India is just one of those countries that never gets old; every visit reveals something new.  Through the  Students for Development Internship I was able to travel to India for the second time, this time as part of my masters research in Community Health and Epidemiology.  I was fortunate to travel with my partner in crime, a.k.a my buddy Moeza Merchant, who is working with the same supervisor as I for her masters work.  We both got to live and work in one of India’s most beautiful cities, Mysore, India.  I arrived in the Bangalore airport in India on September 24th, 2010 at midnight and was in India until late December 2010.  It was an awesome three months of eye-opening experiences, one after another.

Moeza and I, along with our supervisor got to visit several export-oriented garment factories through our host organization’s connections. It was amazing to visit factories that made clothes for huge Multi National Corporations (MNCs), but what made it more interesting was the relatively good conditions that workers got to work in. The common imagery of sweat shops definitely did not apply to the export-oriented garment factories that we visited. In fact, many of the Managing Directors told us that it simply wasn’t worth subjecting workers to inadequate working conditions as their factories were liable to unannounced visits from third party safety inspectors (hired by the MNC’s) at any time. If these inspectors found anything unsatisfactory, the factory would get a warning, if they did not comply with changes immediately the factory will lose the business. All of these measures have been put in place as a result of demands by international customers on MNCs to take on some corporate social responsibility. This I found very interesting, in fact, I realized that the garment factories that cater to the domestic Indian market is where work on improving working conditions needs to be focused on. I feel that this change can only be brought about by the local consumer’s concern about the welfare of these workers. However,  in a country like India, where precarious jobs prevail and construction workers still wobble on bamboo branches in flip flops, it will be a long time before any serious action will be taken by local Indians. But life is surprising and anything can happen!

Our team was able to form fundamental relationships with our host organization that enabled us to get to know and understand garment communities in both Mysore as well as other cities in both the state of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in India. With our host partners we were able to interview garment workers in their own home and find out a little about their work and life; we did this as part of our data collection for our masters work in partnership with our host organization’s research project. This was definitely what made our internship so exciting! Also, while we were in India, the director of our host organization showed us an Indian magazine called  Frontline and on the cover of the magazine was an article about the high suicide rates of garment workers in Tirupur in Tamil Nadu. So, we decided to visit. Unfortunately, we were only able to visit one factory there and it wasn’t too telling of anything. However, we did get to visit the slum in which many of the garment workers lived and of course that was truly an experience I will never forget. I must note though that the resilience of these people are inspiring. The experience was also very overwhelming for all of the senses. Seeing people living in such harsh conditions inevitably makes you realize how good you really have it. Simple things like taps, running water and toilets in my own home, wow, these are luxuries that only the richest of the rich have in India. These are the social determinants of health that need to be addressed worldwide, the slums need to go. My experiences here have only escalated my interest in Global Health and my commitment to abolish social inequities.  This internship has really helped me understand and see first hand international development issues. Overall, I learned more than I could have hoped for about female garment workers in Mysore, India than I could have read about in  a million books. I learn by seeing and doing and this was definitely a once in a lifetime experience.

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