Home-based making of things is important in the Indian economic system. Many things like ‘kasavu’, ‘chitrapattambaram, carpets, bidi, incense sticks, etc. come in this category. Most of these types of work are done by women and children. The raw material for their production is made available to houses by contractors or their agents. They also buy the finished goods at a fixed rate. Let’s take the bidi industry as an example. The start of this industry was from villages close to forest areas. Villagers collect bidi leaves and give them to the forest department or private contractor.
The contractors who buy them also sell them to the forest department. A person collects up to 100 bundles of leaves a day. Each bundle has 50 leaves. Owners of bidi factories get these bundles from the forest department through auction. These are then again given to contractors. They give these leaves to the houses where they make bidis. Mainly women are engaged in bidi making. The leaves are cut to size. The cut leaf is filled with tobacco and rolled and is tied with a thread. Contractors buy these and give them to the factory owners. The owners pack them and label them and through tobacco outlets they sell bidis. The greatest prot in this business is for the factory owners. The workers get only nominal
