All that glitters is......

In a dark and dingy room of a Jhuggi (hut) in Farukhabad, Nada is busy with her needle. She has to finish doing Zardozi work on the lehenga (long Skirt) by tomorrow. She has been working on it for the last fifteen days - twelve hours a day. Finally it is going to be over. It looks exquisite. But her eyes strain, her head aches and her back is killing her. She is proud of her handiwork. Why, she is could be a master Zardoz ! And she is only fourteen.

Aslam is sitting next to Nada, working on the wooden Zardozi frame that occupies almost all the space in the jhuggi. He too, is busy with his needle. He does not know whether he enjoys it or not, he never thought about it. All he knows is that his first recollections of the world had a wooden frame, needle work and Zardozi it And so he naturally learnt it. He has been doing it for a year now and already he is quite good at it. He is six.

Zardozi is a traditional and very intricate needle work for which Farukhabad is now known, not only in India but also in the Arab countries, U.K., U.S.A. and many European countries. Intricately hand embroidered silk, velvet and satin dresses with gold and silver threads, beads and sequens - this is Zardozi - a glorious art-form since the golden age of the mughals.

The shopkeeper, who market the finished product, is usually the designers as well s the trainer. The raw material such as the sequens and beads are collected from Delhi and the silk and satin from Surat in Gujarat. The shopkeeper then assigns the work to the Zardoz who may take the work home and do it with the help of his family or work at the shop with other artisans. They are paid an average of Rs. 500 per piece, coming to an average of Rs. 8 to 10 per person per day. The same lehenga set is sold for at least Rs. 4000 to 5000 by the shopkeeper. In the big cities like Delhi and Bombay a lehenga set can range anything from Rs. 8,000 to as much as Rs. 20,,,. And when sold in the Arab counties it may fetch double the price. And this is where it all comes from - a small backward constituency in U.P. - Farukhabad.

Zardozi work has been going on in Farukhabad for decades now. In the market in Lalbagh village, one can find attractive Zardozi showrooms. These shops are also the working factories for Zardozi. In the shops and factories one can see only the men workers. And even here, one can see the physical hardship of ten to fifteen hours of continuous, non-stop, eye straining work. The shopkeeper on questioning reluctantly agrees that by the age of forty the eyes to get "affected". But on further questioning a Zardoz reveals that by the age of 24 they suffer severe eye problems. And one visit to the dwellings of the Zardoz explains why!

A major portion of the Zardozi workers are women and children. The shopkeepers prefer to tap young children to do the work because of their nimble fingers. An average child in the Zardozi profession starts at the age of six. Children and women work at home which is usually a poorly lit jhuggi. In the zardoz colony, one finds the same unsanitary, poverty-ridden conditions that are typical of a slum. The other common feature in all these houses being the wooden frame on which women and children can be seen working. It takes a group of four to six skilled workers upto fifteen days to do a lehenga set. They work for ten to fifteen hours per day. Younger children may take upto twenty days to finish the same work.

The occupational hazards of the job are numerous. Apart from the eyes that suffer the severest damage, backaches and leg aches from long hours of sitting in bent down position are common complaints. These health hazards are compounded by poor sanitation and malnutrition. Malaria is common in the area. Most Zardozi artists ignore these problems till they become chronic and severe.

The absence of proper medical facilities, lack of education, exploitation by middlemen - the situation is frighteningly the same everywhere. What is perhaps different is the noticeable absence of any kind of organization or union, issues like minimum wages or better working conditions and health hazards never get addressed. Needless to say, the women and the children have to bear the brunt of the problems - their economic and social status being zero.

Social taboos prevent the women from even stepping out of the house - thus closing all other avenues of income generation. While the male child is in some cases sent to the local Madras (school) the girl child is deprived of any opportunity to be educated. The girls born in the Zardoz families are expected to do all the household chores, look after the younger children and also contribute to the Zardozi work. And when they grow up they are married into another Zardoz family only to spend their entire lives as unpaid labourers.

There is a need for NGO’s and voluntary organizations to step in and introduce various income generation schemes for women. Other aspects like health, sanitation, education and family planning need to be introduced. An alternative marketing outlet needs to be created for these Zardoz families who in the absence of any such outlet have no choice but to turn to the same middlemen-cum-shopkeepers who exploit them.

But in the meantime more and more children like Aslam and Nadga get initiated into the work to loose their health and childhood to it.

by Vismita Gupta

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