{"id":23203,"date":"2019-07-16T09:33:27","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T16:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/?p=23203"},"modified":"2022-07-16T07:04:14","modified_gmt":"2022-07-16T14:04:14","slug":"saturdays-factory-fire-in-new-delhi-was-a-planned-massacre-of-women-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/?p=23203","title":{"rendered":"Saturday\u2019s factory fire in New Delhi was a planned massacre of women workers"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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The fire that killed three workers<\/p><\/div>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

A factory fire broke out Saturday, July 13, in a hardware factory in the Jhilmil industrial area, in New Delhi. Three workers were killed:\u00a0Manju Devi<\/a>, 50 years old, mother of five;\u00a0Sangeeta Devi<\/a>, 46 years old, mother of three;\u00a0Shoaib Ali<\/a>, 19 years old, one of two children. The Jhilmil industrial area is 20 some miles from the\u00a0Bawana Industrial Area<\/a>, where a fire broke out January 2018 in a firecracker factory. An hour by car, more or less, separates the two factory zones. A year and a half separate the two fires. In that year and a half,\u00a0absolutely nothing has been done to ameliorate the conditions of factory workers in New Delhi<\/a>. As was the case in Bawana, Saturday\u2019s factory fine in New Delhi was a planned massacre of workers, the majority of whom were women.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

For a couple days there was news coverage. The two brothers who owned the factory have been arrested. The factory license had expired and so the factory had no license. The factory had no \u201cfirefighting measures.\u201d The fire was\u00a0massive<\/a>, the brothers were\u00a0negligent<\/a>. The stories of each of the three murdered workers are\u00a0plaintive and heart rending<\/a>. In other words, this \u201ctragedy\u201d is precisely like the earlier \u201ctragedies\u201d. Add the Jhilmil industrial area to the list of factory fire \u201ctragedies\u201d:\u00a0Bawana Industrial Area,<\/a>India:\u00a0Tangerang<\/a>, Indonesia; \u00a0Triangle Shirtwaist Factory<\/a>, United States;\u00a0Kader Toy Factory<\/a>, Thailand;\u00a0Zhili Handicraft Factory<\/a>, China;\u00a0Tazreen Fashions Factory<\/a>, Bangladesh;\u00a0Kentex Manufacturing Corporation<\/a>, Philippines;\u00a0House Technologies Industries<\/a>, Philippines. The sacrificial pyre built of women\u2019s bodies continues to grow and light up the night sky of global economic development.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The Jhilmil factory had no license because it didn\u2019t have to have a license: \u201cThe factory was operating in the area of 110 sq metres and a fire NoC [No objection Certificate] is not required for the area below 250 sq metre as per norms<\/a>.\u201d According to some estimates, \u201caround 90% of units in industrial areas of Delhi lack fire safety norms<\/a>.\u201d Some of those factories are in violation of the law, but the vast majority aren\u2019t. They are \u201cper norms\u201d. That is, respectively, they comprise individual areas of less than 250 square meters, and so don\u2019t need any license. The majority of factories in New Delhi\u2019s industrial zones are less than 250 square meters in area. Per norms. That\u2019s the law. That\u2019s how it is. Saturday\u2019s factory fire in New Delhi was a planned massacre of workers, the majority of whom were women, and the planners of that massacre are factory owners, the State, and all who looked the other way, or better, see and construct a world \u201cper norms\u201d in which people who work in larger factories have some value, are collectively worth the cost of a fire extinguisher and an alarm, and those, the majority, who work in the smaller factories, the `informal\u2019 factories, they are less than dirt, less than the ash that fills the air and covers the earth after a massive fire. Saturday\u2019s factory fire in New Delhi was a planned massacre of workers, the majority of whom were women. It won\u2019t be the last such massacre.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

(Photo Credit: The Hindu<\/a> \/ R. V. Moorthy)<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A factory fire broke out Saturday, July 13, in a hardware factory in the Jhilmil industrial area, in New Delhi. Three workers were killed:\u00a0Manju Devi, 50 years old, mother of five;\u00a0Sangeeta Devi, 46 years old, mother of three;\u00a0Shoaib Ali, 19 years old, one of two children. The Jhilmil industrial area is 20 some miles from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[114,4850,556,5061,5180,1205],"class_list":["post-23203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-dan-moshenberg","tag-factory-fire","tag-haunts","tag-india","tag-massacre","tag-new-delhi","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23203"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26337,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23203\/revisions\/26337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}