Hot Curry Love
From Worm to Catwalk_silk production in southern India
Wednesday, 23 December, 2009, a child worker clears dead pupae and silk waste in the confined space behind machinery at a silk reeling factory in Ramanagaram, Karnataka, India.
Children work twelve hours or more a days, six and a half or seven days a week, under conditions of physical and verbal abuse. Starting as young as five, they earn nothing at all to around Rs. 400 (UK Sterling £5.89) a month, some or all of which is deducted against loans ranging from around RS. 1,000 to 10,000 (UK Sterling £15 to £147). This practice is generally known as bonded labour.
Sericin vapors (the animal protein binding silk filaments) from boiling cocoons, smoke , diesel fumes from the machines, and poor ventilation cause respiratory ailments such as chronic bronchitis and asthma. From immersion in scalding water and handling dead worms and handling dead pupae, reelers' hands become raw, blistered, and sometimes infected.
Child workers are usually bound to their employers in exchange for a loan made to their families and are unable to leave while in debt and earn so little they may never be free of it. The Indian government knows about these children and has the mandate to free them. Instead for reasons of apathy, caste bias and corruption, many government officials deny they exist at all.
Millions of children in India toil as virtual slaves, unable to escape the work that will leave them improverished, illiterate, and often with serious health problems by the time they reach adulthood.
Both Indian and international law prohibit the use of bonded child labour and Indian law has regulated and restricted child labour up to age fourteen.
(additional information found at Human Rights Watch - www.hrw.org/reports/2003/india/)
Photo: Haydn West
From Worm to Catwalk_silk production in southern India
Wednesday, 23 December, 2009, a child worker clears dead pupae and silk waste in the confined space behind machinery at a silk reeling factory in Ramanagaram, Karnataka, India.
Children work twelve hours or more a days, six and a half or seven days a week, under conditions of physical and verbal abuse. Starting as young as five, they earn nothing at all to around Rs. 400 (UK Sterling £5.89) a month, some or all of which is deducted against loans ranging from around RS. 1,000 to 10,000 (UK Sterling £15 to £147). This practice is generally known as bonded labour.
Sericin vapors (the animal protein binding silk filaments) from boiling cocoons, smoke , diesel fumes from the machines, and poor ventilation cause respiratory ailments such as chronic bronchitis and asthma. From immersion in scalding water and handling dead worms and handling dead pupae, reelers' hands become raw, blistered, and sometimes infected.
Child workers are usually bound to their employers in exchange for a loan made to their families and are unable to leave while in debt and earn so little they may never be free of it. The Indian government knows about these children and has the mandate to free them. Instead for reasons of apathy, caste bias and corruption, many government officials deny they exist at all.
Millions of children in India toil as virtual slaves, unable to escape the work that will leave them improverished, illiterate, and often with serious health problems by the time they reach adulthood.
Both Indian and international law prohibit the use of bonded child labour and Indian law has regulated and restricted child labour up to age fourteen.
(additional information found at Human Rights Watch - www.hrw.org/reports/2003/india/)
Photo: Haydn West