In Bangalore alone, there are over 600,000 garment workers employed in factories that export garments to large, global brands such as GAP, Reebok and Adidas. Mallige is a film about the lives of garment workers inside and outside the factory space. While she spends most of her time at a factory, the film in an intimate exchange of words, sound and image, attempts to get at a sense of her life – from innocence to experience. The film is an expression to show the precarity of her everyday life at the factory and at home against the backdrop her belief systems and daily rituals.
Efforts to unionise garment workers is growing in the city: to combat low wages, sexual harassment at the workplace, non payment for overtime, lack of creche facilities and unpaid leave among others.