The world of the factory girl

In Mobile Girls Koottam, working class women capture the life of factory workers in India through their conversations and touch upon everything, from universal to personal, in a gently humorous voice

Mobile Girls Koottam: Working Women Speak

Author: Madhumita Dutta

Publisher: Zubaan 

Pages: 258

Price: Rs 425

Can you recall the last time you read any research work that transferred the agency back to the marginalised? Besides having principal authority on the narrative, have you thought of researchers as active listeners, who are keen to tell the story as is without editorialising or highbrow-ing the subject matter at hand?

These two qualities distinguish Mobile Girls Koottam: Working Women Speak from any other documentation on working-class women’s concerns. Written by Madhumita Dutta and illustrated by Madhushree, this book is a result of the titular radio podcast that seven women — five Nokia factory workers (Abhinaya, Kalpana, Lakshmi, Pooja, Satya), one field interpreter (Samyuktha, who’s also a theatre artiste) and Ms Dutta — recorded over five months in 2014.

An assistant professor in the department of geography at the Ohio State University, Ms Dutta came to research in Kancheepuram district in Tamil Nadu in 2013 when she met these five women working in a Nokia factory outlet.

In the introduction, Ms Dutta writes, “What is not often heard is what women themselves have to say about their lives, their labour, their bodies.” This way she not only sets the expectation from the book, but also cautions the readers, who may be “reading into these conversations from very different locations, privileges, and life-worlds”, to “listen” to these women without prejudice.

The first chapter poses this question: Do women feel safe at a tea shop? While Lakshmi says, “It is full of men! So, no one goes, because they are shy. What if the men say something?”, according to Abhinaya, “Men shouldn’t be there” for women to “sit freely and talk, like this [referring to their conversation].”

But why does that happen, the researcher probes? Would things be different if the tea shop owner were to be a woman? As the conversation around this subject takes different routes, these women end up concluding how men often own spaces, and their own bodies, and have the right to decide for themselves.

Even though it touches upon everything socio-economic and political, this book is also gently humorous. Reading the conversations on the menstrual cycle, I was reminded of how we siblings weren’t allowed to step out of the house without keeping a matchbox in our pockets or schoolbags when we were teenagers. While we had matchboxes to ward off evil spirits growing up, Pooja notes that they were given a “piece of iron” for the same purpose.

I also recall a regular visitor, an aunty, who’d ring the bell and ask:  Hai? (Do you’ve them?) By that, she meant sanitary pads, for no one could go to a chemist to ask for one. Chances are you know why, but if you’re wondering, in South Asia there’s shame attached to anything related to sex, menstruation, contraceptives and so on. Because periods are linked to procreation, that’s how someone’s womanhood is certified by society, as these women frequently point out. Not to mention how these notions of women and womanhood are transphobic.

The key takeaway from these conversations is that not only do we need better sex education in the country, but parents and teachers must also be sensitised enough to keep a channel of communication open with their children. Because if society is made aware, then perhaps the shopkeeper won’t wrap a sanitary pad first in a newspaper, then dump it into the trademark “black polythene”, which by the way is also used to hide condoms.

Though this is the extent of problems these women face back home, there was no dearth of issues with a huge organisation like Nokia. As usual, management in this company was also male-dominated, so these women had to inform or request leave or breaks from work from their male reporting managers. But there’s one caveat, too. If they were away, someone had to fill their position because they were working on assembly lines.

As Pooja notes, in such a scenario, “Everything is for output. Adjusting with each other, substituting for each other, letting each other rest, everything is for output.” The single-minded, business-critical focus is privileged over everything else but when these organisations don’t have business for a few days, then it’s convenient for them to lay people off. Among these women, Kalpana was most articulate and innovative about how to register their resistance against such moves. Interestingly, this book has come out during the introduction of new labour laws. But it’s going to cast a much wider net as it captures the universal in personal — from culture to misogyny to shame — in one’s own voice.