Since I’m a bleeding heart, listening to my friends complain about how much last night cost them made me think about the costs that are born by smaller folk than me. In response to my post about how India has become a major flower exporter and how an Indian multinational is poised to become the largest rose exporter in the world, Anantha pointed out the dark side of this business, namely accusations of the use of child labour:
Malur, the little-known rose capital on the Karnataka-Tamil Nadu border, which caters to a large domestic and export market, engages more than 1,000 female children in this chain of rose production, right from rose plucking to packaging, according to John Devaraj, a film maker and a child rights activist… [Link]
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p>While I question some of the claims made (“These girls are swift in their work and can pluck upto even 10,000 roses per day…” [Link]), the accusation is quite plausible on its face.
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p>If present, the use of child labor is even more troubling when you consider the fact that flower growing involves large quantities of fertilizer and pesticides, thus exposing children to noxious chemicals. Even without that, though, roses have thorns, something that’s easy to forget when you only have to deal with the cellophane wrapped versions, so this is hardly light labor.
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p>Horticulture, however, comes out smelling like roses in comparison to the high end of the romance market, namely diamonds. As you all know, India is a dominant force in the bulk diamond market:
India’s diamond industry is the fastest growing in the world, employing more than a million people and turning over some $8bn a year. [Link]
It’s not surprising that some diamond merchants are willing to cut corners when it comes to the source of the gems:
‘These stones are from Africa,’ he said, holding up two knuckle-sized murky brown diamonds. ‘We can’t always tell where they are from, but they aren’t legitimate. But here business is done with cash and no questions.’…‘Look at this diamond,’ Shah said. ‘It’s not small, but is easy to smuggle. What can be done to stop that being smuggled to India? I will get a buyer, an agent for a polisher, who will give me a good price, and then sell it out of a reputable firm for export. There is no way it can ever be traced…’
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p>The stones brought in by dhows and fishing boats through the shallow waters of Gujarat’s ungovernable west coast make a laughing stock of attempts to stem the global flow of blood diamonds. [Link]
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p>And even if the use of child labor in the Indian diamond industry has declined, it’s still a significant problem:
The ILO report claims that child labour is highly prevalent in the Indian diamond industry, as child labourers constitute nearly three per cent of the total workforce. It also states that the percentage of child labourers is as high as 25 per cent in the diamond industry of Surat. [Link]… India’s Save the Childhood Foundation estimates that diamond workshops employ up to 30,000 children. [Link]
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Maybe I’m unromantic, but I don’t like to express my affection using diamonds or roses. Anyway, given the weather these days, wouldn’t a nice pair of boots be a more touching gesture? [I guess there’s a reason why I’m single 
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yawn
When textile exports boomed from India same “child labor” accusation flew…
When India became a diamond polish powerhouse (90% of all diamonds in the world pass through India at some point) same accusation flew.
Labor industry – animal right activists had their ralling cry…
And now flower industry. If you knew anything or researched a little more about flower trade you will know how India had to fight and bend to enable their flowers to be auctioned in Holland. This included complete random surprise visit to flower farm to make sure child labor is not used. (including LOCAL NGOs before someone says “desis can catch gora inspectors from miles”)
Still, some randon unemployed film guy makes a noise about child labor’s use in Flower industry and we have an emotional catchy heading “Bloody Valentine”.
I wish you do some more research about this (and not just Google) before making such posts. Stories of PLANE loads of flowers thrown to sea on arrival at Amsterdam because it did not have something or the other (in one case, label with name of the flower was pasted upside down), not to mention accusation of using DDT.
Flower lobby in Amsterdam has tried very hard for Indians to export flowers and Indian exporters have bent over backwards. Still it appears lobby is still strong as seen from this post. Gotta wonder if all this is viral marketing or smear campaign..
Also before I forget, thank god no one has accused IT industry of using child labor. That may be beleivable too for Americans who are used to staple diet of desi kids winning spelling bee etc.
