By Girish Linganna
Indian hair is lustrous, wavy, bouncy and lightweight, making it so popular for wigs and hair extensions. Each month, lakhs of devotees at the Tirupati Balaji temple donate their hair to the service of the Lord. At a rough estimate, devotees from all over the world donate 500-600 tons of human hair is donated at the Tirupati temple each year.
The finest quality of Indian hair, known as ‘remy hair’, is collected from the temples in southern India where women shave their heads as it is popularly believed that donating hair helps get rid of ego and sins. Remy hair has the cuticles still intact, which makes it look more natural and last longer. But much of the hair India exports is not of the finest quality… It is leftover hair that is often scavenged from beauty parlours, or bought, or bartered from poorer women in exchange for cash, utensils, or trinkets.
At Habi Chak village, in East Midnapore district of West Bengal state, a woman named Hasina, 35, works for five hours a day to untangle human hair. She sorts the hair into strands and makes balls with the pieces that are longer than 6 inches. She throws away the rest of the hair. She earns 7,500 rupees (US$92) per month for untangling about 25kg of hair. Hasina had never thought she could make money from waste human hair. But now, she sells waste hair to collectors and earns a stable income.
Many poor women in West Bengal state of India work in the human hair industry. They collect and sell waste hair to make money. The waste hair industry is worth about $1 billion and West Bengal accounts for almost half of India’s human hair exports.
Hair traders collect hair balls from people like Hasina, then wash, split and arrange them by size at small workshops. The hair in the balls can be from 4 to 40 inches long. Straightening the hair involves using strands of the same length and thickness from root to tip. The processed hair is then exported to such destinations as China, the US and Europe, where it is used to make wigs and other hair products. These countries are the largest buyers of Indian hair.
In the past, Chinese companies bought hair from Indian businesses for about $200 per kilogram. They used the hair to make wigs, extensions, eyelashes, paint brushes and fake beards and mustaches for the global market.
Chinese companies now hire local agents to buy bundles of hair from Indian traders for a much lower price—anything from US$60 to US$70 per kilogram. The hair is then smuggled into Bangladesh, where it is sold for a higher price. This is causing India to lose out on tax revenue. In 2021 alone, border forces seized almost 400 kilograms of smuggled hair. After the hair balls are smuggled into Bangladesh, they are processed in local workshops and then sent to China. Sometimes, the hair balls are transported to China through Myanmar. Unscrupulous traders smuggle hair to avoid paying duties and taxes of around 30% on the import value.
Human hair was smuggled from India into Myanmar as early as in 2012. In the past five years, Chinese importers have set up processing plants in Bangladesh using cheap local labour. This has led to an increase in the smuggling of hair into Bangladesh. Over the past three years, 561,000 Indians have lost their jobs due to smuggling. This is because numerous small hair-processing workshops have shut down in West Bengal, New Delhi, Rajasthan, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
Human hair smuggling is a new challenge for India’s border security forces. They are already struggling to intercept cattle, gold and narcotics traffickers along the 4,096 km border with Bangladesh. Border security officials have seized 350 kg of human hair on the borders of West Bengal so far this year, while 1,104 kg was impounded last year.
A 55-year-old woman in Kolkata sells her waste hair for Rs 5,000 (US$61) a kilogram to female hair collectors who regularly come to her door. The price of hair increased from Rs 2,000 per kilogram in 2018 to Rs 5,000 per kilogram currently due to increased demand.
Local traders often make deals with agents working for Chinese importers who pay in cash or through the hawala network, an informal system for transferring money that is illegal in India. Local traders can smuggle drugs and gold into India because they pay in cash or through the hawala network. On the other hand, Indian exporters pay only through bank transfers for larger transactions.
India is expected to miss out on a large share of the global market for wigs and human hair, which is estimated to reach US$13.3 billion by 2026. This is due to rampant trafficking of hair in the country. Corrupt Chinese traders are able to sell Indian hair at lower prices than Indian exporters because they evade taxes. Smaller Chinese importers are more likely to smuggle hair to bypass taxes. Most large importers are legitimate businesses. China’s hair trade relies on India’s supply.
While Indian exporters have been losing money, Bangladesh’s official hair exports have increased. Bangladesh exported US$113 million worth of wigs and human hair between July 2022 and May 2023. This is an increase from the US$95.5 million exported over the same period in 2022.
China is selling products made of Indian hair in the global market, which is taking profits away from India. Chinese companies make more profit from wigs and hair extensions because they use advanced machines. Indian companies make less profit because their products do not match Chinese standards. China’s profit margin is about US$300 per kg, whereas India gets only a margin of US$200 per kg.
The Indian hair industry could be boosted by using state-of-the-art technology and employing wig and extension experts from Europe and South Korea. Because of Indian government regulations, it has now become mandatory for all human hair exporters to get a trading licence, but some trafficking history-sheeters still manage to get the paperwork they need done.
Members of the hair industry association have urged the government to instruct village councils to collect hair balls from households and sell them only to Indian exporters. The money from the sales would be used for local development and sanitation.
The border forces are struggling to stop smuggling on their own. The Border Security Force has a zero-tolerance policy towards trafficking, but they need to upgrade the border fences with CCTV cameras to ensure that nobody escapes notice.
Meanwhile, Hasina spends her days untangling piles of waste hair for very little money. She does not know who will eventually wear the hair or how it will get to them. (IPA Service)
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