The bangle makers of Firozabad have spent generations working around furnaces. Every other family in Firozabad is engaged in making bangles. They sit around lamps welding glass, making bangles for all the women in the land.
These families are caught in the web of poverty. They are burdened by the stigma of caste. They believe that they are born to this caste and thus bangle making is a god given lineage, out of which they can never imagine a life. They cannot organize themselves into cooperatives for fear of the police. Individual bangle makers are always cought in the vicious circle of the middlemen and the sohukars. This vicious circle exploits them so much that they are left with so less money that they have only enough to engage in bangle making. They cannot afford to have two meals a day. Thus they live in abject poverty.