Here is part 9….


Together, we made an All India Brick Klin Worker Union and I was its General Secretary.

For the next 10 years, I and Bapuram Pakhade worked extensively for the union. We spread its work in Delhi and Haryana and the union grew to a huge level.


When I joined the union in 1976, at that time the payment for these labourers was 14 rupees for 1000 raw bricks which are called pathera in Hindi.

And when I left the union in 1986, exactly after 10 years, the workers were paid 100 rupees for doing the same work.

When these workers were paid 14 rupees, their contractors used to cut their wages as they would sometimes not include around 30 raw bricks or so and during monsoon, the number would even go upto 50, which made these workers not receive their full payment.

But within 10 years, they started receiving their full payment. I worked with sincere honesty, and with all our efforts and those workers' blessings, we were able to achieve our goal. I remember how we used to travel the entire Delhi by using a motorcycle for the union's work, however, later in 1981 we bought a jeep, but the hustle was real.

When we were working in Haryana, we even got threats and thus we shifted our agitation to Haryana Bhawan, in Delhi. Social activist Swami Agnivesh, who was then a MLA too, supported our cause and got associated with it. But the catch was that he wanted to make this entire cause into a political agenda for his own good. We cleared things with him and reinforced the spirit of the union which is working for society and working for these exploited workers.

To be continued