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Fifty Days of Lockdown in India: A View from TwoVillages in Tamil NaduGRACE CARSWELLGEERT DE NEVES YUVARAJ

Grace Carswell (g.carswell@sussex.ac.uk) is with the Department of Geography, Universityof Sussex. Geert De Neve (g.r.de-neve@sussex.ac.uk) is with the Department ofAnthropology, University of Sussex. S Yuvaraj (yuvaraj.eco@gmail.com) is researchassistant, University of Sussex.Vol. 55, Issue No. 25, 20 Jun, 2020The authors are grateful to the reviewer for their valuable feedback.

Villagers in Tiruppur district in Tamil Nadu, India’s largest knitwear manufacturing andexport hub, face different levels of hardship due to the lockdown in the wake of COVID-19.This article details the coping strategies of garment, power loom, and agricultural workersin two villages—Allapuram and Mannapalayam.

Having conducted research in western Tamil Nadu for over 10 years, we had the resourcesto collect villagers’ accounts of the lockdown using phone conversations after we left the

villages in mid-March 2020. Allapuram and Mannapalayam,[1] the two villages in question,are located in the hinterland of Tiruppur, India’s largest knitwear manufacturing and exporthub, and are heavily dependent on the garment and textile sectors for employment. Buildingon more than 50 interviews and 600 survey questionnaires completed between July 2019and March 2020, we conducted around 30 phone conversations between early April andmid-May 2020. In Allapuram, we primarily contacted garment workers and owners of

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garment workshops, while in Mannapalayam, we talked to powerloom owners andoperators. In both localities, we also interviewed agricultural labourers, farmers, andvillagers involved in other economic activities. Unequal mobile phone ownership, however,made it more difficult to contact women, and with time, an increasing number of phoneswere switched off.

Our research participants confirmed that no one in our study villages had tested positive forCOVID-19 till the end of May, but the lockdown had paralysed rural life across the socialspectrum, albeit with diverse outcomes shaped by pre-existing socio-economic positions.The lockdown, rather than the pandemic, has wreaked havoc in these villages. The lockdownnot only provides a lens through which to study the relations of power and dependency, butalso reveals how a crisis can exacerbate existing inequalities as well as galvanise someunexpected forms of support.

We describe the immediate economic fall-out of the lockdown in terms of job losses and theinstantaneous responses they elicited. We then explore the shifting experiences in themedium term as unemployment and cash shortages began to threaten the livelihoods of thevillage poor. Responses and interventions seem to differ quite radically in our two villages,in line with caste relations, labour markets and, crucially, relations of patronage. Ourfindings shed new light on the workings of patronage at a time of crisis.

The Immediate AftermathEven before the lockdown was announced, factories in the Tiruppur region were shuttingdown as orders from western countries were being cancelled. On 25 March, almost allemployment in the two villages ceased. Allapuram comprises around 230 households withdifferent types of garment work as their main source of income, alongside employment inagriculture and services. Apart from the dominant Kongu Vellalar Gounders community(27% of the population), Allapuram comprises a number of intermediate castes as well as asizeable Dalit community that is made up of Christian Adi Dravidas (24%) andArunthathiyars (also known as Matharis [22%]) (Carswell and De Neve 2014). Most of thelabour force commutes to Tiruppur’s garment factories or works in one of the eight garmentworkshops that mushroomed within the village during the last 10 years. The workshops arean attractive opportunity for women who work as tailors, checkers, or helpers. All thesegarment jobs almost disappeared overnight.

Mannapalayam, a much larger village of over 500 households, has more than 30 power loomworkshops, several textile businesses, and a sizing mill, all of which are almost exclusivelyowned by the Gounders (33% of the population). Here, the main labouring classes consist ofDalits (39%)—mainly local Arunthathiyars and migrants belonging to other Dalitcommunities—as well as some other castes (28%), many of whom are migrants (Carswelland De Neve 2014). These labouring classes are primarily employed as textile workers inthe village-based power loom industry run by higher caste employers through relations of

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indebtedness (Carswell and De Neve 2013). While men are employed as loom operators,women work as either operators or cone winders. Some local Arunthathiyars have startedtaking up garment work outside the village, but their numbers are still limited. Here too, thelooms ceased functioning overnight and all power loom workers, including those doingrelated work like bale packing, lost their livelihoods.

Both villages offer agricultural coolie work too, but this is considered less desirable and ispoorly paid. It is almost entirely taken up by women and the elderly. Across the region, thevast majority of employment takes the form of casual labour in textile and garment sectors,lacking any form of regulation or protection. Days without work are days without income.

