Wealth and Poverty

Two things have prompted me to write this blog entry.

Firstly, a recent programme on the BBC which showed a handful of British twenty-somethings who were interested in or involved in the clothing industry being taken to India to learn about the clothes trade there. They were all of them very middle class and well off, even by British standards. The short series showed them working firstly in an high-end factory which makes clothes for some of the expensive labels on the high street. They all, except one, found the sewing work too difficult, either because it was beyond them technically or because they were too slow (despite the arrogance of the men who initially thought the work too easy). They found the conditions very difficult - most notably due to the discipline: no talking, no walking around; just concentrating on the work at hand to ensure a profitable throughput of work. These middle-class youngsters couldn't bare normal factory working conditions. The group was taken to work at other locations too: picking cotton from the fields (very low paid, back-breaking work - and the programme didn't discuss the high levels of cancer-causing pesticide used); working in a cotton processing plant; and, finally, working in slum conditions in a back-street factory where they were expected to sleep in the same room they were working in. The programee was a real eye-opener in terms of showing the conditions Indian workers suffer in order to provide us with cheap clothing.

The second is the state of the world and British economies. The British economy has had low inflation for the last ten years. It appears that this is in large partly due to cheap imports from India and China. Clothes are no more expensive now than they were 10 years ago. This has helped keep inflation down, enabling the Bank of England to keep interest rates low, which stimulates growth in the economy. When clothes manufacturing jobs moved from Britain to India, it was thought that it was good in terms of developing a third world economy. Britain would get cheap imports and India would be able to provide a living for more of its most poor. The manufacturing jobs lost in Britain would be replaced by higher-paid, more specialised jobs (call centres, for example).

That was the theory. In terms of the British economy, it has worked for the last ten years. But at what cost? Our supermarkets have squeezed suppliers until the poorest paid workers in India are poorer still. Capital is squeezing labour across international boundaries - and what comeback has the Indian worker to British supermarkets? The UK government does not represent Indian workers. Democracy is toothless across country boundaries.

With the economy becoming more challenging, what will be the outcome for the poorest in our global economy? To what extent can we squeeze more labour for less expenditure when food prices are rising globally and the poorest are worst hit by this? It seems to me that the wealth sinks of our economy will be the first to suffer: house prices, car sales, electronic gadgets; and along with these, the poorest too, causing hunger, suffering, disease without ability to pay for basic healthcare or clean water.

I will leave it to the reader to decide who suffers most.