7 - Technology: Tanneries, Tanners, and Technological Injustices

Summary

Technology plays a crucial role in mediating the interaction between society, labour, and nature. In a broader sense, the history of technology reflects the evolving attitudes of humans towards labour and nature. The dominant socio-cultural factors in a society significantly influence the development of technology, technological sciences, and education, and the strategies employed in transforming the natural world. One important principle that shapes technological application and innovation across various industrial sectors in India is the casteist materialist conception of the relationship between labour, work, and nature. This conception perceives this relationship as a natural, static, and fixed phenomenon, rather than a dynamic and evolving process. According to this view, the interaction between labour and nature is shaped by caste-based cultural and historical processes, with its specific content and course determined by the hereditary occupation and skill of Dalits. In practice, the combination of caste domination and capital constantly seeks to control and regulate the exchange of technology and knowledge between labour and the physical environment, which ultimately proves detrimental to both Dalits and the environment. This approach hampers progress and perpetuates inequalities, hindering the positive impact of technology on society, labour, and nature as a whole. The leather industry in Kanpur, along with the associated technology and the age-old involvement of Dalit labour, serves as a prominent example that illustrates the aforementioned scenario.

Jajmau, an industrial suburb of Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, is well known for leather tanneries. Located on the banks of the river Ganga and administered under the Kanpur metropolitan area, its tanneries have been doing good business since long – generating INR 15,000 crore of revenue every year and accounting for the country's 30 per cent of leather export. Tanning is the process of treating skins and hides of animals to produce leather, and tanneries are the places where the skins are processed. Tannery workers are Dalits – mainly Chamars – and low-caste or low-skill Muslims. Kanpur, founded in the early eighteenth century, became an important commercial and military hub in British India and after independence, it came to be known as the industrial and financial capital of Uttar Pradesh, and a producer of fine quality leather and textile products.