Skinning Dalit and Women Laborers: A Study on

Leather Industry in Kanpur & Chennai

Adarsh, MA 1st Year, History Program, SLS, AUD

*

“Safe working conditions, fair wages, protection from forced labor, and
freedom from harassment and discrimination - these must become standard
global operating conditions.”
– Paul Polman

1. Introduction
This paper is targeted at understanding the relation and functioning between a
city and the labor within the industry it is associated with. This paper analyses
how labor is not a homogenous category, and how there are gender and caste-
based intersections in the domains of formal and informal labor. I’ve tried to
put forward my understanding and opinion about the forementioned topic and
tried to explain it along with the presentation of the facts. I have done so by
taking the leather industry in the cities of Kanpur and Chennai (formerly known
as Madras) as context. For a better understanding and description of the topic,
I’ve divided the paper into separate sections. In Section 2, I would explain a bit
about the history of leather industry in Kanpur and Chennai. In Section 3, I
would throw some light on the discrimination that women Laborers face in
Chennai Leather Industry. In Section 4, I would describe the pitiful situation of
the Dalit Laborers and producers in the Kanpur leather industry. In Section 5, I
would conclude the paper.

2. History of Leather Industry in Kanpur and Chennai (Earlier

Madras)
India has been familiar with the art of manufacturing leather products since
the ancient times. The practice of tanning and leather preparation from animal
skins is also mentioned in the Rigveda. Rigveda attaches this practice with
reference to the tanners (the chamars) as it was the profession attached to this
particular caste among the Shudras.1 The practice or art of tanning had the
status of being a cottage industry and was limited to Shudras in the villages till
1857.
The first official attempt to set up a formal and organized tanning and leather
manufacturing facility in India was made by the Government as it established a
Saddlery and Harness factory at Kanpur (1867) in order to produce vegetable
tanned leather.2 The method of western vegetable tanning provided the
indigenous leather producers to acquire modern technologies and such
tanneries were established at Kanpur, Madras and Calcutta.
For the first time, the process of Chrome Tanning (a very quick process to
produce tanned leather with help of chemical and salts) was introduced in
Madras after establishment of a Chrome Tannery in 1903.3 The scenario was
repeated as more new Chrome tanneries were established in Madras, and
Kanpur. The leather tanning industry was given a boost by the First World War
and many new leather tanneries were set up throughout the India, especially,
in Kanpur and in Madras. However, after the end of First World War the
leather tanning industry faced a setback as the overall demand for tanned
leather or semi-tanned leather got decreased by a large margin. The ball fell
again in the court of tanning industry after the Second World War breakout
and there has been no looking back for the leather tanning industry since.
Most of the tanneries in India are based in Madras and Uttar Pradesh (Kanpur
and Agra). Madras tanneries are known for their expertise in manufacturing of
light leathers like wet blue chrome goat skins, handgrain morocco leather,
chrome suedes, clothing leather and finished reptile skins. Kanpur tanneries on
the hand, expertise in manufacture of sole leather and eventually took over
the production of semi-finished leather and finished leather too. 4

1
1. Macdonell's History of Sanskrit Literature ,1925, Pg. no. 167-168.
2
2. Mohd. Ahmad Jamal, “Leather industry in U P with special reference to Kanpur Agra,” Department of
Commerce, Chhatrapati Sahuji Maharaj University, 1987, Pg. no. 1.
3
3. Ibid, Pg. no. 2.
4
4. Ibid, Pg. no. 4.
The industry plays a crucial role in the national economy as a source of
employment for masses across the India and also earns significant amount of
foreign exchange. Hence, it was also included in the initial Five-Year-Plans. The
industry has seen its fair share of highs and lows over the years. From getting
reduced after the first World War and getting a boom after the Second World
War, seeing a halt after India got independence and getting revival in the 1960s
to eventually growing in 90s and 2000s and facing a huge obstacle of pandemic
till last year, the leather industry has grown significantly.

