Every day, after she finishes cooking, cleaning and fetching water for her tiny one-room home in Mumbai, Saubhagya Nadelkari picks up a stack of leather strips and makes her way to her neighbour’s home.
There, in a narrow alley that is covered with plastic, about half a dozen women sit or stand as they braid long strips for use in belts, sandals and bags. They talk and laugh as their fingers fly, knotting each strip at the end when it is done.
Nadelkari makes about 100 pieces a day. She is paid about 24 rupees ($0.40) for a set of 12 finished pieces.
Nadelkari and her friends are among nearly 38 million home-based workers in India, according to a 2012 survey by WIEGO, a global non-profit focused on informal workers.
Unlike self-employed home-based workers who sell their output directly, sub-contracted homeworkers are dependent on a middleman who drops off and picks up orders and keeps a part of the payment as commission.
They are affected by fluctuating demand, cancelled orders, delayed payments and rejected goods.
In India, the world’s fastest growing major economy, more than 90 percent of workers – or about 400 million people – are in the informal economy, according to the Centre for Equity Studies.
Women and children in the informal economy are particularly vulnerable to exploitation.
The garment industry is particularly prone to abuse. Of the 38 million home-based workers in India, about 45 percent are involved in making garments or textiles, and half these workers are sub-contracted homeworkers, according to WIEGO.
The piece-rate work that is common in the industry is low paid and seasonal. While the women do the bulk of the work, children pitch in during busy periods, even skipping school to work.
The supply chains of global fashion retailers have come under greater scrutiny since the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh three years ago.
Despite pressure from activists, India has not endorsed the International Labour Organization’s convention 177, which requires member nations to adopt a national policy to improve the lives of homeworkers.
That includes counting them as labourers, and providing social security protection and adequate remuneration. Activists including WIEGO are also campaigning for secure contracts, social protection, better remuneration and unions.
For Nadelkari in Dharavi, a sprawling slum that is home to thousands of home workers, all of these would be welcome.
“Until then, at least I get to do the work with my friends. We talk, we laugh. We forget how hard it is,” she said.
(Published in an arrangement with Thomson Reuters Foundation)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)