A woman makes bricks by hand. Kiln workers will aim to make at least 2,000 bricks a day, working until 1am to avoid the worst of the heat. Photograph: Roli Srivastava” is how Suma Devi describes her 16 years of labouring at the brick kilns near the city of Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, more than 500 miles from her own state of Bihar.
Devi starts work at 8am, stopping at 1pm to avoid the worst of the heat. During her break she cooks for her husband and daughter and sweeps their temporary shelter, a brick hut. The lingering TB has left Devi stuck in a cycle of illness and visits to doctors. “We cannot repay the advance, because I keep falling ill,” says Devi. “We have spent up to 12,000 rupees on medicines and tests at a private clinic. We have to borrow more and more,” she says.Their wages are paid only to their male relatives.
Workers do not tend to carry documents – such as the Mamta card for pregnant women and new mothers to record antenatal care and vaccines, or the Aadhaar, a biometric identity card – for fear of losing them on their long journeys or in insecure temporary housing. At the Madhav kiln, dozens of female workers queue in the shade of an acacia tree waiting to see a doctor conducting basic check-ups at a health camp organised by the CEC for the afternoon.Nearly all of the women are underweight, and most of their babies have lightened hair colour – a clear indication of malnutrition.
She weighs 37kg , and one-year-old Kartik is severely underweight at just 2.9kg – the average weight of a newborn in the west. “I feel he is not growing, but shrinking,” she says.