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Dhobighaat Video with Subtitles.mp4Several things are being said about the Dhobis of IIT Kanpur, their work, workspace, whether their services are essential to the functioning of the community, and so on. We visited the site yet again and had a detailed meeting with the Dhobi families to ascertain these facts and this is what we have gathered. Of course the immediate context of this exercise is the arbitrary eviction notice served to them which expires on 2nd January 2025. They are being summarily evicted after providing sincere services over generations for six decades, without providing any alternative to carry on their livelihood. Here is a brief summary of what we learnt. Also do please watch a 5-minute video we have made on the issue here.
1. At present there are 32 Dhobi families who do their washing, drying, stacking the washed and unwashed clothes and most of the ironing work from within the Institute premises.
2. Around 3700-4000 students and RAs, 150 faculty members and staff, entire Visitors’ Hostel 2, Health Centre, Central Workshop and other non-regular users including several lab establishments use their services.
3. The services of the dhobis include picking up the dirty clothes, soaking and washing them after sorting for colour, drying them, ironing them, and then delivering them to the users. The charges for this entire service is only Rs 10 per garment. The students pay Rs 300 for 30 articles of clothing per month. This rate has not changed for the last several years.
4. There seem to be adequate number of tanks and related facilites to clean clothes in such large numbers every day by multiple dhobis and to dry the washed clothes. But strikingly, there are no toilets or bathrooms in the dhobighat; as men and women work here all through the day and get wet, they need to change/ wash in the open with little privacy.
5. The work day is very long constituting of 20 odd hours divided between the male and female member from picking the dirty clothes to finally delivering the clean-ironed pieces, with a seven day work week.
6. Of the 32 dhobi families operating at the moment, around 26 are completely dependent on this work for their livelihood. No member of the family has any other gainful employment. Around 5-6 individuals have some contractual employment but the family cannot survive without this work. Besides household expense, medical expenses and other daily expenses, most families have school/college going children which involves a significant expense too. Earlier they had access to the KV IIT, but now they have to send their children to private schools.
7. As can be surmised from the rates charged by the Dhobis they operate on extremely thin margins. The input costs other than labour come to a third of their earnings. Thus a typical family of 6 would earn between Rs15000/- to Rs18000/- per month. And at least two members of the family have to work around 20-22 hours between them every day, to make it work. Further there is regular work for only 8 months a year; during the vacation period of 4 months (3 summer and 1 winter) there is little work. In comparison an unskilled worker in the Institute working for 26 days a month earns around Rs 21,000/- and also has access to ESI and EPF benefits (at least on paper).
For further details of what we found out please see the attached report.
For previous reports, please check the following pages:
In light of recent eviction notice to dhobis, Citizens' Forum writes this letter to Director, IITK on December, 13th.
Citizens' Forum's second letter to the director on December, 24th. Hindi translation of the letter is available here.
78 alumni have endorsed the Citizen's Forum's December, 13th letter to Director.
Dhobi Factcheck on Misconceptions.pdfPage updated
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