India is the second-largest producer of clay-fired bricks globally, bricks which are used to build houses and buildings across the country. There are an estimated 250,000-300,000 kilns in India, ranging from small, informal enterprises to large multinational construction and recruitment firms.
Every year, seasonal labourers migrate long distances to undertake physically demanding work in the brick kilns of Uttar Pradesh in Northern India. These workers are predominantly women, many of whom, out of coercion or necessity, take on loans from their employers and enter a cycle of “unpayable debt.” The pressure on each migrant family to produce many thousands of bricks within the productive season is intense. Faced with the inability to pay back their debt, many are left with no choice but to return to the kilns year after year.
More than the money left owing at the end of each season, “unpayable debt” refers to the cycles of socio-economic precarity, violence, humiliation, and unfreedom that these low-wage migrants face despite (and often through) their mobility across local and transnational borders.
“We took advance money of 20000 rupees from the contractor and now we are working here all day and night and paying off the loan… The terms and conditions were that the loan which we took during my illness will be paid off and we will get all the basic amenities which in reality we didn’t get. He told us that we will have a school for our children, a toilet, and a bathroom but neither had we found a school nor a bathroom for ladies. We faced many problems due to that.”
Unpayable debt and seasonal cycles of unfreedom
Despite working in the kilns for up to 8 months, in our study some families fared relatively well, earning enough to build a home in their village. Many others were unable to earn beyond the debt they had to repay the contractor. Without any savings for the year, families end up taking advances again from contractors and are compelled to migrate to the kilns again to repay this debt. As scholars have noted, the freedom of choice to work at the kilns, or to move between different kilns is severely constrained by debt that becomes cyclical, and, effectively, unpayable. During the production season, some workers in our study noted that the frequency of worker movement between their home and the kiln, or even off the kiln site was also restricted, with workers being subject to surveillance and restrictions to make sure they don’t leave the kiln before paying off their ‘advance’.
“… they have a night guard living [next to our accommodations]. If there is any movement then the guard informs them [the kiln owner] regularly. If we go to the market, the owner of the kiln is there or one or two of his people accompany us to observe what we are doing, whether we leave work and go…. they have the fear that we will run away without paying back the money…..” (Interview 43, 2020).
But what is really “unpayable” about this debt?
Around 65% of the entire brick production in India takes place in Northern India, with Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Bihar, and West Bengal being the highest-producing states in the region. According to the state’s Pollution Control Board, there are 19,395 brick kilns in Uttar Pradesh alone.
In Uttar Pradesh and the surrounding northern states, 72% of the workforce migrates to the region to undertake kiln work during the six-month production season. Wages are paid in sums according to the amount of work completed, such as molding 1000 bricks or transporting 1000 green bricks.
In many instances, workers will be paid an advance by the kiln agent which they must then work off as a debt. This debt and credit relation, endemic to casual and migrant workforces throughout the region, leaves workers in the precarious condition of either fulfilling steep production quotas before the season ends or risking returning home with meager wages or an outstanding debt that gets carried through to the following year. High financial precarity also means that workers’ freedom of movement is severely restricted, with many unable to visit home or travel away from the kiln at any point. In this way, the mobility that such work purports to survive is often an illusion.
How do brick kiln operators get around India’s labour regulations?
It is the clandestine nature of the smaller remote kilns and those run by multinational corporate firms that allow labour standards related to social, economic, health, and safety to go unfollowed. Daily life at the kilns consists of 8 to 14 hours of work a day, with only one unpaid rest day every fifteen days. Workers are not entitled to medical benefits or maternity leave, and they are not provided with protective equipment such as gloves or respiratory masks. When rainfall halts brick production (manufacturing is conducted outdoors in uncovered yards), workers are not compensated and often their quotas are not adjusted despite the delays.
Additionally, there is no access to electricity, childcare, or gender-segregated toilets—all of which place additional pressures and vulnerabilities on women living at the kilns. As a result, children are put to work in their early years and domestic work extends the working day long into the night.
“Right now, there’s no electricity. Electricity will come once the kiln owner makes the arrangements. They’ll tie a long electrical wire. In peak winters, working is a bit difficult. We work more when it’s warmer. During fog, you can barely see short distances.“ [Gaura]
Caste and Women in the Construction Industry
The stigmatization of women’s work encompasses various societal and interpersonal mechanisms that consistently undervalue specific types of work performed by women. This includes tasks such as domestic work, brick kiln labor, construction work, entertainment industry jobs, and sex work. The stigma associated with these occupations is deeply rooted in patriarchal norms within families and communities. It operates as a means of social control, particularly affecting women who migrate for employment opportunities. This system of social control creates a parallel structure of policing, distinct from the formal state apparatus. Family, community, and state forces collude to marginalize and victimize women involved in certain types of work, or simply make these stigmatized occupations invisible in society.
Chamar (Dalit) men faced challenges in finding suitable marriage prospects due to their involvement in seasonal labor migration to brick kilns. Approximately 60 percent of Chamar households, including women and children, migrated to brick kilns located in different parts of the district, as well as Punjab and Haryana, for a period of six to eight months each year. During the remaining four to six months, both men and women worked as casual laborers for Jat farmers. It has been observed that Chamar women typically began working in the brick kilns immediately after getting married, while women from other communities engaged in paid work at a later stage in their married lives, as their mobility increased.
Due to the pressures of poverty and caste dynamics, brides from different regions, both nearby and far away, who married Chamar brick-kiln workers also joined their husbands in working at the brick kilns from the very first year of their marriage.
“After making bricks the entire day, it’s tiring to do anything else. And fingers start paining as well. Continuous brick-making is exhausting. Waist starts hurting. One keeps on staring at the mud……wondering when will this get over.” [Keshkali]
The number of female migrants working in brick kilns is much higher than male migrants, and this trend has remained constant. According to NSS 2007-08, 77.6% of female migrants in the sector moved due to marriage. It is common to see groups of women carrying heavy loads of bricks weighing up to 90 pounds on their heads at construction sites in India. However, opportunities for women in India to acquire skills in higher-paying trades such as carpentry, masonry, plumbing, and electrician training, which are typically male-dominated, are rare.
“The OBCs (other backward class) always came here. Now the Dalit communities have also started migrating to kilns. No other caste comes. When we return to our villages from the kiln, the upper caste men say, “look the rascal brick-makers have arrived.” [Gaura]
Sources
Roadmap for Promoting Resource Efficient Bricks in India: A 2032 Strategy →
Migration to Brick Kilns In India: An Appraisal →
Labour Market Dynamics & Industrial Relations in Brick Kiln Industry →
Impact of brick kilns on land use/landcover changes around Aligarh city, India →
The Making of Urban Peripheries and Peripheral Labor: Brick Kilns and Circular Migration in and beyond Greater Delhi, 2021 →
Caste and development: Contemporary perspectives on a structure of discrimination and advantage →
Report of the Working Groupon Migration →
Afterword: A “Division of Laborers” →
A Roundtable on Rupa Viswanath’s The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion, and the Social in Modern India and the Study of Castehttps →
Debt Bondage and the Tricks of Capital →
Forced Migration of Labourers to Brick Kilns in Uttar Pradesh: An Exploratory Analysis →
Working against Labor: Struggles for Self in the Indian Construction Industry →
Moving For Marriage: Inequalities, Intimacy and Women’s Lives in Rural North India →
Gender and Globalization Opportunities and Constraints Faced by Women in the Construction Industry in India →