Sayajirao’s penitentiary turns into unique industry

VADODARA, June 28: Maharaja Sayajirao would have approved. More than a century after he set up the Baroda Central Jail, it seems less a pris...

VADODARA, June 28: Maharaja Sayajirao would have approved. More than a century after he set up the Baroda Central Jail, it seems less a prison and more a treasurehouse of talent and industry.

Confined to limited space, with empty hours to fill, inmates of the BCJ have turned their hands to producing a variety of items — furniture of sal and sagun, textile items, boot polish and even pakodas and bhajiyas — adding up to annual sales of crores of rupees. Recently, they were contracted to supply furniture worth Rs 10 lakhs to the Sardar Sarovar Project.

In fact, the State government has recently supplied a list of items manufactured at BCJ to all the government departments so that they might them from the jail itself.

Among its clients are the police and forest departments, which have asked for khaki clothes, boots, belts, rifle slings, durries and furniture.Not just the government departments, the prisoners, too, stand to benefit from the work, as they are paid for their labour, and can even transmit 50 per cent of their earnings to their dependents outside the jail, while spending the rest of themselves, as the jail manual requires.

Such was the incentive that the prisoners worked overtime to complete the SSP order 12 days before the deadline.

The small-scale units within the jail notched up an annual turnover of Rs 2.49 crore for 1997-98, while the net profit came to Rs 15.09 lakh. The 1996-97 turnover was Rs 2.43 crore and the net profit Rs 18.34 lakh.

The weaving section earned the most this year, earning Rs 95.44 lakhs, followed by the tailoring section (Rs 50.93 lakh), carpentry (Rs 42.08 lakh), printing (Rs 24.07 lakh), chemicals (Rs 20.24 lakh), bakery (Rs 7.62 lakh) and leather sections (Rs 7.16 lakh).

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According to Jail Superintendent R N Meena, the State government had recently granted Rs 5.5 lakh to modernise and buy equipment for the weaving and carpentry sections.

“Many of the 600 prisoners employed in the various units were untrained when they came in, but have developed skills through hard work and dedication. Besides earning them money, this work will also stand them in good stead once they are released”, he said, adding that practically all the prisoners — and not just the ones sentenced to rigourous imprisonment — lent a hand in the jail’s own industries.

“The import of prison work has changed over the years. While it may have been a form of punishment in the past, now it is a feasible way of generating income for the prison”, the superintendent said, adding that it was tough for the government to foot all the bills.