After the lockdown was announced, the labouring poor—in particular, the Dalitcommunity—were soon left without any cash in hand. While some families had savings,many garment workers reported that they had not even received their last working days’wages. Kabir, a young tailor, was an exception. He received wages for his last four days ofwork as well as an additional Rs 1,000 as “corona relief” from his employer. “But I did not hear of any other companies giving corona relief in cash,” he said. Madesh, atailor living and working in Tiruppur, told us that garment workers in the city had notreceived “a paisa” from their employers. Several workers reported that they were evenunable to contact their employer or contractor, as many stopped taking calls to avoid beingharassed for money.

The power loom workers of Mannapalayam also met a similar fate, but with some variations.Here, the last wages were paid on Saturday, 21 March. Murali, a 30-year-old loom operator,is heavily indebted to his employer. Having accumulated close to ₹1,00,000 as advancepayments over time, he was reluctant to ask his employer for more than Rs 500 advance.Another Dalit loom operator narrated a similar situation; he did not want to ask for moneyas he had already received an advance from his employer. “When we reach a criticalsituation, then we can ask.” He was aware that such a critical situation was looming, andadded, “the government gave some relief materials and that’s enough for us till 14 April. Ifthe government extends the lockdown, then we’ll get into trouble for money.” Most powerloom owners did hand out cash to their regular workers, but these sums were added to theiroutstanding debts.

A few factories in Mannapalayam use more advanced looms (Sulzer) that run with anentirely different labour force—young male migrant workers from Bihar and Odisha. Thereare approximately 100 such migrant workers across a handful of Sulzer units. When thelockdown was announced, these workers were stuck in their dormitories, where employersarranged basic food provisions. The cost of those provisions, however, was later deductedfrom their wages. Already excluded from village life, unable to return home, and deprived oflocal state support, the labourers were particularly vulnerable and dependent on employersfor their survival.

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In the first few weeks of the lockdown, most research participants reported that they hadaccess to food. However, this “access” was not uniform. Economically better off villagers,usually of the higher castes, were able to procure food in bulk from nearby towns just beforethe lockdown. One power loom owner reported spending Rs 5,000 on food that wasdelivered to his house. However, most had to turn to the local grocery stores. The rush tobuy rice and vegetables and a lack of transport meant that local shops soon ran out ofseveral food items. It was here that government intervention through the public distributionsystem (PDS) was much welcomed by the villagers.

On 6 April, the panchayat distributed Rs 1,000 as relief to each household with a rationcard. Ward members went door-to-door delivering the cash and handing out a token with aday and time slot to collect free food items from the ration shop. Those with a Jan Dhanbank account—the government’s financial inclusion programme—received an additional Rs500. During the next few days, households collected their usual entitlements of rice, dal,sugar, and oil, but for the month of April, received them for free. While this was muchappreciated by the poor, several interviewees were concerned that the relief money wouldnot even last a week. Some said that it would be better if the government set up communalkitchens rather than distribute cash, which could easily be squandered on alcohol. Otherspointed out that cash was required to purchase much-needed medication.

Frail Safety NetThe safety net was certainly thin, to say the least. While the PDS seemed to function fairlysmoothly, including through the use of smart cards and digitised technology at the rationshops, there is no doubt that some people fell through the net. Previous research hasidentified several villagers without smart cards—typically the most deprived— who areunable to claim rations and other support under the PDS (Carswell and De Neve 2020b).They are likely to have been left out of any COVID-19 relief too (Masiero 2020). Migrantsare another particularly vulnerable group in this respect, as their smart cards are, almostwithout exception, registered at their home villages. While the migrant workers from NorthIndia were wholly dependent on the goodwill of their employers to keep them housed andfed, other migrants from nearby districts were unable to access state support locally, eventhough many of them had lived in the villages for years. One farmer from the neighbouringdistrict of Dindigul, who cultivates leased land in Mannapalayam, travelled to his nativevillage to collect his rations. He was stopped at different check posts by the police butallowed through when explaining his purpose. It remains unclear if all Tamil migrants wereable to travel home for ration collection, but even if they were, this process clearly entailedsignificant costs and risks.

A key central government scheme—the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural EmploymentGuarantee Act (MGNREGA)—that could have provided immediate relief to rural households,remained idle—. India’s flagship poverty alleviation scheme, that offers each ruralhousehold 100 days of paid work annually, was suspended from 21 March. As a scheme

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specifically designed to help the rural poor bridge periods without work, MGNREGA—withadequate social distancing rules—could have been mobilised to extend timely relief duringthis spell of mass unemployment. However, it was unavailable when it was most needed andarrears for work delivered during the 2019–20 financial year were left pending. By 10 May,no one in either village knew when it would resume. This was not merely a missedopportunity but a failure of governance. The non-availability of MGNREGA work seriouslyundermined a key coping resource of the rural poor—women and the elderly inparticular—at a time when garment and textile labour markets collapsed.