Would you care to elaborate who these smaller folk are?
I used the ILO report from 2 years ago w.r.t child labor in the diamond industry. I’d think they have some credibility. I also said that while I thought the flower accusations were credible, I had problems with some of them. I concede up front that the issue has nuance and uncertainty, but there is also a lot of child labor in India. I’ve seen it myself. That’s why such claims can be made.
I don’t doubt that all of this is being influenced by trade policies and realpolitik, but if it does stop people from using child labor (and yes, I know actually making that claim would require more evidence) then I think awareness-raising articles like this and random site-checks are worth it.
The question you really have to ask yourself is would these kids be better off not earning any money at all. I don’t condone child labor but the reality of the situation is that these kids would be on the street peddling small wares which I am sure is far less safer (think pollution) than plucking roses.
In the movie Blood Diamond, there is a short scene about illegal diamonds from Africa being mixed with legit ones in India.
IFOB makes a good point. It could very well be protectionism masquerading as concern for child welfare. You could also link to http://www.wsj.com ( link required ) for an interactive mine-to-ring trail of the world diamond trade highlighting the biggest national players in the mining, cutting & polishing and the consumption of diamonds.
Added a few more caveats to the section on roses, since that’s the bit I don’t have good sources on, just this one activist’s claims. With diamonds, I consider the ILO to be a credible source.
I agree with Ennis, you can’t just roll your eyes over child labor accusations and call it a form protectionism. There’s undoubtedly a lot of child labor in India in restaurants, construction sites, factories, chaiwallas … If you try to compare it with the western standards of child labor and welfare, obviously India comes up short on welfare programs and preventing child labor. Then again, there’s only one other country with a population the size of India. In a perfect world, all the parents would have jobs that would let the kids go to school and still keep everyone fed and healthy. In reality, most of these kids work in diamond polishing shops and rose gardens and at the local chaat-wallah simply because they need the money. If everyone stops buying diamonds and roses for moral reasons, these kids will go find some other job!
To what extent are these children laboring simply so they can put food in their bellies? Because, if that’s the case, boycotting their flowers and diamonds could literally kill them. Then you’d be giving your friend “blood” boots as a gift 😉
iFOB, your claims are quite valid and there is always the possibility of over cautiousness in such matters. But here is a point to ponder over the example you gave. Would it be really difficult for someone to become an exporter of flowers, show inflated production numbers from a representative all adult labor farm which is legit and monitored, and then on the side have another farm where children are employed and use the production from there along with that of the legit farm to make its exports? In that case, would you rather err on the side of caution and trouble the grower a little more or to actually turn a blind eye and let some children slog it out?
On the other hand I agree with iFOB that things are not fair when it comes to the west, a lot of these labor organizations and especially these people who talk big about child labor fail to talk about the causes. We all know that the cause is poverty, people dont have enough to eat and we preach about educating their children. The western world talks about fair practices but when it comes to fair trade, they are not willing to step an inch back. Thus while the US subsidizes its farm produce, farmers in India cant get paid enough despte hard work and thus cannot feed their children.
This kind of argument drives me NUTS. Where would you draw the line then in terms of dangerous or detrimental child labor OR adult sweatshop labor??? It’s the argument used to justify multinational sweatshops: “At least they’re earning wages instead of living in the dirt, those poor third world sods…”
And iFOB: if you’re argument is about some kind of protectionism imposed by the big, bad Dutch growers, well, that argument doesn’t really fly considering that one of the largest producers of flowers for many years now has been Colombia, which also has to trade its product in the markets of Amsterdam. One imagines that Colombia also had to jump through numerous hoops in order for its product to meet the standards of the international markets (and yes, the industry with all its pesticides, sweatshop conditions, etc, has also been quite detrimental to Colombian workers, even as the formal economy has charted gains from the industry).
These are all Catch-22 situations, it seems: would you rather work in an apparel sweatshop or a horticultural one or a diamond one? Lesser of several evils?
