Indian Death

The majority of Indians live in poverty. Many are employed in industries I mentioned in the previous post. There are two areas in particular, farming and waste management, that provide jobs yet involve great sickness and death. When one is poor, and has a family to support, any means of earning money is preferable to starvation. Why worry about tomorrow when today is by no means a sure thing?

Farming is one of the oldest professions. Feeding a family or a village is seen, not only as a noble pursuit, but also as integral to a society. In India, like in almost anywhere else in the world, farming has been taken over by large corporations. Agribusiness, as it is called, is a multi-billion dollar enterprise dominated by just a few corporate behemoths.

Most farmers in India have a small plot of land to cultivate, seed and grow crops. They usually only grow enough to feed their families and sell in local markets. The money earned helps to feed, clothe and send their children to school. As with any crop grown one must start with seed. It is the seed that is at the heart of the problem.

The agronomist knows that the only seed that is guaranteed to grow is that which has been genetically modified to do so. This seed does not come cheap. The subsistence farmer has already taken a loan out just to buy necessary farm implements such as a tractor. The seed, expensive as it is, must be purchased anew each season. Food grown from it will not produce viable seeds that can be replanted. Hence the need for a new supply each year.

As the seeds have been modified so too has the fertilizer. This must be purchased every year from local distributors. This is the method corporations use to ensure steady profits year after year. Their seed, their chemicals, their way. It does not take much to figure out that many poor farmers, caught up in this cycle of greed, are doomed to fail. Too often not enough money is earned to pay for the loan and the bank comes to repossess whatever that loan money paid for in the first place.

An alarming trend has developed because of this all too common scenario. Indian farmers, in their shame and disgrace, have committed suicide en masse. Some have ingested the fertilizer they could scarcely afford. Others have been found by their wives hanging from trees. Tens of thousands have taken their own lives since the 1990s when statistics began to be tabulated.

Some of these farmers grew foodstuffs, some farmed cotton for clothing, while others raised corn for use in mass-production. No matter what the crop was the farmer became caught in a genetically modified trap that they could never escape from. This is but one example of how enormous corporate profits have been made on the backs, and even on the graves, of those least able to fight back.

There is one other method that Indians use to eke out a living that causes death. Their demise does not come swiftly. It is a slow and painful process. It is one that makes suicide seem infinitely more humane. Much of the waste materials that we, the American people create, is hauled by boat to India to be sorted, processed and reused. Our trash ends up in giant heaps that poison the landscape as much as the populace.

Castoff computers are a good example of the types of trash Indians manage. Dismantling takes place in order to procure the trace minerals that can be smelted and resold. The danger lies in the method used. Large fires are set in order to burn off the plastic casings. Poisonous clouds fill the air as mercury, cadmium, arsenic and lead are inhaled by the scavengers. It does not take a rocket scientist to imagine all of the painful lingering diseases these workers contract. Whether death comes fast or slow it will inevitably arrive.

This is how poor many of these people are. They are so poor in fact that they must risk their health and well-being just for the chance that our trash might make them a few dollars. This is sad and this is sickening. I do not normally subscribe to the belief that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In this case though this saying seems less than trite.

Admittedly India is not the only country with these problems. There are more than a few nations which see large migrations of poor from the countrysides travel to the inner cities looking for greater opportunities. As these latest posts have shown India is by no means lacking the will to survive. The chances the poor have there to prosper are varied. It is the quality and sustainability of these chances that must begin to improve.