Dyed dirty

A tough one: what do a cotton farmer and a rock star have in common?

They both run a high risk of suicide.

When I think about it, I always get upset. A little while ago I read something on Ode’s reading table about Indian cotton farmers who see only one way out of their misery: drinking their own agricultural chemicals. In an Indian publication called Down To Earth, I read about farmers who were up to their ears in debt after buying pesticides, only to discover that the plague had become resistant to the poison and was cutting the crop yield. New cotton seeds and agricultural chemicals had been bought on credit, but uncontrollable crop disease had become the order of the day. Some farmers had their land repossessed because they couldn’t pay their debts. Others committed suicide, leaving their families destitute.

I had never seen a cotton plant or a cotton farmer. If T-shirts and jeans grew on trees, the relationship between producer and consumer would be so much clearer. But there are so many stages involved, not to mention thousands of miles between the cottonseeds and the end product. The farmers I read about were irrevocably linked to the clothing I was wearing, but I really didn’t want to know about it at all.

Apparently I’m not the only one. Suicidal pop idols die in a blaze of glory and international press coverage, but cotton farmers in developing countries perish silently. It seems as if politicians, business people and scientists have become just as resistant to the cry for help from these farmers as the plague to the chemical exterminators. What about the consumers? You and me? We often simply don’t know.

The facts are readily available. An average of six to ten times a season, cotton is ‘enriched’ with pesticides that contain a strong cocktail of chemicals. Some are carcinogenic and others are plausibly tied to headaches, dizziness, pneumonia, asthma, birth defects and depression – which makes the choice for suicide that much easier. Manufacturers are required to include the side-effects on the label, but many farmers in developing countries cannot read, and the protective clothing that is recommended during the spraying process is often too warm to wear in a hot climate.

And yet these chemicals gave many farmers hope for a brilliant future. In the late 1960s developing countries were overrun with Western technology’s new miracle, agricultural chemicals. Within one generation this ‘green revolution’ would bring an end to the centuries-old tradition of labor-intensive farming in uncertain climate conditions. Cotton fields produced higher yields than farmers ever dreamed possible. Time-consuming manual labor made way for poison sprayers that successfully eradicated the continuous threat of plagues and insects. And the products were cheap too, because the government provided hefty subsidies. The dream of every farmer had come true.

The hangover came a few seasons later, when plagues and insects became resistant to the chemicals. Farmers needed new cocktails and higher doses. In the meantime, international pressure forced the government to scale back subsidies; the farmers had to pay for it all themselves. Thus began the downward spiral. The nightmare of every farmer was coming true.

A few figures help illustrate the point. Twenty percent of global insecticide use goes towards cotton cultivation. The average T-shirt requires 250 grams of cotton and 125 grams of pesticide, an unprecedented proportion in modern agriculture.

So should we stop using cotton? But, and hang on with me here: Synthetic fabrics do not biodegrade easily, and the process of refining petroleum – the raw material for synthetic fibres – produces heavy air pollution. Trees must be chopped down to make viscose, leather tanning requires an unbelievable cocktail of chemicals and a single square yard of silk entails throwing about 100 live caterpillars into boiling water so as to unwind their cocoons. Wool? Sheep shearing, preceded by a pesticide bath, is apparently not a gentle process. Moreover, as lambs they undergo another painful intervention, when, as a preventative measure against a nasty disease, a substantial piece of skin and flesh is cut from their backsides without anaesthesia. The one exception is hemp, but this promising crop was politically sidelined because one type can be used to expand the mind.

But the main reason why cotton remains the most important raw material for clothing and textiles is simple: It is still the most comfortable fabric in the world.

I knew a little more about circumstances in sweatshops, which are at the opposite pole of the production process. In recent years, action groups have publicized a range of social injustices: child labor, low wages, bans on unions. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In ‘No Logo’, the popular book by Naomi Klein about the way big companies structure our modern world, I was amazed to read about seamstresses who weren’t allowed to use the toilet during working hours and had to urinate in a plastic bag under their machine.

Such inhumane working conditions are not unique. Particularly during the busy run-up to Christmas, there can be so many orders to fill that workers are required to work overtime – sometimes until two o’clock in the morning – and then have to be back at their post by seven. Anyone who becomes overtired and suffers a temporary lapse in concentration can expect corporal punishment from the supervisor. If women want to arrange time off during their period, they have to pull their pants down in front of the factory doctor. Pregnancy usually means dismissal.

Could it really be true that the clothes hanging in my closer were made under such circumstances?

When the Clean Clothes Campaign launched another effort to pressure a clothing store, I sometimes filled out a preprinted protest card. But a month later I would find myself back in the same shop I had petitioned to clean up their act. After all, everyone needs new socks now and then. And how would I know if the competition was behaving any better?

