Nokia transformed a small village in India promising jobs, yet at a cost to female workers that lingers, says Vani Swarupa Murali.
SINGAPORE: Just 40km southeast of Chennai in the south of India lies Sriperumbudur, a part of the Kanchipuram district of Tamil Nadu. While Kanchipuram is a town, famous for its silk saris and Hindu temples, the village of Sriperumbudur has mostly been famous for the assassination of the country’s late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
The attraction of Sriperumbudur to a big international company was location of the village, sitting inside the Tamil Nadu Special Economic Zones’ Act , a point that allowed flexible labour provisions.Nokia was able to hire without any restrictions on working hours for women and allowed women to work night shifts.
The selection criteria were clear enough, with the would-be workers put through tests for hand steadiness, hand-eye coordination, finger dexterity, and more. According to Dutta’s research, there was apparently a preference to hire girls who did not excel in school or were from government schools because they were assumed to have limited opportunities to switch jobs.
They were already beginning to get frustrated by the monotony of repetitive tasks and constant standing in the factory. The friendships that they forged helped them to cope, until management “reshuffled” the lines every six months.This was done supposedly to create a productive, “hyper-efficient” social setting, but it meant the women would constantly need to re-build new friendships.
More people took up the schemes in the months following, leaving Nokia to pay US$35.9 million in total. By October that year, 850 employees remained, hoping the factory would fill more orders or the compensation on offer would be increased. Voters line up to cast their votes outside a polling station during the second phase of general election in Amroha, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, India, April 18, 2019.
This meant that most women were just school graduates, whereas the men in other factories were polytechnic or industrial training institute graduates. As another woman told Mishra and Leena: In December 2018, it was announced that the Foxconn unit in Sriperumbudur will begin manufacturing iPhone models, giving women a greater chance of being re-employed.
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