Faridabad: The short, heavyset man sits in the fading evening light in a Faridabad tenement, occasionally stabbing the air with his hands to make a point. The 26-year-old, who works for a factory that makes parts for India’s biggest car maker, should have been a key statistic, but his name doesn’t really register in the system as a victim of an industrial accident.
A series of four workplace mishaps at Victora Tool Engineers Pvt. Ltd in the past six years cost the worker all his fingers except for his thumbs, sliced off in a “power press” that cuts metal into shapes for automobile engines. The last of the accidents took place on the afternoon of 10 July. His company has kept him on, and he’s grateful for that, but he doesn’t know for how much longer.
Clearing up: A 25 September photo of rescue workers at the site where a power plant chimney collapsed. The chimney was being constructed at a Bharat Aluminium Co. Ltd facility at Korba in Chhattisgarh. Gurinder Osan / AP
“They have not told me anything so far,” he says.
The accidents have left him unfit for factory or any sort of manual work, which is all he’s qualified for. He left his home in Nepal and landed up in the Haryana industrial hub of Faridabad, some 30km from the national capital, about a decade ago. A few months ago, he got married and brought his wife to stay in Faridabad.
This is the ugly side of India’s cheap-labour story, which is key to the success of the myriad small enterprises that dot India’s industrial landscape. Victora Tool makes 200 metal parts, including pedals and car seat frames, for Maruti Suzuki India Ltd (MSIL), which led a bounceback in industrial growth amid the slump, with a 42% surge in production in August from a year ago.
A low-cost workforce has given India a competitive edge in assembly line manufacturing and turned it into a major global outsourcing hub. But these gains may have been made by cutting corners and ignoring workplace safety.
Also See Forgotten Statistics (Graphics)
Poor migrant workers, such as the Victora factory man, who earns Rs4,100 a month, routinely fall off official statistics as companies under-report industrial accidents to evade prosecution.
Government numbers reflect an alternative reality. According to the official figures, the drop in the number of deaths is sharp—deaths due to injuries fell 4.5%, to 1,387 in 2008 from 1,453 in 2007.
Another statistic belies these numbers. Data supplied by two labour ministry agencies show that accident insurance benefits claimed by companies indicate a rate of accidents that far outweigh those that are reported.