhatiyaar village.
Kalamani’s hut smells of dried fish. Her dinner cooks over a kerosene stove in the corner and her friendly dog hangs about.
“I got married at the age of 17 years. At that time, my husband
worked as a bonded laborer in the fields of upper-caste landlords. I
worked as an agricultural daily wager and earned 30 rupees ($0.54) a
day.”
Meager Campaign Funds
Today, Kalamani does the same work but earns 200 rupees ($4) a day.
Wages have increased in the past two decades, but so have expenses. She
had no money to campaign in the elections; “I borrowed 50,000 rupees
($893) from my relatives and the women’s federation group,” she said.
In many villages of India, local politics are still controlled to a
great extent by the wealthy landlords who are also the employers for
most of the lower caste, landless laborers like Kalamani. Running in
elections against them is taking a great risk.
“I came to this village 20 years ago to live with my husband after we
were married. Since then, I have never seen anyone from here running
for the Panchayat president’s election—everyone is afraid of upper caste
landlords who hold most of the land here.”
When Kalamani ran for elections, she was mocked and threatened.
Kalamani recalled, “They said, ‘Don’t run for president; you can run
for ward councilor [a low-level post in the governing council].’”
Support, Ridicule
Kalamani took strength from 2,500 women of the Sakkiyar Women Society
Federation (SWSF) she leads. The Federation organizes Arundhatiyaar
women in 81 villages for thrift and credit and addresses local women’s
rights issues.
“When I talked with people in my community, they choose not to say
much, but some said they’ll vote for me. The upper caste candidate gave
food, liquor, and 300 rupees to each person of our community in the
village.”
Kalamani won only 85 votes out of the 5,000 polled. The winner got 1,601 votes.
“If I would have won, it would have been good. But I lost and I lost
the money I spent on campaigning. My husband asked me why I ran for
elections and lost so much money.”
Kalamani’s daughter, Annakodi, is a big encouragement for her. She
stands by her mother and understands the amount of courage and
perseverance that goes into her mother’s decisions.
“I’m a first generation school attendee,” Annakodi said. “I became
the first girl in my village to complete school, the first girl to
complete college, and now the first girl to study an M.Sc. [Masters of
Science] course.”
“It would not have been possible without my mother’s support,”
Annakodi said. Kalamani also took a loan from SWSF to support her
daughter’s education.
While sitting down on her floor with her little niece, Kalamani
pesters shy Annakodi to talk in English. “I want to become a social
worker and encourage more girls in my village to educate themselves.
Most of the girls drop out from school after eighth or ninth grades,”
Annakodi said.
Out of six candidates for president of the General Panchayat, Kalamani was the only woman and the only lower caste person.
Kalamani remains hopeful for the next elections. “In 15 wards of the
Panchayat, some villages don’t know me. If I’m able to reach them and
gather their support, and if my own community overcomes its fear of rich
landlords and supports me, I can win.”
READ started 2001 for Arunthathiyar(Dalit) children education ,In our journey ,we have dream for construct community training centre ,Because we want to train our community children,youth and women for community empowerment .
This dream now slowly completing with support of INDP . Therefore 14th April 2013 ,we opened one portion of training centre on Dr.Ambedkar birth day .We are happy and proud to bring the change among society on equality.
READ,INDP,SWSF,VIDIYAL had womens day celebaration on `14th March at Sathyamangalam,Erode dt ,Evening 6Pm to 10 Pm .We had traditional art forms ,such as like Dalit culture specially Arunthathiyar drum beating .
At that time same time from france Mr.Markwill group had music .
Arunthathiyar(Dalit) community farm and resource centre .Please visit us and learn about issue,farming,cooperatives ,organic farming ,green club for children and nurcharsy .Thanks
READ started intervention at Dharmapuri district at Kailayapuram with children and youth and women ,Recently we conducted training for women ,children and youth
READ and our federation organize the training centre and integrated agricultural farms .We called community ,We discussed for constraction .Community will support for work with out labour fee .
Vasandi heard the girls in her village talking: Satellite television
with movies. Air conditioning. Three meals a day. Swimming pools. And
after three years, a bonus of 36,000 rupees (about $650), a sum of money
so huge she could barely picture what it might look like, all those
rupees stacked in a heap.
It could all be hers, if she were lucky enough to work in a local textile mill, the girls said.
They
had heard the news from a recruiter, who was paid 1,500 rupees ($30)
for each new single girl he brought to the mill works, with its unending
hunger for fit bodies to keep the machines running 24 hours a day.
To
Vasandi (who, like many southern Indians, uses only one name) it
sounded splendid. She was 16. Not long before, she had left school after
Grade 7. She was living with her family in a stuffy one-room house in a
rural village.
