CHENNAI: A series of horror stories published in these columns on the plight of girls trapped in spinning mills under various ‘schemes’ that first started in the 1990s with the name ‘Sumangali’, brings to mind vignettes from a recent Tamil film 'Angadi Theru' by director Vasantha Balan.
Though 'Angadi Theru' is set in a multi-storied cloth shop in the bustling Ranganathan Street in Chennai’s T Nagar, several scenes have a striking resemblance to the personal stories the girls — who left their homes in rural hinterland to work in various spinning mills under inhuman conditions — narrated.
Apart from the similarity in the way the workers are treated — as slaves — 'Angadi Theru' also shows how girls are sexually harassed in the work place by supervisors. It also highlights the management turning a deaf ear to complaints by girls against the supervisors and the girls choosing not to talk about it due to fear of being thrown out.
The lodging facilities that the textile shop provides to workers, both boys and girls, is akin to what the ‘Sumangali’ girls are get at the mills. Just like the spinning mill workers who put up with hardship, humiliation and abuse, the characters in 'Angadi Theru' too are forced to endure the exploitation and denial of basic rights for one reason: people back home in the villages who depend on their income.
In fact, the attitude of the mill owners, who speak of altruistic intentions while launching the ‘scheme’, is exactly the same as that of the textile shop owner, as it could be read from the spiel he gives to the recruits. Owners, be it of the textile shop or the mills, perhaps, believe that they are doing good to humanity by giving employment to the children from poor backgrounds.
The shop owner in the film stresses the point that he chose people from the rural areas because he was aware of their plight. Another similarity is in the recruitment process. The spinning mills also go to rural pockets and hold camps to select workers.