Why I am angry at, and not angry with, my city Bangalore

"He would never look at us in the eye. Only his eyes would scan us up to down, then... down and back all the way up."

The words of Sujatha (name changed) still rings in my ears. In her late 20s, working as daily-wager at a garment factory in Bangalore's Peenya, the industrial suburb that houses a large chunk of small and medium scale industries, Sujatha was giving me an insight into a day in the life of a garment worker.

I was reporting those days for a national television news channel, and had been working on ground reports on the plight of garment factory women, a workforce that constitutes an unseen chunk of the snazzy IT city Bangalore.

Assured that I would shoot only a silhouette of hers so that her identity would be protected, Sujatha opened up to us on this creature that is a constant in the industry, the supervisor, most often male, whose job it is to keep an eye on the batches of women cutting cloth, patching, sewing away on machines all day, and beyond.

"The only thing we women would do is to try being together in a group when he was around, and never be caught alone, especially when the shift was ending."

A princely sum of 3,000 rupees per month was what she and her women batch-mates got paid.

But now it turns out that the measly salary and the appalling work conditions aren't the only harassments women like Sujatha had to put up with.

A fear of losing - or being not able to access EPF, the Employee Provident Fund, even in case of an emergency - had been running high among workers right across the garment industry sector ever since Arun Jaitley proposed that the EPF share could be drawn only when an employee turned 58.

That, for most of India's working class, is too long a wait. Provident Fund has barely ever been looked at a retirement saving option, as much as it has been perceived as a pullout-able handy chunk of money, when a parent or spouse lies critical in a hospital, when a child needs to be admitted to college or married off. Blocking that off, making it off-limits, can be the last straw for an already crushed workforce.

Less than 7km from where I live in north Bangalore, at the bustling Jalahalli Cross, on Tuesday afternoon a state transport bus burned - sending up fearsome toxic black embers, almost engulfing the Tumkur Road flyover right above it.

Chances are, like me, you too watched this image on loop on your TV set, Live, nonstop on television. Disturbing images also of cops manhandling women protestors - women with anger and anxiety writ large on their faces. This, a day after this city of ours had a 10-hour block on Hosur Road (the one that leads to the Electronics City, which houses Infosys, Wipro and other global IT majors).

This is the first time in all my years in Bangalore, as a student and later as journalist, that I have seen something that has even remotely brought together hi-tech Electronics City with its poor cousin Peenya.

The uniting factor is a rather sad one though: the protest by Bangalore's garment workers.

Bangalore has an estimated 12 lakh workers (some papers say 5 lakh, and there is no authentic survey figure) who work in some 800 garment units. Like Sujatha, the workers are mostly women - migrants pouring into Bangalore to escape a bleak future in their villages.

Their working conditions are near-slavish: sexual exploitation and physical abuse by their managers is almost a given. Leaving behind children either in their homes or back in their villages, the women often stay a dozen to a "house" - mostly a single room with a shared toilet - as cheaply, and as close to their factory, as possible.

As part of the special television report that I mentioned I was working on, I tried to get access to the owners of these units to hear their take. An activist friend of mine then connected me to a few women leaders - who somehow sneaked in my photojournalist colleague and me to talk to some of the workers, one among whom was Sujatha.

What are known as "warehouses" for global big brands are actually dingy, crammed, dirty sweatshops. The garment workers, who work anywhere between 9 to 14 hours a day, are not allowed to even go to the toilet half the time and certainly not without the supervisor's nod.

Payment is peanuts of course, but dignity drops to the absolute minus.

Unions were almost non-existent. I spoke to labour law specialists who said the right to protest is a joke, there are fewer and fewer cases in courts, and certainly not because they have nothing to complain about. Even the number of labour courts has come down - from six a few years back to three when I last spoke to the lawyer.

Maybe that's why when the day before I read reports on and watched how "garment workers have brought Bangalore to its knees", my sympathy remained with the "inconvenience-causing" party.

The PF issue is only the tipping point for anger built up over several years now. Possibly, there is greater awareness among the workers and even the courage to come out and protest - despite the risk of losing their jobs and livelihood.

The sad thing though is that this protest - burning of public property - is futile and with the government now putting the new plans on hold, the workers will have no excuse but to go right back to their pitiable pigeonholes, this time with even fewer chances of escape.

Beware, there is a tear in that designer garment you wearing.