Characteristics of Precarity Three features mark the livelihoods of the labouring classes in Allapuram andMannapalayam: an absence of adequate social protection to fall back on, a lack of savings todraw from, and a continuous balancing of loans and incomes that can easily turn intounmanageable debt when earnings dry up (Carswell and De Neve 2020a). Together, thesefeatures underpin the precariousness of India’s poor labourers in a job market whereregular employment is rarely guaranteed. If anything, the pandemic and lockdown havecome at a time when the textile industry in the region was already under mountingpressure, not least due to increasingly cut-throat global competition. Many labouringhouseholds had already felt the financial strain and were sliding into debt. The lockdownhas not only exacerbated their precarious position, but has also brought to the surface therelations of power, dependency, and patronage that underpin rural life.

Following the immediate aftermath of the lockdown, a number of responses surfaced.Agriculture—the only sector where some work was still available—gained renewedsignificance. It was typically the wives and mothers of tailors in Allapuram and power loomoperators in Mannapalayam who earned money from part-time agricultural labour. In manylabouring households, women became the sole earners. Kamesh, a young tailor-cum-contractor in Allapuram, told us that while he was unemployed, his mother still got two tothree days of agricultural work per week, at Rs 300 per day. Not only did she earn moneybut she could also get vegetables from the field so that they did not have to buy them. Thiswas invaluable as people reported rising food prices with an increase in demand due toeveryone being at home. In the lockdown, women—mainly mothers and wives—haveemerged as the largely unacknowledged workers who have ensured the survival of thehousehold.Men too tried to get agricultural work, but a combination of rising labour supply—both maleand female—and the start of the dry season meant that agricultural labour opportunitiesdwindled rapidly. Within weeks, women, who normally got several days of work, werescrambling for a single day of farm work per week. As an unemployed young tailor inMannapalayam explained, “last week, my mother didn’t even get one day of work. Thefarmers’ families now also stay at home, so they do most of their farm work with householdlabour.” Market uncertainty made farmers hesitant to sow new crops, while the ban ontransportation made it hard for them to sell their harvested crops. As a result, some ended

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up selling vegetables and milk to the villagers at reduced rates.

Perhaps, most interesting was the nature of community-based support during the lockdown.Informal sector workers in India commonly turn to their employers during times of crisisand appeal to their patronage in exchange for past or future work commitments. This iswhat happened in these two villages as well, but with different degrees of success.

In Allapuram, labouring households were largely at the mercy of garment employers. Butthose who commute to work in Tiruppur companies had no one to turn to. In an industrywhere garment workers frequently move between companies, urban employers steer awayfrom developing close bonds with a footloose labour force. They do not pay cash advances,evade relationships of patronage, and avoid any commitments beyond wages. Many,therefore, simply switched off their mobile phones when they closed their factories.

Garment workers employed in the newer village-based garment workshops were slightlybetter placed to appeal to the goodwill of their local employers. But, having only recentlydeveloped bonds with them, they too struggled to make claims of patronage. One villageemployer explained to us that he was out of cash himself, partly because he was still owedmoney by traders to whom he had sold finished garments, and also because he had alreadyborrowed money to give advances to his workers earlier on. He felt unable to extend furtherhelp at this point.

In Mannapalayam, the situation was quite different. Here, power loom workers—many ofwhom are Dalits—have close bonds with their higher caste employers, fermented throughrelations of debt based on accumulated cash advances. Normally, such bondage seriouslycurtails workers’ freedom in the labour market. However, during the lockdown, it providedthem a patron to appeal to. Workers were fully aware that their employers would need thempost-lockdown and hence had a direct interest in supporting them. They appealed for andreceived help. Any payments, however, were considered cash advances and added to theiroutstanding debt.

Power loom owners confirmed giving cash to their workers even though many of them hadlittle surplus cash themselves. One employer said that a trader who buys his fabric had onlygiven him Rs 30,000 in April, which he had partly used to distribute as advances to hisworkers. Another power loom owner also distributed Rs 10,000 that he received from abuyer, even though the advances given to his workers before the pandemic had alreadytotalled Rs 7,00,000. While many power loom owners clearly tried to support their workers,they also sought to escape ongoing demands. Both these employers chose to leave thevillage.

Support from employers also came indirectly through contributions to a communal kitchenstarted in late April. When many labouring households began to run out of provisions,people from the Dalit community began collecting food and cash to start a communalkitchen. They approached local landowners, power loom owners, and others in their

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networks for contributions in cash or kind. Most of those approached contributed, and whilegenerous donations were praised, the rare exceptions were strongly criticised. The villagepresident contributed 50 kilograms (kg) of rice and a Gounder landowner donated 30 kg ofchicken.

