Thousands of Indian auto workers are losing fingers to unsafe factories

The report, titled Crushed, covered 7,500 auto workers in Maharashtra and Haryana who have suffered non-fatal injuries since 2019 and sought SII’s help to get benefits under the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) benefits. ESIC is a government social security and health insurance scheme for registered workers, designed to protect them and their dependants from financial distress because of sickness, disability, maternity break, or death at work.

SII’s growing database aims to plug the data gap that exists over accidents and injuries in the industrial sector, but it is not a national-level dataset and does not reflect the pan-India trend. “Crushed reports have covered Haryana since 2019 and Maharashtra since 2022, based on when our worker assistance centres were established there,” said VN Saroja, head of worker safety at SII.

Crushed injuries

The latest edition of the survey said there were at least 875 injuries in automobile supply chains in 2024, and 69.7% of these were ‘crushed injuries’ (lost fingers). Crushed injuries have surpassed other types of injuries, though their share in overall non-fatal injuries documented by SII fell from 85.3% in 2019 to 69.7% last year, it said.

Both Haryana and Maharashtra fared equally poorly on crush injuries. In Maharashtra, 80% of auto workers lost a body part at the workplace between 2022 and 2024, and 78% suffered a similar fate in Haryana from 2019 to 2024.

The latest government data from the Directorate General Factory Advice Service and Labour Institutes shows there were 56.9 fatal injuries per million workers and 154 non-fatal injuries per million workers in 2023. Industry-wise data is not available.

The reported said the typical injured worker is a migrant youth with a level of education. About 60% of injured workers assisted by SII had left their studies between Class V and X. In contrast, only 4% of injured workers had a graduate degree or diploma. About 87% of injured workers in Haryana were migrants, and 62% in Maharashtra.

Disregard for safety

Power press machines and the lack of proper safety equipment for workers are the primarily reasons for crushed injuries, the report said. Power press machines, 78% of crushed injuries last year, also cause more serious injury than other machines in auto factories, it said. Power presses are machines used to cut and give shape to metal sheets.

“Crushed injury in power press machines is more severe as it results in a greater number of finger losses in case of accident/malfunction,” the report said.

A lack of safety gear compounds the problem, SII said. More than 70% of the workers it said they were not given protective gear such as safety tongs, earplugs and protection guards.

The Economic Survey 2024-25 had also highlighted the issue, noting India’s manufacturing (11.4% of the total workforce) and construction (12%) workers were prone to workplace accidents.