In a hot, crowded room in Salem city, Soundarya, 23, and her mother Kamala work like automatons methodically placing little silver flower designs on a pre-made cast of a silver anklet. Looking up momentarily from their painstaking job, Ms. Soundarya says she has been employed at the makeshift silver anklet manufacturing factory for the last three years.
“At first, the work was extremely difficult to learn, but with time and patience, anyone can pick it up in a few months,” she adds. Ms. Soundarya and her mother are permanent workers in the workshop, though in other workshops, workers are paid on the basis of the number of anklets they make each day.
The two are among an estimated 1.5 lakh-plus workers turning out silver anklets in 168 villages around the city.
