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• Will it go up in smoke? 

"My mother was a beedi worker and my three sisters were beedi workers. From childhood I've been watching their sorry plight; call it TB, cancer, asthma, I've seen it all. When my mother coughed up blood, it used to fill a vessel; she would always say these women require better and cleaner housing," recalls Narsayya Adam, a third-time CPI(M) MLA from Solapur city in Maharashtra.

That was 40 years ago. But when he was first elected MLA in 1978, he took on the mission of organising and improving the lives of Solapur's beedi workers. "They lived in small, cramped huts with no ventilation and open gutters. I dreamt of giving them good homes with better ventilation."

With a background of participation in the mazdoor andolan, he first raised the voice of Solapur's 65,000-odd beedi workers in the State Assembly in 1978, and with support in Delhi cutting across party lines, in 1985, about 3,000 houses were built by the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority, each costing Rs 22,000. The State and Central governments contributed Rs 5,000 each and the remaining came from the workers. "But they couldn't repay the money they had borrowed and the interest piled up," says Adam, known as 'Adam Master' as he once worked as a teacher. . . .

Archana is 11, just back from school and, still in her school uniform, helps her mother in tying up the rolled beedis. When you ask the little girl what she wants to become when she grows up, her grandma intervenes: "What is the use of educating her? People like us don't get jobs in fancy offices; for us beedis is our livelihood." But Archana wants to become a teacher.

"Now I'm waging a battle to get them below poverty line (BPL) cards; once they get those cards they will get 20 kg wheat and 15 kg rice every month. That will be a big help for beedi workers."

He says 60 per cent of Solapur's 65,000 beedi workers are Telugu-speaking, and there are many Muslim women too in this vocation. . . .

But he has read the writing on the wall. "The biggest question before us is the Anti-tobacco Bill of 2003 which aims to slowly kill this business. This is a 5,000-year old sanskriti; but if you put skulls and skeletons on the packet, how will people buy it? Our research shows that cigarette is much more harmful; smoking 20 beedis is like smoking one cigarette."

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