Thirty deaths in two easily avoidable accidents in less than a week have not slowed India's fireworks industry.
Just 11 years old, Noor Fatima toils 20 hours a day stuffing fire-crackers with gunpowder and binding them up with thread before other girls, some as young as eight, pack the 'bombs' and rockets in colourful cardboard boxes under a tin shed at Usthi village, 60km from Calcutta.
Shrugging off the blasts in Hyderabad and Villiuram in Tamil Nadu last week which left 30 dead, including eight illegally employed children, India's 10 billion rupees (HK$1.61 billion) fireworks industry has quietly slipped into top gear to meet demand before the most important Hindu religious festival - Diwali - which will be celebrated next Monday.
The high-profit industry continues to exploit children with impunity, particularly young girls such as Noor, who earns just 30 rupees a day for the back-breaking work handling dangerous chemicals and inhaling toxic fumes without gloves or masks.
According to the South Asia Coalition of Child Servitude, a leading non-governmental organisation, the ratio of girls to boys in the industry is eight to two, because girls are considered more dispensable than boys in the male-dominated society, and many poor families force girls to find jobs to raise cash for their dowries.
The coalition also has calculated the industry saves more than 60 million rupees in labour costs by hiring children instead of adults.