See, now that iFOB mentioned child labor in the outsourced IT industry I expect to see Lou ‘The Pompous Populist Windbag’ Dobbs to be on CNN tonight:
Oh Lou, when will you just please go the hell away?
I wuold draw the line at the point where the children or adults were forced to work against their own will. Particularly with the adults, they’re perfectly capable of making their own decisions about whether they would rather work in a sweatshop or not work at all. As for the children, they need someone to help them make those decisions but it needs to be someone who understands the child and his/her situation. The decision shouldn’t be made for the child by some self-rightous do-gooder half way around the world who think he/she knows what’s best for said child.
So basically, short of slavery, all employment is “voluntary” and thus beyond ethical reproach or criticism?
I dunno, most contemporary labor and human rights theory would challenge that assumption. If your choice is to sign yourself into near-slavery or see your family starve to death, are you really making an informed, dispassionate decision?
If we assume that employer-employee relationships will just work themselves out, the employee will always be abused and threatened (particularly with the HUGE power disparities in play here). The empowerment of workers through the government and labor unions has been as important to development in the West as relatively free trade policy has been.
I really don’t see human rights-based trade policy as such a big deal. It’s an economic choice: if you want to sell goods in lucrative Western markets, you have to conform to certain labor standards. I still think the owners of these operations stand to gain far more through access to Western markets than they would lose by paying their employees appropriately.
iFOB, you can drop your rude, belittling tone:
So there’s dumping. Not a big surprise. So the dumping makes life even harder for the workers. No argument there. But what’s with all this yawning and dismissing? How does any of that mean there isn’t still child labor? How does any of it mean there wouldn’t still be child labor, slavery and other human rights violations even without any protectionist obstacles?? FFS, there always has been! Too add to the point that kusala made by giving the example of Colombia, I must ask, do you really need to see the numbers to believe it, especially when there is plenty of reliable documentation on the cruel realities of horticulture and the diamond industry (and almost every other export industry) in other Third World countries? Do you know India to treat it’s poor any better than another country racing to the bottom?
Umang:
I think individual boycotting — meaning boycotting that isn’t done en masse within a given time, and/or doesn’t get international media coverage — doesn’t really help the workers at all. I’ve spoken to many sweatshop workers, and they have all told me that what they really want is for people to demand that governments and companies protect human rights, not for us to boycott the product itself. They want to keep working, keep producing our Nikes, but get paid well, be given breaks, allowed to unioinize, etc. Some want age limits, some don’t. (In any case, as kusala noted, the reality is that working, regardless of how bad the conditions are, isn’t much of a choice to either children or adults.)
But I’m torn; I still don’t want to buy flowers or diamonds. It’s not blood on my hands in the proverbial sense, but what I’d be holding in my hands would be someone’s blood, and that makes me queasy. And besides, I really don’t like the idea of supporting the human rights of workers by buying more stuff. Such a shitty ultimatum — like having to choose between capitalism and communism. The kind of consumerism and materialism it endorses will lend itself to a lot more long term damage to human health, cultures and the environment… and it’s going to be the poor in the Third World countries (and in many cases, the poor in any country) that will have to bear the brunt of it again and again. There has to be something else…
Child labor is illegal because Indian govt made such a law.
On the other hand, irresponsible, ineffective and not to mention, callous governments (like the one in India) got no moral right in deciding how and what the poeple should do. If the government has shown a lucrative and sustainable model of financial security to the parents, they would have happily sent their kids to schools.
Until then, this whole debating business is moot.
So is dowry. And yet…
Sure, people need more financial security. But how does that make this debate moot?
