CHENNAI : Saptingala?" After a five-year spell as a migrant worker, Suman is well versed with the Tamil words for “Have you eaten?".
It is a question that his friends often ask each other on the factory floor in Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu, the country’s largest garments hub.
Suman, a man in his early 20s from Jeypore in Orissa, has made thousands of T-shirts and pants at the garment manufacturing unit where he works. “I don’t know where the clothes go or who ends up wearing them.
If I do the work, I get paid," he said. Suman makes ₹3,800-4,000 a week. Or at least, he did—till 21 March, the day he picked up his last salary.