Patna: At five in the evening in Bihar’s Sikandarpur Industrial Area, eight women step out with their white plastic tiffin bags, walking home after shifts at Britannia and other factories. For over a year, this journey has marked their first steps into the industrial world.

These women clean and mop factory floors for fifteen days a month, earning ₹6,000. Their wages, however, aren’t the only things they take home. They also bring back to their villages the scent of biscuits and cookies, a trace of the places their futures are being slowly forged.

The factory work frees them from sowing paddy in the landlord’s fields, where the pay was meagre and the work unrelenting. Their husbands, meanwhile, continue to haul bricks and mix cement at construction sites. Show Full Article

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