The Hindu Business Line : Where women have the time of their lives

YOUNG Hetal carefully puts the watch drive into the mould and screws it in. The drive or the movement has come from Germany and the mould and the screws from nearby towns in Gujarat. Her friend does more or less the same with a wall clock that is in the making. Some of Hetal's relatives, also young girls, are busy working at the assembly line of awatch unit, filling and packing the product.

They are part of a 10,000-strong female workforce in the scores of watch units that dot Morbi town. One thing they all have in common is that they outscore men as the preferred employees in this industry.

Not that Morbi, a ghost of a town that was rebuilt after the Machhu dam burst in 1979, snuffing out almost 10,000 lives, would really mind.

There are some half a dozen factories in this Saurashtra town, adjoining Rajkot, that are veritable timekeepers of not only India but a good number of other countries as well.

Almost working around the clock to help the rest of the world keep time are some 10,000 girls from 80-odd villages spread over 100 km. They work for brands such as Orpat, Samay, Sonam, Solar, Ricon and Victor and 40-50 assembly units doing job work for big companies.

With an average age of 18 years, these young women drive the Morbi economy accounting for over 80 per cent of the workforce in the clock and watch manufacturing companies, barring the night shifts.

More often than not, it is these young women who keep the fire burning at home, earning up to Rs 4,500 per month by the time they become proficient.

True, many of them opt to retire from being professional assemblers of clocks and watches and settle down as housewives after putting in 4-5 years in the trade and saving a tidy package to get married.

But then, there are quite a few who cannot let go of a good thing and even persuade their spouses to take up this vocation or at least get employed as unskilled workers in the same companies.

Manisha Parmar, who lives in Wankaner, realised she could lend as much financial support to her family as any other male member by working for such a company.

Alpa Kalriya, hailing from Rajkot, opted to stay on the company payrolls even after getting married as she valued the financial independence as much as she did her marital status. But the quintessential Morbi girl coming good has been Tripti Dave.

"It was mainly due to my savings as a skilled worker in the watch company that our family could arrange a good marriage for me. Over and above my savings, provident fund, etc., there was an equal contribution from the company that added up to Rs 2 lakh. Now, I continue to work for Ajanta along with my husband, and we even helped my father recently when he had to go in for a heart bypass surgery," she said.

One of the biggest employers in the region has been the Orpat (Ajanta) group, which has nearly 5,000 girls on the rolls for manufacturing watches, clocks and home appliances. It's followed by Samay with over 2,000.

Between these two entities and the group's latest foray into health products, some 90 buses are being plied to bring in the girls for work and drop them back.

"It is a completely secure environment for the girls and it only because of this security that a cross-section of the village community has no qualms about sending out the girls for work. Why, the villagers have become so emancipated that they think nothing of the fact that it is the girls who drive a majority of these buses. The last person living on one particular route keeps the bus parked in front of her house and picks up others for work the next morning," says Narendra Shah, an old hand who runs one of the biggest watch and clock showrooms in town.

Thus, it is the women who have been delivering the goods as far the Morbi industrial township is concerned with their disciplined work ethos that is underlined by higher levels of concentration vis-à-vis their male counterparts.

After all, they don't take time out to smoke the odd beedi or chew the occasional pouch of gutka, and so ensure a significantly higher rate of output for the employers. Clearly, women call the shots in this part of the country.

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