And so, in May, 2010, her father dropped her at
the gate of JV Spinning Mill outside this small industrial town. She put
her small bag of clothes in the dorm she would share with 320 other
women, mostly Dalits like herself, from the “untouchable” bottom of the
Hindu caste system.
Within days, she had been trained to run
skeins of cotton thread on to a giant spindle, and to clean cotton
fibers off the machine continuously to keep it from jamming. Her ears
grew accustomed to the constant thunderous clatter in the mill, and she
got used to waking at dusk for a night shift.
She was working at
one of the hundreds of mills and dye operations and garment factories
that dot the plains of western Tamil Nadu, spinning cotton for textile
factories that supply the biggest European and North American retail
chains, including many brands people found this week under their
Christmas trees.
H&M, Abercrombie and Fitch, and Marks and Spencer have all sourced materials from this area over the past few years.
There
were indeed movies on the dormitory TV, but she was usually too tired
after a 12-hour shift to watch them. There was a pool, where she dipped
her feet, but none of the girls knew how to swim.
She was
desperately homesick. She had never been away from her family and
village before, and it would be six months before she was allowed home
for a few days’ visit. And the dormitory warden bolted the door on her
building each night from the outside.
Still, she was earning $50 a
month, with the promise of that bonus dangling a few years in the
future. So she tried to settle in.
Her parents were earning a
couple of dollars a day doing occasional agricultural labour – “coolie
work,” as it is called in English and Tamil around here – on the farm of
a dominant-caste landowner. But often there was no work. And no one
Vasandi knew – other than the mill girls – had ever had a steady, waged
job.
For a barely educated Dalit girl, it could seem a rare
opportunity, marketed as Somangali Thittam, or “the marriage scheme” –
an ostensible social-welfare plan provided by the textile industry, as a
payoff from India’s growing participation in the global economy.
Except for just a few details. ‘Bonus’ or bondage?
It
was, for one thing, illegal. As a child under 18, she was by law
required to be in school. She was also underpaid, earning less than half
even Tamil Nadu’s low minimum wage for apprentice textile workers, 196
rupees ($4) a day. (The mills counter that the lodging and meals they
provide, which are obligatory, represent the balance of the wages.)
What’s
more, unknown to Vasandi, the money for that promised three-year bonus
was being deducted from her own wages – making her, technically, a
bonded labourer, which has been illegal in India since 1976.
Finally,
the bonus was explicitly marketed as being for her dowry – the cash and
jewellery her parents would be expected to give her in-laws at her
marriage. Dowry has been illegal in this country almost as long as
bonded labour. But there is so little enforcement of the law that the
textile mills market the scheme with images of wedding jewellery
designed right into the logo.
Vasandi never found out what that many rupees look like all together.
She left her job this past May, two years after she started: She was
anxious because girls were getting injured or falling ill from overwork
around her. She thought she would be given the portion of her bonus she
had earned – but the warden informed her that in leaving before the full
three years, she would get nothing.
She admits she should have
seen it coming: In her two years at the mill, she had only ever seen six
girls out of some 600 receive their bonuses. Others were injured and
let go or wore out and quit first – almost anyone close to the
three-year mark would be fired for some pretext or another, she says.
That
practice was found to be widespread in an industry audit by the Centre
for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), a Netherlands-based
independent non-profit research organization.
Asha Kowtal, general
secretary of the All-India Dalit Women’s Rights Forum, says the
Somangali schemes are nothing more than the caste system reinvented for
an industrialized economy.
“How many Brahmin girls do you find in
Somangali Thittam? How many Iyengar?” she asks, referring to the
occupation-based groups that are considered to be the top of the Hindu
caste system. “Only untouchable communities are making use of this.
Somebody sitting in Toronto is buying a Banana Republic T-shirt or a Gap
one and not thinking about reinforcing the caste structure and the
patriarchy.” The supply-chain sidestep
The
Somangali Thittam scheme has been in place for about 10 years, says
Karrupu Samy, who runs an organization called Rights, Education and
Development (READ) that advocates for Dalits in bonded labour. In the
past several years, READ has attracted the attention of international
ethical-trade campaigners and thus of major clothing chains.
In a
statement, H&M, for example, says it views the “schemes as
absolutely unacceptable,” but because the mills are only secondary
suppliers, “we do not have direct contractual influence.” So it
pressures its own suppliers to pressure theirs, and lends support to the
ethical-trade groups, the company says.
After 112 garment
workers, most of them young women, died in a blaze in Bangladesh in
November, companies whose clothes were being stitched there, including
Walmart and Sears, said they had no idea that their products were being
made in that factory, which had repeatedly been cited for safety
violations such as locked exits and blocked stairwells.
The
companies said that local middlemen had subcontracted out their work, a
murky system that made the supply chain hard to follow – and which is
equally common in India.
International scrutiny has prompted some
of the mills in Tamil Nadu to make improvements, such as introducing
health insurance, raising the minimum age of employees and increasing
the contact permitted with families.
