“The beedi is cheap because women’s labour is made cheap”

 Interview

Author: Nandita Shivakumar

Date: July 27, 2026

Many readers outside South Asia may never have seen a beedi. It is small, thin and hand-rolled: flakes of tobacco wrapped in a tendu leaf and tied with thread. In India it is often called the “poor man’s cigarette”, sold far more cheaply than factory-made cigarettes and smoked largely by working-class communities.

But that low price is made possible by a supply chain that pushes costs down at every level, above all by relying on the underpaid, unorganised labour of marginalised women, many of whom roll beedis from their own homes. 

In Davanagere district, in the Indian state of Karnataka, the Neralu Beedi Workers’ Union has been organising women beedi workers by building community spaces where home-based workers can collectively discuss wages, social security, and their rights at work.

In this conversation, Nandita Shivakumar speaks with Jabeena Khanum and Karibasappa M of the Neralu Beedi Workers’ Union about the hidden journey of a beedi, the challenge of organising women who work from home, and the difficulty of bargaining in a supply chain built around an extremely cheap product.

Illustration : The Big Fat Bao

Question 1. Could you begin by explaining what the beedi supply chain looks like – where the raw materials come from, who rolls the beedis, and how the finished product finally reaches the market? 

Karibasappa: The beedi supply chain is not easy for a worker who rolls beedis to see. A worker receives raw material – usually tendu leaves, tobacco, and thread – from a contractor or subcontractor. She rolls the beedis at home and returns them. From there, they move back through the contractor to the company, and after that, workers usually do not know where they go.

Most beedi workers do not know where the leaves come from, where the tobacco comes from, or where the finished beedis are finally sold. Beedi work is not organised like factory work, where all workers are in one place and the employer is clearly visible. In our region, most women roll beedis from their homes, and many rarely leave the home. For companies and contractors, this reduces costs, because they do not have to maintain a proper workplace. It also keeps workers scattered and less visible to each other.

There are both registered and unregistered companies involved in beedi production and sales, and registered and unregistered contractors who supply raw material to workers and collect the finished beedis. Under Indian law, companies and contractors are expected to register with the government and maintain proper records of workers. But in reality, many avoid registration because once workers are recorded, companies and contractors have to take responsibility for wages, identity cards, welfare benefits, and other legal protections. 

Jabeena: We have heard from researchers that beedis produced here may go to places in Africa or the Middle East, but often this comes through word of mouth. We do not truly know. We have also heard that the tendu leaves we use come from tribal regions in central and eastern India, and that the tobacco often comes from Karnataka itself. But again, this is not information that workers can easily verify. 

When we ask contractors, who are often our only point of contact, where the raw material is coming from, where the beedis are going, which company is taking them, or who is selling them, they ask us, “Why do you need to know all this?”

So for us, understanding the beedi supply chain has itself become part of our demand. We want to know where the raw materials come from, who profits from our labour, and what happens to the beedi after it leaves the workers’ hands.

The company is visible in the market. The contractor is visible to the worker. But the woman who actually makes the beedi remains invisible, and the supply chain remains invisible to her.

Question 2. Why are so many women in your region involved in producing beedis, and what specific issues do they face because of this home-based model of work?

Jabeena: In Davangere district, there are about 25,000 beedi workers, and most of them are Muslim women. Many come from very poor families, have had limited educational opportunities, and face restrictions on going outside the home to work. In that context, beedi work becomes one of the few ways women can earn an income while remaining at home.

But this is exactly what contractors and companies exploit.

Most contractors are men, and many are from the same community as the workers. So the contractor is not just someone giving work. He may be a neighbour, a community member, or someone connected to the same religious spaces. This means the relationship is not only economic; it is also social and communal.

Sometimes, if women question the contractor, ask for better wages, or come to union meetings, the issue is taken into community meetings, and religious or community leaders may be asked to mediate. Instead of treating it as a labour issue, people may say, “If this work stops, what will happen to your family? You cannot go outside and work, so why are you creating trouble?”

This becomes a bargaining chip against women beedi workers. The contractor knows that women need the income, and that many have very few other options. That is why he has so much control.

Question 3. Why is it so difficult for women beedi workers to negotiate better wages, and what factors shape their bargaining power?

Jabeena: Women are paid very little for the amount of work they do.

If a woman rolls around 1,000 beedis in a day, which can take around nine to ten hours, she may get around ₹240 (around US$2.50). Even after working such long hours, many women earn only around ₹4,000 to ₹5,000 a month (around US$50). If the raw material is poor, or if some beedis are rejected, their income falls further.