Contributions varied from day to day, but the kitchen was able to prepare between 25 kgand 75 kg of rice each day. The Dalit leader of the kitchen explained that PDS rations areonly adequate to feed a family for 10–15 days. Many Dalit households and some non-Dalitstoo ate at the communal kitchen for 10 consecutive days, until another month of free PDSrations were disbursed around 6 May. The kitchen may be restarted when those rations areover. It was clearly a successful communal effort to feed the village at a time when bothstate and market failed to provide for the poor. It was an effort that was unfortunately notreplicated in Allapuram. Here, political parties donated rice, but this was largely limited totheir vote banks.

Looking Ahead It is alarming to imagine the future of the labouring poor of Allapuram and Mannapalayam.If the virus is to reach these villages, the health impacts could be severe given thechallenges of physical distancing in tightly housed colonies. Even without the direct threatto health, the effect of the pandemic on people’s livelihoods has been enormous. Villagershad no idea when garment companies or power looms would restart. Power loom ownerswere anxious that the shrinking market demand in combination with rising labour shortagesdue to migrants returning home would seriously hamper a speedy recovery. Garmentfactory owners similarly feared that the global lockdown would affect demand for theforeseeable future. With the arrival of the dry season, agricultural work was also shrinking,reducing vital earning opportunities, especially for women and the elderly.

While the state government made vital additional provisions through its PDS, these werenonetheless inadequate to sustain life, let alone provide a nutritious diet. State support inkind and cash could have been considerably expanded from the start of the lockdown as theinfrastructure to distribute it was available. Unfortunately, for MGNREGA, funds were notforthcoming (Drèze 2020). The implementation of the scheme—subject to social distancingrules—would have been most obvious to implement and expand at the onset of the crisis toprevent the rising despair and indebtedness among the rural poor (Khera 2020). The centralgovernment’s failure to act adequately is likely to have cost many lives across the country.Reflecting on government actions, a Dalit man lamented the decision to reopen alcoholshops in the state and commented on what he perceived to be misplaced priorities: “Thisgovernment uses the police department to protect wine shops instead of protectingpeople!”

In Allapuram, garment workers’ freedom in the labour market meant they lacked patrons toturn to, while in Mannapalayam, workers’ ties to their employers at least provided them

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with some leverage to wrest support from them. Rather unexpectedly, it was the bondedpower loom workers who were able to activate their employers’ patronage and protection,both individually and as a community. This sheds new light on the contemporary relations ofneo-bondage, which in this case are not found to be merely time-bound, limited tocontractual obligations, and impersonal (Breman et al 2009). While this safety net helpssustain power loom workers in the short run, it merely enhances their indebtedness andtheir dependency on employers and moneylenders for the foreseeable future.

Stuck between collapsing job markets and inadequate social protection from the state, thelabouring poor are left to rely on the vagaries of local patronage and charity. This is not onlyerratic and unreliable, but is also likely to dwindle over time. The current crisis bothexposes and enhances India’s rural inequalities and dependencies. It lays bare the poor’sprecarious reliance on volatile global markets, faltering state support, and unevenexpressions of patronage. What the new normal will look like after the lockdown endsremains anyone’s guess.

End Notes:

[1] The names of villages and villagers used in the article have been changed to maintainanonymity.

References:

Breman, Jan, I Guérin and A Prakash (eds) (2009): India's Unfree Workforce: Of BondageOld and New, Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Carswell, Grace and Geert De Neve (2013): “From field to factory: Tracing transformationsin bonded labour in the Tiruppur region, Tamil Nadu,” Economy and Society, Vol 42, No 3,pp 430–454.

—(2014): “T-shirts and tumblers: Caste, Dependency and Work under Neoliberalisation inSouth India,” Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol 48, No 1, pp 103–131.

Carswell, Grace, Geert De Neve and S Ponnarasu (2020): “Good Debts, Bad Debts:Microcredit and Managing Debt in Rural South India,” Journal of Agrarian Change,https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12365.

Carswell, Grace and Geert De Neve (2020): “Rations, Smartcards and Internet Centres: HowDigital and Biometric Technologies are Transforming Social Protection Delivery in TamilNadu, India,” Unpublished, University of Sussex.

Drèze, Jean (2020): “Has the Finance Minister Pulled a Fast One on MNREGA Workers?”Wire, 27 March,

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https://thewire.in/economy/nirmala-sitharaman-mnrega-workers-relief-pack....

Khera, Reetika (2020): Covid-19: “What Can Be Done Immediately to Help VulnerablePopulation,” Ideas for India, 25 March,https://www.ideasforindia.in/topics/poverty-inequality/covid-19-what-can....

Masiero, Silva (2020): “Beyond Touchscreens: The Perils of Biometric Social Welfare inLockdown,” Datactive, 23 April,https://data-activism.net/2020/04/bigdatasur-beyond-touchscreens-the-per....

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