A complex problem indeed. A few years ago I did some work for a college in Kodaikanal that was quietly setting up schools for tribal children who were the kids of bonded laborers in coffee and tea plantations and who themselves were often laborers. Most parents want their children to go to school, not work in the fields, but the bottom line is that not every family can survive the loss of a wage earner. The schools had to provide meals for the kids, just to get the conversation going with the parents. Some employers using bonded or child labor offer wages of rice–that’s hard to give up if you live a region where corruption prevents you from getting a ration card or a school meal (often the only meal a poor child gets). The solution, to me, seems less about boycotting the industries that utilize child labor and more about ensuring that the poor have unfettered access to the services that India provides and for which they are eligible. Corruption is a huge drag on India’s extensive social welfare net and stifles economic development.
FYI – it seems the word r3tard is banned even if you just say that corruption r3tards economic growth.
Ennis,
Reminds me about that uproar over a politician using the word ‘niggardly’. While at some levels political-correctness hasn’t sunk in deep enough, its shallow manifestations such as word-filtering are going too far.
Dont you think they are two different problems? Dowry is a social evil, which people are not letting it go in name of customs and traditions, not to mention, greed. Where as child labour is out of dire need. Many poor families (still stuck in tribal mindset) procreate so that their kids will help them out. They figured out the simple economic sense of ‘strength in revenue and numbers’ and I apologize if I come across as facetious with that comment in quotes.
In India, financial means (not even security) is the bottom line. Poverty is a business there, where politicians simply see it as necessary evil. We can list all kinds of examples to show why society as a whole has failed the poor, inspite of sitting on $200B worth of forex reserves.
The debate is moot in practical sense. I was only reacting with angst, it was never meant to belittle this particular string of arguments back-forth.
Ennis is the Shiv Sena’s new hero for supporting their campaign against Valentine’s day gift giving. Have you checked to make sure that not just flowers and diamonds but almost all products except perhaps software (not withstanding the fake mustachioed code-coolies) made in India have some component of child labor in them? Just like the neighborhood McDees and Taco Bells, but that is another story. In fact, if you give up buying most things you will be one step closer to the Hindu ideal of giving up on material things, since they are ephemeral.
Self-righteou westerners can stop buying third world products made with child labor and their counterparts in the third world can stop buying coke and pepsi and other first world products to stop the imperial corporate mafia from taking over the world and we can all live happily ever after in spiritual bliss with no material things to bother us!
Err, you could if you wanted to but there is a good chance you wont be able to. Instead, you could exercise your right and power as a consumer, get organized and raise a voice – ‘I like your products but hey, I don’t like this crap that goes on in creating it. If you don’t get your act together, remember I could find some other Tom or Dick who could make it same as you and wont add the crap to it’. Look at Whole Foods and the growing Organic Movement, remember the customer is king as long as he does not forget it.
So, when do we start calling them “blood roses” huh?
Its easy to sit in a First World country and crib and whinge about standards of morality in the third world
a quote from the movie blood diamond
If these children arent working in your tea stalls, canteens, udipi restaurants they won’t even have the money required to buy food, they will starve. 50% of India’s kids suffer from malnutrition, why coz their parents cant afford food. For most people its a matter of survival. Those kids arent being greedy trying to earn money, they are trying to survive. Darwin says the fittest survive.
Whats the other option, for these kids or their parents? If they are girls sell them to brothels or Arab men or if boys to middle-agged, pot bellied, balding, white perverts.
Access to some cash they earn in relatively safer chocies like flower picking or serving your dosa and idli or polishing your shoes on railway stations keeps them safe and fed.
be careful, samir. you are one step away from being labeled troll by the abcdwalas here. Indians are depraved by original sin – that and only that is the operative word on this forum.
Make no mistake folks, hindu-majority India is by far the worst violator of human rights on the planet. Especially children’s rights. Besides condemning half its children to starvation diets, India also condemns large numbers to slave labor:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/India3.htm
“With credible estimates ranging from 60 to 115 million, India has the largest number of working children in the world. Whether they are sweating in the heat of stone quarries, working in the fields sixteen hours a day, picking rags in city streets, or hidden away as domestic servants, these children endure miserable and difficult lives. They earn little and are abused much. They struggle to make enough to eat and perhaps to help feed their families as well. They do not go to school; more than half of them will never learn the barest skills of literacy. Many of them have been working since the age of four or five, and by the time they reach adulthood they may be irrevocably sick or deformed-they will certainly be exhausted, old men and women by the age of forty, likely to be dead by fifty.
