A product rolls out exactly every two minutes from various centres. It is not an MNC in any industrial corridor churning out products. It happens in the 130 prisons across Tamil Nadu. And the workers are all convicts. The brand name, ironically, is Freedom Bazaar.
In the past 11 months, Freedom Bazaar in the seven prisons netted a revenue of Rs. 2 crore by selling bread, chips, pickles, painting, sculptures and vegetables, to name a few. All these products are priced lesser than the market price.
That is not all. The convicts also do carpentry, tailoring, shoe-making and so on. Soon, they will start making LED lights and fabrics, too.
Overall, the total business at the prisons is Rs. 13.25 crore so far this year.
“More Freedom Bazaars are in the offing, but that depends on the demand,” says a senior official of the Prisons Department. “There is a perception that inmates only break stones, plough fields and cook food. This is not a movie. There is much more that happens at prisons,” he says. Soon, there will be an exhibition of paintings and sculptures of the convicts.
According to Prison Statistics India, annual reports brought out by the National Crime Records Bureau, in 2009 and 2010, Tamil Nadu was placed seventh in gross earnings from products of inmates.
In the past three years, the revenue has tripled from Rs. 4 crore to about Rs. 12 crore in 2013.
“Corporate houses are also training inmates and give them jobs. For instance, a big IT firm has funded a project to train inmates in making sanitary napkins. More than 50,000 such napkins have been sold to the government,” another senior official says.
Of the 15,000 inmates across the State, 7,000 undertake various jobs made mandatory. For the rest, it is optional. “But even among the remaining 8,000, almost 60 per cent of them come forward to do work while the rest opt for vocational courses,” the official notes.
The skilled prisoners earn Rs. 100 a day, the semi-skilled Rs. 80 and the unskilled Rs. 60. The wages get credited to their accounts. They can either send the money to their families or save it for themselves.
The next big plan is to set up BPOs in prison. “We are working on it. In 2015, you can get to see some BPOs operational. Data entry work is what we are planning for,” a senior official says.
