Unseasonal shower drowns brick kiln workers' livelihoods

Experts argue the burden of climate-linked disruptions must not be passed onto the workers

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"Just one spell of rain, and a week’s work is gone,” said Ramvati, sitting beside a half-formed row of soggy bricks outside her home in the western UP village of Nanau.

She and her husband had molded 1,600 bricks over two days — none of them counted, none paid for. The light drizzle lasted only a few hours, but it wiped out five days of their wages.

March to June are traditionally the most productive months for brick kiln workers in western Uttar Pradesh, as the clear, scorching days provide ideal conditions for drying molded bricks under the open sky.

But in recent years, that critical window has been lost due to unseasonal rains and hailstorms.

The rest of the days were marked by cloudy skies, high humidity, or sudden rain —con ditions that turned drying fields into slush and halted production repeatedly.

As a result, workers lost not only bricks but also their most profitable working weeks of the season.