Most or all of these children are working under some form of compulsion, whether from their parents, from the expectations attached to their caste, or from simple economic necessity. At least fifteen million of them, however, are working as virtual slaves. These are the bonded child laborers of India. This report is about them.”
“The practice of child debt servitude has been illegal in India since 1933, when the Children (Pledging of Labour) Act was enacted under British rule. Since independence, a plethora of additional protective legislation has been put in place…….These extensive legal safeguards mean little, however, without the political will to implement them. In India, this will is sorely lacking. All of the labor laws are routinely flouted, and with virtually no risk of punishment to the offender. Whether due to corruption or indifference-and both are much in evidence-these laws are simply not enforced. In those rare cases where offenders are prosecuted, sentences are limited to negligible fines.”
“Why does India-the Indian government, the ruling elite, the business interests, the populace as a whole-tolerate this slavery in its midst? According to a vast and deeply entrenched set of myths, bonded labor and child labor in India are inevitable. They are caused by poverty. They represent the natural order of things, and it is not possible to change them by force”
“In truth, the Indian government has failed to protect its most vulnerable children. When others have stepped in to try to fill the vacuum and advocate on behalf of those children, India’s leaders and much of its media have attributed nearly all “outside” attempts at action to an ulterior commercial motive.”
“India is the world’s largest democracy, a nuclear power, the world’s second most populous country, and, although a poor nation, one of the six largest economies of the world. It is possible to end child servitude. The only thing lacking is will.”
“While India leads the world in the number of bonded child laborers, debt servitude is a significant problem in Pakistan and Nepal as well”
“While both boys and girls work as child laborers, the girl child is often subject to even more dismal treatment than her brothers. Girls consistently earn less money than boys (as women earn significantly less than men in India), and are subject to gender-specific forms of abuse from their employers, including rape……Furthermore, girls are over represented in some of the most brutal industries to employ child labor. There are twice as many girls as boys laboring in India’s quarries and factories, and the majority of children working in the construction industry are girls”
“Approximately fifteen million children work as bonded laborers in India. Most were put into bondage in exchange for comparatively small sums of money: two thousand rupees-equal to about thirty-five U.S. dollars-is the average amount “loaned” in exchange for a child’s labor. To India’s vast numbers of extremely poor, however, this money can be, literally, a life-saver.”
“The arrangements between parents and contracting agents are usually informal and unwritten. The number of years required to pay off such a loan is indeterminate. Many of the children interviewed by Human Rights Watch had already been working for several years, and even among those relatively new to their jobs, none said that they expected to be released prior to maturity.”
“Regardless of which of these debt structures the child labors under, the end result is the same: it is very difficult to escape bondage. The underlying reason for this difficulty is the grossly unequal power relationships between the child workers and their parents on the one hand and the creditors-cum-employers on the others. The former are frequently low caste, illiterate, and extremely poor. The latter are usually higher caste, literate, comparatively wealthy, and powerful members of the community. Often, these creditors-employers are the only money lenders in town, and as such are extremely influential. They are also frequently connected, by caste and by the social and political hierarchy of the community, with local officials, including police officers, factory inspectors, and other local authorities who might normally be expected to safeguard the rights of children.”
safer…compared to what? and where? and with whom?
seems like an overgeneralization to me to say that exploitative child labor is safer than some other alternative…
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safer…compared to what?
I did answer that safer than brothels and pedophiles. Thats the Harsh reality there. You can sit in USA and I can in Australia. but until you go to the hell of poverty, you will never know, neither will I.
This is an interesting discussion. I’m in India at the moment so this sort of hits home. I’m somewhere with the school of thought that before we start boycotting products and companies we need to create better opportunities for the children and the families involved. I agree with Preston whole heartedly. So many families cannot afford to lose a wage earner.
