Jungle Sisters

Migrants from the rural areas of India now make up a significant percentage of the labour force in India. Seduced by the opportunity to be independent, many hopeful young women like best friends Bhanu and Bhutu try their luck working for garment factories. As part of a wider recruitment and training scheme, these factories are monitored by mediating advocates such as British academic Orlanda. Her task is to bring in women from the impoverished countryside to Bangalore and other manufacturing centres, where she believes they can be “empowered” by the national economic boom. Yet the women’s relative inexperience leave them terribly susceptible to exploitation, a fact that has put Orlanda’s capitalist optimism to the test. Documentary maker Chloe Ruthven, who also happens to be the protagonist’s sister, follows Orlanda as she and her gaggle of precarious workers are confronted with the brutal reality of sweatshop conditions and deliberate corporate negligence.