As snarky desis, we use mirchi constantly, in both our writing and our food. However, there is a human face to all this heat:
In temperatures of over 45 degrees, 80 year-old Rajima sits under an asbestos roof preparing chillies for export to Britain. For eight hours at a stretch her aching fingers pluck the stalks from the red chilli pods, releasing a pungent dust that fills her nose and throat making her cough and sneeze. For this, she earns 30 rupees, the equivalent of 40 pence, or less than a third of the cost of a small jar of chilli powder in a British supermarket. Rajima and her 50 co-workers are the hidden face of India’s spice trade. [BBC]
Think about the effects to Rajima’s health from all of this exposure to pepper. Pepper farmers and processors go through alot and earn very little:
Watching his produce weighed at Warangal market, one farmer complains that the 800 rupees he’s getting for each 40 kilo sack is too little to cover the growing costs. “I took huge loans for agricultural investment – mostly pesticides,” he says. “Now there will be no alternative for me but to commit suicide”. [BBC]
Furthermore, demand for pepper is down, due to a recent food scare concerning a food coloring carcinogenic additive. Bad weather has spoiled much of the Indian pepper crop, causing desi farmers to lose business to those in other countries. It’s a rough life for farmers from Andhra Pradesh.
According to state records, 4,500 farmers have killed themselves in the past seven years, driven to despair by poor harvests and financial worries, and that figure would be far higher if other family members were included. The epidemic of suicide started with cotton farmers but it is now spread to spice growers. Ironically, most die by swallowing the pesticides that have helped get them into debt.[BBC]
I’d like to say something cute about how there should be increased demand coming from Assam where they use chili to ward off wild elephants —
In the past 15 years, elephants have killed more than 600 people in Assam… elephants cannot stand some pungent chilli varieties … so chilli smoke bombs and ropes smeared with chillies may keep the elephants away [BBC]
— but honestly, no jokes about how Republicans are allergic to spice can take the tragedy out of the story above.
So please, next time you add some mirchi, or even use it as a metaphor, take a moment to remember the people who make it possible.
I guess the next step is to fire the mirchi workers and extract it through machine. Faster. More efficient. Heavily subsidized. And you’re paying for it. Next time I go to India I’m getting a copy of that naseeruddin shah film where he gets mirchi bombed by 20 women at the end. I think it was a Ketan Mehta film. And Om Puri was in it too. Damn that was a phunny film.
Farmers comitting suicide? Good riddance. Who needed those village idiots anyway? Less population’s gotta be a good thing too. I don’t see what the problem is. Now all we need is to get a few mass suicides going and we’re all set.
Its amazing how people can develop a sense of humor about tragidies like these, innit?
Try making such a joke about breast cancer/testicular cancer in front of Americans. And yeah, that yellow Armstrong Foundation wristband looks spiffy on you.
Ummmmm…. 1) I’m an Indian from India (who is too cowardly to expose his real identity) 2) These farmers don’t have testicular cancer. They just aren’t doing so well in their chosen profession – this happens after they get free power and government grants. And for that, they are committing suicide. Guess what – real people find other ways and means of living. Everbody has debt, and everybody goes through failure in business. Making it sound like these particular people are desperate is just an example of the rampant victimisation that happens in India all the time. In fact, I’m willing to wager that somebody with testicular cancer probably has more of a will to live and will try to fight on than some of these fucking pussy farmers. I’ll start appreciating them when I have to stop paying higher income tax, stop suffering through power cust and water shortages due the rampant abuse that these poor poor victims abuse all the fucking time.
Thanks for the (really, really sad) post, ennis. Despite having done “anti-sweatshop” work before and having visited garment workers in Bangladesh, I never really thought about the working conditions and lives of mirchi (i call it lanka) producers before.
I wonder if there’s any one or any wealthy-world organizations that are working on this in a responsible way.