Strength of a woman

People Like Them

It churns out sheet after sheet of silk paper, much in demand these days for wedding cards. Sixty-year-old Nafe Singh owns it, and all he wants to do in life is to make whatever profit he can from his unit.

After years of pursuit of that elusive profit margin, he has come to one conclusion, as simple as it is revolutionary. If you want employees who are regular and dedicated, hire only women.

Nafe Singh is supremely unconcerned that his all-woman outfit is a bit of an oddity in the predominantly male industry.

"I'm not doing any social service by keeping these jananis (women in Harayanvi). I've just found that they are better and more regular than the male migrant labourers, who are available for work here," he said.

Jhind, a primarily agricultural area, attracts a lot of migrant labour, and has a strong labourer class in addition. He recalled the time when he started this unit, about seven years ago, with a conventional male work force.

"I was plagued by labour problems. Migrant workers often just took off for days on the pretext of going home. They often got drunk in the evenings and were too hung over to report to work the next morning. All this wrecked havoc with my production schedules," he said.

So three years ago, when he began to hire women, he found that production became more streamlined, and adhering to schedules became easier.

Most of the ladies he hired used to work as contract labourers in fields earlier, and were happy to be in a regular job. By and large, they are all over thirty, with school-going children and fewer home responsibilities.

"It's not that they take no holidays," said Nafe Singh, "they also want time off when their nanads (sisters-in-law) come visiting, or when the neighbours's wife is having a baby. But they are so much more dedicated that my work never suffers."

And in comparison to his earlier all-male staff, the ladies take fewer holidays. As Nafe Singh says, "even if they did, where would the poor things go? There is nothing here in Jhind by the way of entertainment."

Was there a flip side to his women only policy, I asked. "No, not really," he mused, stroking his stubbly chin.

"I haven't really given it much thought. I guess they can't lift heavier papers with the ease that men can. So when we make heavier paper, I need two girls to lift one man's load. But that's nothing compared to the quality of work I get from them." said he.

So he's using a paper manufacturing technique which requires two people to lift a sheet of paper pulp, instead of the standard technique involving one person lifting one sheet.

And while earlier, he had 20 men making paper, now he has kept 28 women doing the same job. Each woman gets Rs 40 a day, and Nafe Singh says that he paid his male employees the same amount. Is the extra expense he incurs on their salaries justified? I asked.

He replied emphatically in the affirmative. "These ladies have got my production back on track, whatever extra I spend on their salaries, I get back through the more efficient service that they provide," said he, adding, "I'm really happy with all these jananis!"