Extracted from The Day the Chariot Moved: How India Grows at the Grassroots by Subroto Bagchi and published by Penguin Business

After lunch that day in Tiruppur, accompanied by Chithra Arumugam, an IAS officer from Odisha who was in charge of the textile department, BN Das of ORMAS and a few other officers from Odisha, we went to Cotton Blossoms, a mid-size and very typical Tiruppur entrepreneurial story. This company, I was told, treats their workers very well. It was very evident to me on my arrival. A dozen girls, dressed in their very best, were waiting for me because they had been told someone big from their state was coming and that he wanted to chat with them. They were beaming. It was amazing to see them, dressed up in their finest clothes and jewellery; they did not show the strains you would normally see on displaced, migrant workers. Inside the conference room, we chatted over tea and biscuits.

I was warmly received by the owners, Milton Abraham John and Philomena John who I was told were one of the most progressive employers. It was quite evident from the walk-through and conversation with the management as well as groups of workers that the company valued its human capital and saw the linkage between employee satisfaction and global competitiveness. After the conversation at Cotton Blossoms, I was taken to Anugraha Fashions. I had heard about this company before. Its website opens with the line, ‘You can have anything you want in life, if you are dressed for it.’ It was a quote from Edith Head, the most awarded woman at the Academy Awards who had designed costumes for many old Hollywood movies.

Rows upon rows of sophisticated machines, all kinds of clothing in many different stages of production. Every worker at her station, quietly focused on her assigned task. Things moving like a clock’s hands. As we were walking around, I turned to my host and asked if I could meet someone who came here as an SMO but had worked her way up. He gestured at a young woman overseeing a bank of workers. ‘That one there,’ he said, ‘is a line supervisor. Her name is Basanti Pradhan.’ ‘Could I spend some time with her?’ I asked. ‘Why, of course, you could do that, sir,’ he told me. Basanti and I met in a small conference room. I asked her to tell me about herself from the very beginning. She told me that she came from a village near a place called Patnagarh. It instantly endeared her to me. I was born in Patnagarh, a subdivision of the Balangir district in western Odisha. There, my father was a junior-level government servant. It was almost seven decades ago. And this was the first time I had met somebody who was born around the same place. I felt a special kind of bond with her. Basanti’s father was a goatherd. She was the third child in a family of seven daughters. It was obvious that her parents were trying hard for a son. And that was never to be.

When her mother was pregnant for the third time, sympathetic villagers told her that this time around it was going to be a boy. But no. It was a girl. When Basanti grew up to hear that story, she told her father that she would be both a son and a daughter to him. It meant that she would tend the goats, take them to graze like boys her age did, but she would also climb trees to cut branches. She would then carry them on her shoulder on the way back home. Goats eat all night. While a girl could herd the goats, not every girl could climb trees to cut the branches like only boys could. The family managed life one day at a time. When the time came for the oldest daughter to get married, they found a suitable groom. With whatever money the family had, the girl was married off. This was around the time Basanti was studying in Class 8. Very soon, it was the second daughter’s turn to be married. But this time around, the family did not have much money left. Meanwhile, Basanti had gone up to her Class 10, but she failed in her examinations. I asked her what subject she had failed in. She said she couldn’t understand English and failed.

This is when she heard about the DDU-GKY training programme. A PIA called ILFS was mobilizing girls for SMO training in Balangir. She asked her parents’ permission to go there. Her parents would not agree. After all, sending a young girl from a village all the way to Balangir and then God knows where, was simply impossible. Basanti asked her father a defining question. She said, ‘You got your first daughter married. Now it is your second daughter’s turn. How will you marry her until and unless I go and earn some money?’ The reality sank in. Her parents agreed to send her to Balangir. And that is how Basanti started her training and eventually reached Tiruppur. Once she arrived in Tiruppur, she worked very hard. She diligently sent money home and got her sister married. But beyond it all, in Tiruppur, Basanti Pradhan was determined to chart her own life. She learnt the local language and impressed her supervisors with her work ethic. She was here to stay. Soon, her parents wanted to get her married because word was getting around in the village that the daughter has gone off to some place far away and was not getting married; who knew what indignity she would bring. Hence, it was more important for her to come back, get married and get ‘settled’. Money brought food, but marriage brought honour.

Basanti said no to her parents. She said she would get married, but she would get married only when she decided. And only after she had saved enough money for her trousseau. Eventually, she found someone who was also working in Tiruppur who happened to be a boy from the vicinity of her village. There was great joy in the family, but no sooner was the wedding over than both her parents and her in-laws wanted her to get pregnant. They wanted a child. In a village, if a young girl did not get pregnant, tongues wagged. It was a matter of disgrace for the husband. To prove a point about his manhood, the woman had to bear a child as soon as possible. Preferably a son. This time around, Basanti again said no to both her own parents and her in-laws. Yes, she would give them a grandchild, but it would happen only when she decided. Right now, it wasn’t a priority for her.

Extract published with permission from Penguin Random House.

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Published on January 25, 2026