3. Women Laborers and Discrimination in Madras Leather

Industry
Women have been subjected to harsh labour conditions for a long period of
time, especially, the women working in the informal sectors. Women labourers
indulged in informal sectors like the leather industry in Madras face obstacles
like Ignorance, traditional bound attitudes, illiteracy, lack of skills, seasonal
nature of employment, heavy physical work of different types, long hours of
work with limited payment, sex discrimination in wage structures, lack of
guarantee of minimum wages/ comprehensive legislation/ minimum facilities;
migration and disintegration of families, bondage and alienation etc. 5
There is a section of Women who have even worse conditions when it comes
to labour conditions of women in informal sector that is – ‘Low caste women’.
They are subjected to all the above mentioned characteristics of informal
sector labour and the reflection of casteism in labour. These women rise as
medium of change, through their income to move their families from the
traditional network-based economy to the modern market economy. However,
they face a social backlash from their families as an exogenous increase in low
caste female income, net of total household income, dulls the family’s ties to
the home community as the woman earns bargaining power within the
household.6
Such harsh scenarios and unequal conditions in the context of use of informal
labour processes is highly possible because of the employment based on caste
in Kanpur and the segregation based on the gender in Chennai.

5
5. Sudha Deshpande (1996), “Changing Structure of Employment in India,” The Indian Journal of Labour
Economics, Vol.39, Pg. no. 4.
6
6. N. Luke & K. Munshi (2005, February), Women as agents of change: Female income, social affiliation and
household decisions in South India. Retrieved April 20, 2008.
However, Women labourers indulged in the leather industry in Madras have
been fighting progressively against the evil of ‘gender-based segregation’ over
the years. Recently, it was claimed that women labourers of the leather
industry in Chennai would be soon enjoying increased employment
opportunities and other benefits as Tamil-Nadu became the first state to form
a new policy for leather development and footwear in March. An official from
the Council for Leather Exports assured that the new state policy will be
detrimental and play a crucial role in increase socio-economic development
and women empowerment. Women would benefit a lot from this policy as in
Tamil Nadu, 85 per cent of the skilled and unskilled labourers engaged in the
industry are women.7 One important and impactful way to diminish and
eventually vanish the gender discrimination that the women labourers face in
Chennai’s leather industry, is to form an all-women labour union through
which the women labourers can negotiate with their bosses on formal and
equal grounds.

4. Dalits and the Leather Industry in Kanpur: A Simple

Casteist Tale
As I mentioned it in the very second section of my paper, though it has become
a significant and growing industry, the practice of leather manufacture in still
considered to be an impure practice and is looked down upon. Not to forget, it
is considered to be an impure practice as it is attached with the notion that
varna and caste system bestowed such tasks upon the Shudras or the
untouchables. This whole concept has led to the origins and development of
unfair and harsh conditions for the Dalit labourers and leather producers in the
Kanpur leather industry.
In the Kanpur leather industry, there is a division among labourers, producers,
traders, and even creditors on the basis of religion and caste. For this paper, I
would only be analysing the caste part of the concerned division. The main
problem in Kanpur leather Industry is of ‘caste exclusivity’ and it is prevalent
among all castes from upper castes to sub-castes to lower sub-castes.
According to a study, 81.0 per cent of all sub-caste categories purchase inputs
from those traders who exclusively belong to upper sub-caste category. From
the study, it could be clearly observed that the upper sub-caste producers do
7
7. Jeyalakshmi Ramanujam, “TN women stand to gain with leather policy,” The New Indian Express, March 19,
2022, https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/tamil-nadu/2022/mar/19/tn-women-stand-to-gain-with-
leather-policy-2431776.html
not prefer lower sub-caste traders, whereas lower sub-caste producers prefer
upper sub-caste traders for establishing business relations.8
While undertaking tasks like borrowing and hiring of labour for work, religious
and caste sentiments among producers are measured in the same manner,
that is, in terms of their preference to a specific religion and caste for business
transaction. Across various sub-caste groups, 89.86 per cent of all producers
seek borrowings from upper sub-caste creditors, 2.70 per cent from middle
sub- caste creditors and 7.43 per cent from creditors of lower caste-status.
From this trend, it is obvious that in the credit market, caste and religious
feelings among producers are not less intense.9 there is relatively more labour
flow from the lower sub-caste families, and the producers, for labour hiring,
generally prefer a lower sub-caste family to an upper sub-caste one. Again,
between upper sub-caste and lower sub-caste producers, the former mostly
hire labour from lower sub-caste families whereas a chance to hire labour from
upper sub-caste families is bleak. In market interlinkings, particularly in the
Hindu producer community, the lower sub- caste and smaller size producers
are frequently victimised by traders and creditors in terms of extra-economic
coercion and production limitations.10
The leather industry in Kanpur serves not just as an industry but also a
modern-day illustration of how a manufacturing market is plagued with caste-
based biases and discrimination. Such significant industry that is a decent
contributor to the national and state economy must never have such malice in
it. In fact, no matter how big or small and impactful or unimportant an industry
is, there should be no presence of caste-based or religion-based or gender-
based biases or discrimination.
One solution for this problem can be the formation of producer cooperatives
which in many ways would be beneficial for the socio-economically weak
producers. The solution to diminish the caste-based and religion-based biases
in the Kanpur leather industry is to educate the producer community about
how the social evil of casteism is plaguing their industry and how it will
eventually devour the industry to its very core if certain and appropriate
measures are not taken on the right time.

