BACKGROUND: Tobacco smokers in India make up 10.7% of the population, with bidi smoking being the most prevalent method. The bidi industry, primarily in household settings, operates in an unorganized sector due to stringent government regulations and gain tax exemption. However, challenges such as health hazards, economic exploitation, limited social security benefits, long working hours, low wages, and contractualization pose a challenge to industry regulation. This study aims to unveil the complexities operating in the local bidi market ecosystem, the omnipresence of the unregistered bidi enterprises, interplay between bidi rollers, middlemen and industry, socio-economic conditions and exploitations of bidi rollers.
METHODS: The study employed a qualitative approach, involving household surveys with bidi rollers and in-depth interviews with middlemen (munshis), labour union leaders, and youth club representatives, using a non-probabilistic purposive sampling method, during December 2023 and January 2024. VEED.IO platform (2023 and SPSS v 27 (2020) were used for translation and data analysis.
RESULTS: Five major tactics were identified: child labour, sabotaging government policies, inequity, illegal trade, and authoritarian middlemen. The involvement of young adolescent girls in bidi-making, exploitative practices like patti -retaining an extra share of rolled bidis by the munshis, high rejection rates, low wage rates, fraudulence with provident fund accounts, and illicit trade, were largely reported during the study. Interestingly, a favourable portrayal of bidi companies through social welfare initiatives, undertaken with the help of clubs, (to mask their exploitative practices), emerged as an important finding.
CONCLUSIONS: The bidi industry is plagued with exploitative practices including intermediaries like munshis exploiting bidi rollers to maximize production while minimizing wage rates. Such critical evidences make the case stronger for expedited adoption and implementation of WHO-FCTC Article 5.3 policy guidelines at all levels.