And negotiating with the contractor is not simple. The worker is not only negotiating with him as an employer. She is also negotiating within the limits placed by her home, her family, her community, and her dependence on this income. The personal and the workplace are completely intertwined in this work.

That is why the problem is not only that the work is low paid. The whole system is built around women’s lack of options. The home becomes the workplace, but without the recognition, protections, working hours, or bargaining power that a workplace should provide.

Question 4. Can you tell us how you began organising women beedi workers, and what kinds of challenges the union has faced?

Jabeena: For me, this work is personal. My mother, my sisters, and I all rolled beedis. I was the first daughter in my family to truly ‘step out of the house’.

I wanted to work outside, but I also wanted to change the mindset inside my own home. In many Muslim families in our region there are restrictions on women going out, speaking publicly, or taking leadership. So my organising did not begin with workplace issues. It began from my own life, from the need to challenge patriarchy at home while also recognising the conditions faced by the women workers around me. 

Karibasappa came to this work differently. Through his community-based activism he was working with the children and families of beedi workers, and he kept hearing the same issues again and again: high levels of debt, the inability to educate their children, and serious health problems among women beedi workers.

But even between us, building a shared understanding was not immediate. When we first met about 25 years ago, communication was not easy. I spoke Dakhni and Hindi. He spoke Kannada. We had to learn how to understand each other, not only in language, but in how we understood the problems facing beedi workers.

Question 5. How did that shared understanding turn into an actual organising in the ground?

Jabeena: Over time, we began to see that many issues women described as private household problems were actually labour issues. For example, women would say that they were unable to spend enough time with their children or help them with their homework. But this was because they had to work extremely long hours to roll the number of beedis expected of them, while also completing all their household responsibilities.

Similarly, many women spoke about persistent coughs, breathing difficulties, body pain, and other health problems as though these were simply personal illnesses. Gradually, we understood that many of these problems were connected to their work: they were sitting in the same position for long hours and were constantly exposed to tobacco dust inside poorly ventilated homes.

Because the workplace was the home, these labour issues were hidden within women’s everyday domestic lives. We therefore could not organise only in the language or structure of a factory union. We had to begin at the community level and slowly build women’s confidence to recognise and name these problems as workers’ rights issues.

From around 2002, we began working with women and their families on issues affecting beedi workers’ children and on other concerns within the household. We also supported women to establish savings and self-help groups. These groups created spaces for women who were otherwise isolated inside their homes to meet, build trust, and develop confidence and leadership.

Gradually, women began speaking more openly about their work. They saw the common thread between their experiences: the same contractors, the same wage deductions, the same problems with raw materials, and the same fear of losing work. They began to understand that these were not individual failures but shared workers’ issues.

Of course, there was backlash from community leaders and contractors, as we mentioned earlier. But many of these women were also the main breadwinners in their families, and they wanted a better future for their children.

After more than a decade of this groundwork, we formally established Neralu as a union in 2014, beginning with around ten women workers. Today, we have around 1,300 women beedi workers as members.

This may appear to be a small number, but it must be understood within the conditions in which we organise. In beedi work, labour exploitation is reinforced by patriarchy, religious norms, community pressure, and restrictions placed on women inside the home.

When a woman joins the union, she is not only questioning the contractor. She is also challenging family expectations, community pressure, and the idea that women should remain silent inside the home. Each woman who joins has crossed many social barriers to become part of the union.

Question 6. What can organising beedi workers teach us about building collective power in supply chains where workers are scattered, informal, and largely invisible? 

Karibasappa: Organising women who roll beedis has taught us that labour organising does not have only one model. In some sectors, workers may already see themselves clearly as workers. But in home-based beedi rolling, that identity is not always clear, especially because the work happens inside the home.

Women first came to us with health problems, debt, or the difficulty of educating their children. At first these looked like separate personal or household problems. Slowly, we had to show how they were connected to their labour, to low wages, piece-rate payment, lack of identity cards, and lack of social security.

So the first step is often building that political consciousness. Women have to recognise that what is treated as a private household struggle is actually connected to labour exploitation. If you are a first-generation worker from a very patriarchal setting, and your work is done from home without proper recognition or rights, that recognition is very difficult to build. It takes time.

The beedi sector also shows us that informality does not mean there is no system. There is a system, but it is organised in a way that makes accountability difficult to trace. The company is hidden behind contractors. The contractor controls raw material. Workers are not properly registered. The home is used as a workplace, but the rights of a workplace do not follow.

That is why a union cannot be built from outside with one fixed model. Sometimes it may form in one or two years. Sometimes, as in our case, it can take ten years or more. Organising has to grow from the way workers live, work, and understand their own struggles.

