So Many Live and Die in Crushing Poverty!
YATI leaves her shanty in a southeast Asian land for the factory where she sews bits of leather and lace for shoes. For one month’s work—40-hour weeks plus 90 hours overtime—she makes less than $80. The shoe company that employs her proudly portrays itself as a conscientious promoter of human rights in the less-developed lands. In the Western world, this company sells the shoes for more than $60 a pair. Wages account for perhaps $1.40 of that.
When Yati “leaves the clean, lighted factory,” says a Boston Globe report, “she has only enough money to rent a 10-by-12-foot [3-by-3.6 m] shack, with dirty walls alive with gecko lizards. There is no furniture, so Yati and two roommates sleep in fetal curls on a mud-and-tile floor.” Her situation is sadly typical.
“Are these people better off with me or without me?” protests a trade association chief. “The small wage gives them the ability to enjoy a decent lifestyle. They may not be living in the lap of luxury, but they aren’t starving.” They are, however, often malnourished, and their children often go to bed hungry. They face daily the hazards of dangerous workplaces. And many are dying a slow death from handling poisons and toxic wastes. A “decent lifestyle”?
Hari, a south Asian farm laborer, saw things differently. He painted with words and poetic eloquence the grim life-and-death cycle all around him. “Between the mortar and the pestle,” he said, “the chili cannot last. We poor are like chilies—each year we are ground down, and soon there will be nothing left.” Hari never saw that “decent lifestyle,” nor did he have the faintest notion of the lap of luxury in which his employers probably lived. A few days later, Hari was dead—another victim of crushing poverty.
Multitudes live and die as Hari did. They languish in misery, too weak to resist, as they are bled dry of life. By whom? What kind of people would do this? They seem benevolent enough. They say they want to feed your baby, help your crops grow, improve your life, make you rich. In reality, they aim to make themselves rich. There are products to be sold, profits to be reaped. If the by-products of their greed are malnourished children, poisoned workers, and befouled environment, so be it. It is a price the companies are willing to pay for their greed. So as the profits mount, so do the heartbreaking casualty figures.
[Picture Credit Line on page 3]
U.N. Photo 156200/John Isaac