The Politic

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Working in the Shadows: Mumbai’s Home-Based Female Artisans

Aadya Jain0

Image Credit: Marcel Crozet / ILO, Flickr, https://citizenmatters.in/the-exploits-of-piece-rate-work/.

Editor’s Note: This essay was submitted as part of The Politic’s 2026 High School Essay Competition. The author, Aadya Jain, is a senior at Oberoi International School in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

A price tag reveals a boutique garment cost, but remains silent about the hands that crafted it. In Mumbai’s fashion markets, the delicate luxury of hand embroidery, gold-threaded Zardozi or precise Ari is sustained not by modern factories, but by a hidden army of women working from home. Under a dim domestic bulb, these artisans painstakingly stitch together the fabric of India’s textile economy. Yet, as fast-fashion cycles compress margins, this economic pressure travels downward, trapping these invisible craftspeople in the deepest shadows of the supply chain.

In Mumbai, this workforce remains a statistical blind spot. Official datasets treat home-based work as an extension of unpaid domestic chores, causing what Ellina Samantroy terms ‘statistical invisibility.’ This erasure is framed by the World Bank’s finding of a staggering 57 percentage point gender gap in India’s labour force participation. Paired with three local perspectives from independent artisan Supriya, members of Mission Swayam Siddha, and export merchandiser Esther Johnson, the datasets expose the structural realities of this informal supply chain.

The Piece-Rate Trap

In her small Mumbai home, Supriya sits on a floor rug, guiding an Ari needle through taut fabric. She speaks with pride of a family legacy craft, making “an apparel comes to life with embroidery,” keeping handcraft “evergreen.” Specialising in Ari and Maggam needlework, she produces three patchworks in an afternoon. Thus, an elaborate saree needs over two days of bone-aching concentration.

Supriya’s workshop is a microcosm of a vast informal economy. WIEGO reports that India has 41.85 million home-based workers, 45% of whom work in textiles and garments. While the India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) notes that textiles employ over 45 million people, home-based artisans, despite sustaining India’s $4.56 billion craft market, remain scattered, isolated, and stripped of bargaining power.

Where the Money Disappears

This isolation leaves workers trapped in a piece-rate structure that systematically denies them standard labour protections. As Esther Johnson explains, “they are usually engaged through multiple contractor layers rather than directly by brands, forcing them to absorb overhead costs like electricity and needles from their own meagre earnings.”

This regulatory silence represents a structural failure of India’s recent labour updates. While the Code on Social Security (2020) consolidated nine laws, a legal critique by Arpita Ranjan and Aman Yadava in the International Journal for Legal Research and Analysis notes that it leaves subcontracted piece-rate homeworkers entirely undefined. As argued in The Wire, until official frameworks properly define home-based workers, their labour will be systematically ignored. This gap is further compounded by what Madhuri Kankipati identifies in India as a structural failure to formalise labour, where tying basic safeguards strictly to platform affiliation leaves the most isolated unorganised workers completely unprotected.

This legal vacuum directly drives the stark gender-based economic exploitation on the ground. Because the law’s silence shields brands from liability, contractors compress piece rates with impunity, resulting in massive wage disparities. National Statistical Office (NSO) data shows a monthly income gap of around $193 between self-employed men and women in million-plus cities, where men earn almost $314 and women nearly $123 a month. In Mumbai, this gap climbs to almost $345. Nationally, WIEGO figures show female home-based workers average barely $0.29 hourly, compared to $0.58 for men and well below the recommended daily minimum of $4.52.

The Order Chain

This wage erosion is structural, moving through a five-tier pipeline: 

Brand → Exporter → Contractor → Agent → Artisan. 

Intermediaries extract a cut at each link. Under strict target-costing models, brands demand low-cost, rapid delivery. Because labour is the only flexible expense, contractors squeeze piece rates to protect their own margins.

The resulting value capture is stark. In nearby Thane, a Citizen Matters report documented women assembling keychains for just Rs. 2.50 (approx. $0.03) per dozen. With retail prices at $0.12 to $0.24 each, middlemen capture over 95% of the value. For Supriya, seasonal festive spikes like Diwali bring welcomed income, but this labour offers no security or protection against the sudden, unpaid lulls that follow.

A Double Shift

Domestic care expectations also come into play. Focus group participants at Mission Swayam Siddha, an NGO in Mumbai’s informal settlements, explained how household chores consume their mornings, leaving only a brief window between 3:00 PM and 6:00 PM for commercial embroidery.

The NSO’s time-use data reflects this double shift since self-employed urban women average 35 working hours weekly compared to 52 for men. This care burden makes factory work inaccessible, leaving home-based piecework as their sole income source. Yet in cooperative spaces like Mission Swayam Siddha, women escape domestic isolation, learning from mentors and weaving solidarity into a shared struggle.

A Craft in Decline

This traditional livelihood is further threatened by automation. The women of Mission Swayam Siddha note that cheap, machine-made garments have eroded younger consumers’ appreciation for detailed handcraft. Johnson confirms that computerised embroidery machines have captured the mass market, relegating handwork to a niche luxury and bridal couture sector.

Even legal protections offer little shield. While India has secured Geographical Indication (GI) tags for techniques like Lucknow Chikankari and Kutch embroidery to convert traditional crafts into globally recognised brands and safeguard cultural heritage, as highlighted in the Press Information Bureau release in 2026, commercial benefits rarely trickle down. A First Resort report highlights this ‘identity-wage paradox’: GI tags legally safeguard heritage, but do nothing to raise wages for isolated workers disconnected from the registered producer groups that capture the GI premium.