To see child beggars on the street is probably the most painful experience of my life. I’m ashamed to say that when I was younger or even as a child who grew up in India I never noticed them. When I see arguments like there are millions of child labourers in India it breaks my heart. That it’s a poor country (for the majority) and that it has over a billion people is something often ignored. The sheer size of the poor population alone needs to be taken into account.
My aunt has recently employeed a 14 year old in her house who lives with her. I had so many bad emotions about the decision. What about her school? How could you do this? But apparently this child was brought from my paternal village because she was going to otherwise get married off to a man 30 years her senior. She paid money to the family she pulled her out of. My aunt without thinking much into the whole thing brought her to Mumbai.
The child is taught to read and write at home but she doesn’t attend school and for all intents and purposes appears happy and health. She has a home she is protected in where she gets to live and be a part of the family but the stark truth is she is household help. Nearly every household I’ve been to in Mumbai in the last week has a young boy or girl that lives with them that is household help. The same child would have to hustle in all the wrong places out on the streets. It’s so complicated. It’s so difficult being in the middle of the melee to have any strong stand on it.
We don’t have the luxury of drawing lines. Poor children are not going to start attending school all of a sudden just because every multinational sweat shop grows a conscience. That’s not how the world works. If its not plucking flowers, it would be something else. Take a look at how far China has come. Are sweatshops evil? Sure. But I don’t think there is a better alternative short of the government offering free food and a salary for every kid that attends school. And why hold multinationals to a higher standard when like in this case, worker conditions of local companies aren’t any better?
Wow!
I am amazed. For the first time I am observing rational thoughts on this blog rather then sanctimonious preaching about why Indians behave the way they do or how they should behave ideally.
Keep it up guys. I had almost given up on this blog. One Sidh and one Ennis is enough to keep the FOBs away from this place.
Regards, Aninda
blockquote>I don’t think there is a better alternative short of the government offering free food and a salary for every kid that attends school
Some countries are going exactly that – Check out these links:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=oportunidades
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oportunidades
I wish the government would finance and prioritize family planning (especially in the countryside), and give incentives to have fewer children. Having 1.1 billion people in India is not something to be proud of. Poverty is always a symptom of an irrational culture. The best way to cure it is to make women aware of their individual power and educate them to get rid of entrenched superstitious beliefs. Quantity does not equal Quality, otherwise a culture like of Sweden would be wretchedly poor.
Its called the demographic transition theory and every country goes through it. You can employ all the family planning techniques you want but its not going to make a real big dent in population growth. Basic economic growth can fix this and many other problems.
It’s not the numbers in India that are the problem. Brazil has 184 million people. South Africa has “only” 47 million. Both suffer from problems similar to those in India. By contrast, the US with some 300 million people is the third largest country in the world. Would India look any different if it had, say, a mere 500 million people? Yes, at 1.08 billion, the statistical drag on GDP per head in India is extreme–but having a smaller population isn’t necessarily going to redistribute the wealth.
China’s GDP per head (at purchasing power parity) is $7,498, more than twice India’s at $3,508. (All these figures are from The Economist.)
Yes there is…for their parents to be paid fair wages so that they don’t have to be paid to go to school, or to work. I am frankly shocked by the apologists for child labor. It’s like saying that slaves in America were better off than they would have been dying of disease and starvation in Africa. Sure, it’s difficult to lead a morally consistent life, and sure, child labor is part of the reality of India. But defending child labor? Come on people…it’s not complicated. It’s simple. It’s a bad thing. And as consumers, we do have the power to make at least multinational corporations change their practices.
The vast majority of child labour in India is employed on small family farms, shops, domestic help, family trade etc… The employment of children by multinationals is quite low (both in percentage and absolute terms).
Boycotting partcular products and making multinationals change thier practices may make us feel good but I don’t see how it helps these kids, chances are they will just find work in a different industry.