Under fierce heat and endless stacks of bricks, families put in long days inside India’s brick kilns. Many have travelled far from home simply to get by. Parents lift clay and fire bricks while their children grow up around dust, smoke, and open kilns. Burns are common. School slips away. For many, each day feels like a choice between staying alive and earning enough to get through.
Most workers come from states like Odisha, Punjab, Bihar, and Maharashtra. Advances promise steady income, so they arrive with hope. What they meet instead are unsafe sites, short pay, and cramped rooms that barely protect them. Over time, hope gives way to debt, and finding a way out begins to feel out of reach.
The Larger Context
India is the second-largest brick producer, and this sector employs over 2.1 million people. A large share of this workforce is believed to be trapped in debt bondage. As parents migrate with their families, schooling breaks. Nearly 80% of young children who live at kiln sites end up working there.
This moving population often stays unseen by welfare systems, so policies and protections rarely reach them. Brick kiln workers still lack a voice, even as they hold up the country’s construction economy.
Our Creative Intention
At Simit Bhagat Studios, we felt the need to make this hidden workforce visible and to stay with their daily reality. This independent project had a simple aim. To build empathy by witnessing. We wanted audiences not only to grasp the issue, but to feel its urgency.
Our aim was to show how deeply the kiln system touches families, incomes, health, and childhoods, using plain, honest visual storytelling.
Shaping the Film and the Visual Language
We chose a mixed media path using live action footage, still photographs, and a text based video narrative. Instead of voiceover, the film leans on quiet frames, gentle background music, and carefully placed on screen text.
We chose a mixed media path using live action footage, still photographs, and a text based video narrative.
The camera follows workers through daily routines inside the kilns. The text mirrors their world in simple, direct lines. This format lets the story breathe, giving space to each image and allowing the weight of these lives to settle without noise.
Using our in house video archive and on ground documentation, we built a visual record of living conditions, labour, and quiet endurance.
Check out the illustrated story of ‘India’s brick kiln workers choosing between life and livelihood’
What This Project Showed Us
This work reminded us how powerful quiet storytelling can be. Without dramatic narration or heavy explanation, the lives of brick kiln workers speak clearly, as their invisibility is not from lack of struggle, but from lack of attention.
We hope these stories prompt people, organisations, and institutions to look closer, speak up, and act with urgency for the rights and safety of brick kiln workers across India.
If this story stayed with you, and if you want to shine a light on urgent social issues through film, photography, and visual storytelling, reach out to us. We would love to help bring your story into the world with honesty and care.
Client: Independent Project
Discipline: Films and Photography
Director and Editor: Simit Bhagat
Illustrations: Kumar Shradhesh Nayak
