The prolonged COVID-19 lockdown led to the temporary or permanent closure of many manufacturing industries, what with restricted movement and acute shortage of raw materials and manpower. But there was one ‘industry’ that sustained productivity and never let go the tempo — the prison industry of Tamil Nadu, in which the workers are convicts, most of them serving life imprisonment.
While the lockdown had curtailed personal audiences with family members, the convicts lodged in central prisons sustained operations all through the peak of the pandemic with in-house production in the leather, textile, boot, book-binding, carpentry, tailoring and other units. This helped the Tamil Nadu Prisons & Correctional Services Department surge ahead of other States in earning revenue for the sixth consecutive year.
The prison industry primarily caters to the needs of government departments such as Health, Police and Education and works on orders. Over the years, the prison authorities have focussed on imparting skills to the inmates to make them employable and facilitate their merger with the mainstream workforce on their release.