Jabeena: I would add that, for women who roll beedis, building worker power is not only about wages or legal rights, though those are very important. It is also about building a sense of community and togetherness, because the communities we grow up inside are not always spaces where working-class women can find support. 

Family, neighbourhood, and religious spaces can give belonging, but they can also restrict women. They can silence us, control our movement, and tell us not to question injustice. So when we organise, we are also trying to create another kind of community, one where women are not alone, where they can speak openly, sit together, discuss their problems, laugh, rest, and slowly build confidence. 

For us, the union is not only a registered organisation that can bargain with employers. It is a space where women begin to see themselves differently, not only as wives, mothers, daughters, or home-based workers, but as full human beings with rights, needs, and dreams of their own.

Building this kind of togetherness is political. It gives women the courage to raise demands, and to stand beside each other when there is backlash, whether that pressure comes from employers, family members, religious leaders, or local authorities. And in the midst of deep hardship, that joy and togetherness are what help women workers survive, organise, and build power.

Question 7. What is Neralu’s vision for the future of beedi workers in Davanagere, and what changes are you fighting for now?

Jabeena: Today we have around 1,300 women beedi worker members. Our next goal is to reach at least 5,000. But this is not only about adding more names to a membership list. 

For me, this goal is personal. I know what it means for a woman to find the courage to step out, speak in front of others, question a contractor, or say inside her own home that her work and her time have value. I have seen how much a woman changes when she realises she is not alone.

So reaching 5,000 women means helping many more of them build that confidence and skill: to negotiate for themselves, speak for other women in their community, and face contractors, employers, officials, and community leaders as workers with collective strength.

It is also about building solidarity among working-class women. Muslim women, Dalit women, and other marginalised women may face different forms of discrimination. But when women sit together and speak honestly, they begin to see what connects them: low wages, debt, insecure work, unpaid care work, children’s education, health problems, and the daily struggle to keep a family alive. 

That is the language of solidarity we want to build, one that does not erase our differences but helps us recognise each other’s pain, labour, and power.

We want to move beyond individual complaints and isolated negotiations towards a collective structure where working-class women can come together across communities and sectors, understand the links between their personal lives and their work, and put forward their demands.

That is our goal: not only to increase membership, but to build women’s confidence, leadership, and collective power.

Karibasappa: What Jabeena is saying is very important, because without that confidence, leadership, and solidarity, workers cannot bargain. But alongside building women’s power, we also have to fight for clear demands in the beedi supply chain.

As we said earlier, there is very little transparency in this sector. Workers do not know where the raw material comes from, where the finished beedis go, who profits, or who is responsible. The company is hidden behind layers of contractors, and the worker is left alone to carry the risk.

So one of our goals is to make the beedi supply chain more transparent, and to make sure women beedi workers are recognised as workers. Our demands are for proper registration, identity cards, social security, healthcare, better implementation of existing laws, and higher wages.

We know beedis are sold at a very low price, and that affects our bargaining. If the industry survives because women’s labour is kept invisible and cheap, then that system has to be challenged.

At the same time, beedi work raises a deeper question. Beedi is a tobacco product, so there are health harms at both ends of the chain. The woman who rolls the beedi suffers from tobacco dust, low wages, and lack of protection. The person who smokes it also suffers the health impact. But many people who smoke beedis are themselves working-class, and for them it may be a small moment of relief in a life filled with hard labour, stress, and exploitation. 

So when we look at the whole chain, both the worker and the consumer are harmed by this system. The woman worker does not get fair wages or security. The working-class consumer does not get health or dignity. The real profit is captured somewhere else, by companies, traders, and those who control the chain while remaining hidden. 

That is why the future of this sector is not a simple question. Women depend on this income, so we cannot talk about ending beedi work without talking about livelihoods, alternatives, and social security. But we also cannot accept the present model, where poor women produce a harmful product in exploitative conditions, and poor working-class people consume it as a form of relief from their own exploitation. 

For us, the sector has to be discussed honestly and rebuilt with workers and consumers at the centre. 

That is also part of our goal: to fight for women beedi workers’ rights today, while imagining a future where neither the worker nor the consumer is trapped in a system that profits from their poverty, labour, and pain. 

The interview was facilitated by Gopika Bashi. 

Learn more about Neralu Beedi Workers’ Union: 

• “One day, one day, the women will go out to protest…”, India Development Review, April 21, 2026

• "This beedi worker from Davanagere led the fight for fair wages and won", Deccan Herald, February, 2026