8
8. K. M. Mohapatra and K. Srivastava, “Leather Goods Industry in Kanpur: Casteism, Religion and Business
Interlinkings,” Economic and Political Weekly, Sep. 28 - Oct. 4, 2002, Vol. 37, No. 39 (Sep. 28 -
Oct. 4, 2002), Pg. no. 4030.
9
9. Ibid.
10
10. Ibid, Pg. no. 4034.
5. Conclusion
For this particular paper, I had the ambition to demonstrate the relation
between a city and the labour with which it is highly associated or attached
with. To accomplish this task, I undertook the examples of two cities that focus
on the leather manufacturing and tanning industries, Kanpur and Chennai
(earlier Madras).
I tried to appropriately describe how the labour in the leather manufacturing
industry in these two particular cities is not homogenous and how there are
gender and caste-based intersections in the forms of formal and informal
labour. To depict the former, I described the plight of Women labourers in the
leather industry in Chennai and how they face gender-based discrimination
and biases on a daily basis. Under this, special mention must be given to the
women labourers belonging from the low-caste group, who face caste-based
and gender-based discrimination simultaneously. To depict the latter, I
explained the caste-based discrimination within the leather manufacturing
industry in the city of Kanpur and how it affects and moulds the business
interlinkings within the industry from producers to creditors to labourers, etc.
and eventually forging a downfall of the industry or its deterioration if an
intervention doesn’t take place on the time. I have also tried to provide basic
plans to resolve the problems in both the examples. The industry stands
corrected as there are initiatives being taken to resolve such problems in the
leather industry in the respective cities.

References
1. Macdonell's History of Sanskrit Literature ,1925, Pg. no. 167-168.
2. Mohd. Ahmad Jamal, “Leather industry in U P with special reference to
Kanpur Agra,” Department of Commerce, Chhatrapati Sahuji Maharaj
University, 1987, Pg. no. 1.
3. Ibid, Pg. no. 2.
4. Ibid, Pg. no. 4.
5. Sudha Deshpande (1996), “Changing Structure of Employment in India,” The
Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Vol.39, Pg. no. 4.
6. N. Luke & K. Munshi (2005, February), Women as agents of change: Female
income, social affiliation and household decisions in South India. Retrieved
April 20, 2008.
7. Jeyalakshmi Ramanujam, “TN women stand to gain with leather policy,” The
New Indian Express, March 19, 2022,
https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/tamil-nadu/2022/mar/19/tn-
women-stand-to-gain-with-leather-policy-2431776.html
8. K. M. Mohapatra and K. Srivastava, “Leather Goods Industry in Kanpur:
Casteism, Religion and Business Interlinkings,” Economic and Political Weekly,
Sep. 28 - Oct. 4, 2002, Vol. 37, No. 39 (Sep. 28 -
Oct. 4, 2002), Pg. no. 4030.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid, Pg. no. 4034.