Ten bricks are one tikli (a plastic token that is used to count bricks head load by labourers) and 1,000 bricks are 100 tiklis. After submitting hundred tiklis to the supervisor (locally known as Munsi) of the brick kiln site at the end of the day, we get only Rs 100,” says 15- year-old Kabita Gouda, who hails from Kanakot village in Nabarangpur district.
Kabita has come with her parents to work in a brick kiln factory on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar. She narrates, “Every day we head load minimum 1,000 bricks to furnace (chimney) for fire and get a meagre amount Rs 100. Sometimes, we head load 500 more bricks to get extra Rs 50.”
Kabita’s parents have taken loan from the money lender at the village and to refund the money, the entire family is now engaged here at the brick kiln factory. Every year during this season her family along with other villagers goes to work at different brick kiln factories in and outside the State.
Young girls like Kabita and others join them as head loader to support the family financially. In brick kilns, there are hundreds of adolescent girls engaged as head loaders (locally known as Buhali) to support their family financially. These adolescent young girls engaged in head loading bricks to the furnace, also break coal, besides do the household chores and sometimes, even take care of their siblings.
latika Gouda, another adolescent, shares, “This work is very difficult and painful. The weight of one brick is around 5kg and every day we head load nearly 5000kg of bricks and sometimes it exceeds.”
She adds, “Not only this, we also extend hand in the household work”. In brick kilns, when parents migrate children accompany their parents, but adolescent girls are more preferred because they will be extra hand at factory work and also do the domestic work too.
“We have no agriculture land at our village to feed. So, we migrate to work at brick kiln factories. Kabita is the eldest among other siblings and she has been doing this head loader work for the last three years,” says her mother Gouri Gauda. Kabita studied till class 5th at village school, but after her grandmother’s death, the family felt it would be unsafe to leave the growing daughter at village alone for her studies. She also asks, “You tell us where we will leave her. She was interested to continue her studies but we also need another hand to join us”.
These adolescent join their parents to do different jobs at brick kilns- head load bricks, dry them under sun in lines, breaking coals, taking care of siblings and helping mother in cooking. Their work start from the wee hours, after washing dishes they immediately rush to take bath near the tube well adjacent to their small colony erected for a few months. There is only one tube well on which a total 50 families depend for bathing, drinking and cooking. So, when women and adolescent girls finish their early chores, men and children take bath.
“No one understands what we go through during menstruation days. We hardly get privacy for bathing and cleaning,” says latika, another adolescent.
Due to poverty and lack of livelihood opportunity in their villages, people in the western part of the State migrate to cities and neighbouring States to work in brick kilns. They take loan from money lenders and to repay the money through middlemen they get engagements at kiln sites. These families as units (consists of father, mother and one child or more) work for nearly nine to ten months. Even though adolescent girls work in both worksites and household chores, they get less food to eat.
“At home, in the food distribution while male members of the family eat rice with vegetable, women and young girls survive with water rice and locally made pickle. This badly affects the health condition of adolescents and you will find most of the adolescents are anemic,” explains Saroj Kumar Barik, Programme officer, MiRC, Aide et Action (the organisation working on migration issues in four states including Odisha.
Another grey side of these kilns is that as the units get work and money lenders give advance to the families, middle men or agents lure fathers to split big families into small units, by getting married their young girls at an early age. So, one can find there are many young girls married at an early age working in kilns. Once girls meet puberty, parents start searching groom for them and after 1-2 years, they marry them off.
“In these migration prone districts, marriage is a medium of formation of another unit. One separate unit means it would help them to lend more money from money lenders. Young girls here seasoned in such ways that they know before marriage they work for father and after marriage they do it for husband,” says Sanjaya Mishra, an activist works in Bolangir district on migration issue.
Usha Singh, a thin and highly anemic young mother, in her early 20s, gave birth to her second child recently. You ask her about her age she will give you a blank look. “I don’t know; maybe I am between 27 and 28 year-old,” she says. The ASHA who had come to immunize pregnant women and infants tried to find out her actual age. She asks her first menstruation period and then counts accordingly, and later reveals, “I was 15 when got married and at the age of 16, I gave birth to the first child and now at 22, I gave birth to the second one.”
This is not the one case. Many adolescents and their parents do not have any idea of their children’s exact age. Usha says, “We are landless; so every year we go to work at different kilns as a migrant worker. Before marriage I used to accompany my parents and after marriage joined my husband”.
Activist Sanjaya shares, “We try to stop their early marriage by counseling their parents in regular intervals. Because, it is linked with money lending, sometimes they do not agree with it. We convince them they can marry their daughters off only when they would turn 18.”
Among others, Sumati, another adolescent girl, who has come to help her parents in a kiln site, says, “I have not studied after class 5th, and my parents said they need another hand to help them”. She laments, “But I will not do this with my children. I will rather enroll their name in residential schools or seasonal hostels.”
look at eyes of any adolescent girl and you will find them full of dreams, but hardly do they materialise.