India Glass

[glassshack]

repost from the melting pot: interesting watch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPjDU...el_video_title

makes me think it's where you can find Devardi

[28676bhe]

Ouch! My legs are all twisted and my back hurts from just watching this! OSHA would go ballistic!

Barbara

[deb tarry]

wow very interesting.

[VivianLampwork]

They said in the video that working conditions were good for India standards. Also, they pay is considered very good. Look on the labels of things around your house & the clothes you wear. Most are made in foreign countries. Sure, those working conditions are bad in comparison to what we have in the USA, but what would happen to those people if they didn't have those jobs?

[wickedglass]

this video is somewhat legendary in glassblowing circles and it's been around for a fairly long time, I'm pretty sure this is not Devardi. There are quite a few companies like this around India along with many bead and bangle making factories. I posted a couple of other vids I found over the last year in the same thread ramanglass posted the glass India thread of the process of beadmaking and bangle making over there.
Apart from the obvious health issues from carrying heavy things, repetetive strain, burns from catching hot blowpipes in the wrong spot, have a look at their furnacemen and batchmakers. None of them are wearing masks or respirators.
Back in the day, when batching in Europe was carried out in a similar way without protection, the average lifespan of a batcher was to about 40 years of age, give or take a few years, due to high incidences of silicosis in the lungs. The life of a glassblower wasn't much longer, because they worked in close proximity to the batchers.
What do you think the lifespan of one of these Indian batchers would be, counting bad nutrition and exposure to other, unrelated to glass, illness?

[wickedglass]

Originally Posted by VivianLampwork

They said in the video that working conditions were good for India standards. Also, they pay is considered very good. Look on the labels of things around your house & the clothes you wear. Most are made in foreign countries. Sure, those working conditions are bad in comparison to what we have in the USA, but what would happen to those people if they didn't have those jobs?

^ you have a point to some degree, but that doesn't make it right to have people working in such unhealthy, even deadly, conditions. Do you think there's much in the way of insurance, income protection or healthcare if one of these workers injures himself/herself in the course of making a 10c bangle?
Also, what caste do you think these workers belong to? They, and their children and their grand children are destined to this kind of work according to the very strict caste system in India, never to have the opportunity to rise to anything higher than what they are now ... people seem to forget about that when talking about India. It's not a place I'm interested in ever going to!