What Reform Would Take

Dismantling this invisibility requires supply-chain accountability. To integrate these workers into India’s formal economy, Esther Johnson suggests three practical steps.

First, she recommends establishing a simplified digital registration system linked directly to supply chains, making it feasible to extend basic social security. Second, mandating supply-chain transparency, requiring brands to disclose subcontracting tiers beyond primary factories to expose outsourced homeworking workshops. Third, setting regional piece-rate benchmarks in consultation with artisan groups to prevent underbidding. For brands, Johnson emphasises that these measures are realistic because they build on existing structures, bolstering traceability and supply-chain resilience.

Precedents prove reform is possible. SEWA has spent decades demonstrating how bottom-up organisation challenges exploitation. Indeed, as Al Jazeera reports, on the 30th anniversary of the ILO Home Work Convention (Convention 177), India’s home-based workers are still demanding equal rights with factory employees. SEWA’s milestone achievements prove what collective action can accomplish, as in 1986, the union negotiated minimum wage baselines for garment stitching. In 2014, they launched the physical SEWA Artisan House, a dedicated producer hub enabling female artisans to sell directly to premium markets, bypassing the commission-taking middlemen who historically swallowed their earnings.

Mumbai’s fashion industry continues to rest on the shoulders of unrecorded home-based women. While modern discourses on ethical fashion highlight sustainable fabrics and carbon footprints, they remain silent on the human hands that embroider the luxury on the racks. For artisans like Supriya, working on a floor rug in Mumbai, the reality of the industry is still written in that quiet, precarious space.

Works Cited

  1. Supriya. Mumbai Home-based Artisan. (2026, July). Personal Interview conducted by Aadya Jain. Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
  2. Johnson, Esther (Chief Merchandiser). (2026, July). Expert Consultation on Supply Chain Merchandising and Labor Policy conducted by Aadya Jain. Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
  3. Mission Swayam Siddha NGO Focus Group. (2026, July). Group Interview with Embroidery and Cross-Stitch Artisans conducted by Aadya Jain. Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
  4. Singh, Mandeep. (2025, July 9). Gaping gender pay disparity among self-employed in India’s big cities. Women earn half of what men make. The Print. https://theprint.in/india/gaping-gender-pay-disparity-among-self-employed-in-indias-big-cities-women-earn-half-of-what-men-make/2981997/ 
  5. Raveendran, Govindan. (2020, June). Home-Based Workers in India: A Statistical Profile (WIEGO Statistical Brief No. 23). Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising (WIEGO). https://www.wiego.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/WIEGO_Statistical_Brief_N23_India%20for%20web_0.pdf 
  6. Lalita, T. (2023, January 10). Hidden, unsung, Mumbai’s piece rate workers toil away for meagre returns. Citizen Matters. https://citizenmatters.in/the-exploits-of-piece-rate-work/ 
  7. Anuja. (2026, June 20). As ILO convention turns 30, India’s home-based workers demand equal rights. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/6/20/as-ilo-convention-turns-30-indias-home-based-workers-demand-equal-rights 
  8. Nandi, Rajib, Datta, Ayesha, and Kaur, Gurpreet.(2019, March 26). Until We Properly Define Home-Based Workers, Their Labour Will Be Ignored. The Wire. https://thewire.in/labour/until-we-properly-define-home-based-workers-their-labour-will-be-ignored 
  9. Ranjan, Arpita, & Yadava, Aman. (2024, October). Challenges and Solutions for Implementing Social Security for Unorganized Workers in India: A Critical Analysis of the Code on Social Security, 2020. International Journal for Legal Research and Analysis. https://www.ijlra.com/details/challenges-and-solutions-for-implementing-social-security-for-unorganized-workers-in-india-a-critical-analysis-of-the-code-on-social-security-2020-authored-by-adv-arpita-ranjan-adv-aman-yadava 
  10. Bachchan, Ramola. (2026, June 9). India’s Handcraft & Embroidery Economy 2026 | Report. First Resort. https://www.firstresort.in/blogs/research/handcraft-embroidery-economy-india-2026 
  11. Textile industry in India, leading yarn manufacturers in India – IBEF. (n.d.). India Brand Equity Foundation. https://www.ibef.org/industry/textiles 
  12. Samantroy, Ellina. (2019, November 22). The Invisible Workers: Capturing Home-based Work in India. Antyajaa: Indian Journal of Women and Social Change, 4(1), 1-28. SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.1177/2455632719880848 
  13. World Bank. (2022, January 10). Female labor force participation. World Bank Gender Data Portal. https://genderdata.worldbank.org/en/data-stories/flfp-data-story 
  14. Kankipati, Madhuri. (2026, June 4). Platform Affiliation Must Not Determine Domestic Workers’ Labour Rights. Feminism in India. https://feminisminindia.com/2026/06/04/platform-affiliation-must-not-determine-domestic-workers-labour-rights/ 
  15. Lally, Brij and Agarwal, Anurag. (2026, May 6). Social enterprises integrating Indian artisans into global supply chains. Journal of Social Review and Development, 5(1), 27-30. https://doi.org/10.64171/JSRD.5.S1.27-30 
  16. Press Information Bureau. (2026, January 23). Geographical Indication (GI) tags converting traditional craftsmanship and agricultural heritage. Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2294126&reg=48&lang=1