But India’s textile sector is
so loosely organized – and facing such intense competition from China
and Bangladesh – that mills change their names often to make checks, and
in practice face little scrutiny, SOMO has found in repeated studies.
It
says a majority of the mill workers are still under 18, with as many as
a fifth of them younger than 14. A 2010 investigation by the Tamil Nadu
State Commission for Women estimated that 37,000 young women are
employed in the Somangali scheme, across 900 mills in the state.
The
Globe and Mail conducted lengthy interviews with five young women who
have worked in the mills in the past year under Somangali Thittam; they
told near-identical stories. The JV Spinning Mill and the other
factories involved all refused to answer questions or to admit a
journalist. Of eight other mills contacted, six refused to talk and two
said the scheme had been stopped.
SOMO says some have indeed
stopped it. But READ’s Mr. Samy has a darker reading: “All the
international brands know about Somangali now, so the factories call it
by another name,” he says.
Staff with the Southern Indian Mills
Association also refused to answer questions, but in a recent public
forum on the scheme a director described it as an “opportunity for the
empowerment of women.”
It is true that the mill jobs are about the
only work on offer in this region for young women with limited
education. Female workforce participation remains low, as few jobs are
believed appropriate for women. And the caste system remains deeply
entrenched: Dalit girls are considered for even fewer jobs.
“When I went to work, there was some respect,” says Vasandi. “People said, ‘Okay, these girls are earning money.’”
But
Mr. Samy argues that the mills are preying on his community, and
reinforcing the idea that these factory jobs are the best these girls
can hope for. “Only higher education is going to change things,” he
says.
Mr. Samy himself has a master’s degree in social work, but
he remains a rarity in a caste group where tens of thousands of people
still work in “manual scavenging” – collecting and disposing of human
excrement.
“These companies interrupt the education of these
girls, and exploit them,” he says. “We need work, but not for
under-18-year-olds.” ‘I’m too old to go back to school’
Divya
Naharaj was 14 and just past third grade (with illiterate parents and
teachers who rarely showed up at school, she had struggled to get even
that far) when an agent came to her two-room house in the village of
Mangalapuram to talk to her.
“He told me, ‘Your uncle’s daughter
is working there and you can also go and your family’s problems will be
solved,’” she said. “My parents have only coolie work, so they don’t
earn much, and they have three daughters” – so a hefty dowry bill loomed
on their horizon.
Ms. Naharaj went to the S. M. Mill in Shakti in
January, 2010, learned to operate a knitting loom, and stuck it out for
19 months, working a cycle of four days of night shifts and seven days
of day shifts, with a day off in between. She described her time at the
mill in a grim, flat voice.
When she left to start working, Ms.
Naharaj didn’t imagine she was leaving school forever. “I had the plan
to go back to school after the mill, but I haven’t. I wanted to be a
teacher, but now I’m too old to go back to school and sit with all the
small children.”
Some textile companies offer continuing education
classes to support workers to finish high school, as Ms. Naharaj’s did –
but only after a 10- or 12-hour shift. “I wanted to go to class. But it
was that or sleeping. And I was so tired.” The closest she got to
school was to take magazines and joke books out of the library.
These days she does housework; her two younger sisters go to school and her parents work in the fields until after dark.
Ms.
Kowtal of the Dalit Women’s Rights Forum says the Somongali scheme
perpetuates the idea that a woman’s worth is in her marriage, and that
she is a financial burden to her family. But she isn’t surprised to see
it so openly marketed, because the Tamil Nadu government does it too –
offering four grams of gold and $500 of “marriage assistance” to any
girl who completes high school.
The state’s chief minister,
Jayalalitha, triumphantly introduced the plan a couple of years ago as
part of a spate of measures she claimed would boost the status of women,
openly defying the national dowry ban.
Ms. Kotwal calls this a
classic Indian paradox: The country has excellent laws on paper, but
zero enforcement when it comes to the interests of the poor,
marginalized or out-caste.
One reason the mills like the scheme,
READ’s Mr. Samy says, is that the teenage female workers can all be
classed as apprentices, and thus by law can’t organize into labour
unions.
READ attempts to advocate for them; for example, it is
trying to help Vasandi get her withheld wages. It also tries to give
young women who leave the mills job training – the state government is
supposed to provide them low-interest loans to start small businesses,
but the reality is that most get married when they go home, and do not
do paid work again, except in landlords’ fields.
Vasandi is
learning to stitch clothes, but she is also waiting for a wedding. “My
parents are looking for a boy,” she says, ducking her head shyly.
And her parents will borrow money to pay her dowry – a big pile of rupees.
Dear Friends ..READ ,INDP,SWSF and Vidyal society conducted world cooperative day and food security seminar at Erode Dist,Sathyamangalam 
Drip irrigation 
