India's growing shoe industry relies on women who work from home, earn less than the minimum wage and lack any legal rights, activists said, urging companies importing from India to check their supply chains for signs of labor exploitation...While factories in the area employ people at higher salaries to assemble the shoes, manufacturers find it cheaper to outsource the labor intensive process of stitching uppers to women who work from home, using middlemen, the campaigners said...By doing this, they circumvent all labor norms that would ensure that the homeworkers had guaranteed work and basic rights under Indian labor laws," Gopinath Parakuni, general secretary of Cividep India...These women from poor and marginalized communities ... are part of a clandestine production that exploits their vulnerability," said Parakuni, who campaigns on workers' rights and corporate accountability.