The protest campaigns were definitely successful. They pushed a number of clothing companies into setting up a conduct code which includes a few essential labor rights, such as the right to a fair wage. But action groups like the Clean Clothes Campaign and No Sweat complain that a lot of codes are abstract and incomplete. What is ‘a fair wage’? And codes don’t include the right to trade union membership, often are not translated into local languages and are not monitored by an independent body.

The big problem in the clothing industry is the complex system whereby businesses contract orders out to smaller factories which in turn outsource a portion of the work to others. As a result, no one feels responsible for poor conditions. Clothing manufacturers say that they keep to the law and demand the same of their suppliers. That may be true, but in developing countries, where labor is cheap, laws are often considerably less stringent. Checking to make sure they are adhered to is rarely done properly.

I had to see this for myself. And so suddenly, there I was in Tirupur. This city in southern India is sometimes referred to as T-shirt Town. Of all the T-shirts exported from India to the rest of the world, nearly half come from Tirupur. About one million people live in this area, and it is estimated that some 300,000 have found work in the clothing industry. Official figures are difficult to come by, because a lot of work is done unofficially, as when women use a sewing machine at home.

S. Muthukumarasamy started working in the clothing industry 20 years ago. Dyeing, printing, ironing, labelling, cutting, sewing – you name it, he’s done it. Now he leads a trade union. ‘When I started working,’ he says, ‘there were only 500 factories. Now there are 4,000. The city was very simple. We hoped it would improve with all the new jobs, but things have only gotten worse. Services are dramatically poorer. Water is expensive here because it has to come from far outside the city. The rivers in the area are polluted and a lot of people live in dreadful circumstances. That is what the clothing companies have brought to Tirupur – a lot of jobs, but most particularly pollution and exploitation.’

There is a lot of criticism on the unions in Tirupur. Workers believe they don’t sufficiently stand up for their rights. They may fight for better wages, but rarely for better working conditions. And the most important problems in Tirupur, the polluted water and high cost of living, remain untouched. Moreover, membership means even more trouble at work. G. Basker, who works at a factory that irons fabric, is going through the union to try and get a pay rise. According to the official minimum wage, which is the result of an agreement between the major unions and the association of factory owners, he should be earning 130 rupees a day, but he’s only getting 105. He says that since he launched his dispute he is being ‘mentally tortured.’

Basker is willing to talk freely at the office of the trade union. ‘The supervisor screams incessantly at me,’ he says. ‘He calls me names and humiliates me. I am often forced to work two shifts in a row, but I never get the promised premium for night work. He is waiting for me to make a mistake so he can fire me. I’m sure I’ll find another job, but you come across this type of problem everywhere in Tirupur.’

Just as my taxi driver predicted, when you tour a factory in Tirupur, you are presented with a nice image. The fans will be on and all the lamps will be burning brightly. But as soon as you leave, they’ll be turned down to save money. You’ll see a spanking clean toilet, but that’s not what workers can use. Besides, they won’t tell you that no one is allowed to use the toilet during working hours. You can talk to workers, but never without the manager or supervisor. And if you show up without an appointment you’ll be turned away at the guarded gate. They’ll tell you that the manager just left and won’t be back for a week. In other words, in Tirupur nothing is as it seems.

I’m welcome at the Goodway Garments factory. But – just my luck – it will be possible to have a tour only on Sunday, the one day off in the week. In the empty factory, R.T. Gangadharan, 27, greets me like an old friend. He is the manager of this department, after having done just about every job there is. Gangadharan can’t stop talking about the future, because that’s when everything will be better. ‘India has to make a sacrifice now, but later our country will be very successful,’ he explains enthusiastically. ‘Just like Japan, which also sacrificed a generation after World War II and is now among the world’s economic leaders.’

And what sacrifice is India now making? ‘We get the work but not the money,’ Gangadharan says. ‘People in Tirupur are hungry. They’re dying in poverty, as in all of India. We need more money, which is why we take every job we can get, even if it pays poorly and even if the conditions are sometimes bad. We want to get somewhere in the world. But there is one thing I don’t understand: If clothing companies are making so much money, why don’t we see any of it?’

The question takes me by surprise, and Gangadharan’s inquiring expression even more so. He looks as if he truly doesn’t know the answer. I start talking about Western companies hiding behind contracting schemes that outsource their work to avoid being reproached by customers or legal institutions for irresponsible behavior. Gangadharan nods circumspectly. He suspected as much. He simply follows orders from his boss, but then he sees on a fax that the customer is in Mumbai (Bombay) or New Delhi. He thinks that’s odd. If you get rid of the intermediary and do business directly with a clothing brand, he sometimes thinks, you can make more – and if you’re the customer, you can save money.

Life in the clothing industry is particularly hard for unschooled migrant laborers who left rural areas looking for work. They often have the hardest and dirtiest jobs, lack a permanent contract, put in the longest days and receive the least pay. Most of them work in the 800 dye and bleaching factories in Tirupur which together – hold onto your seats for this one – use some 130,000 pounds of chemicals every day.

And how is it done? Cloth is bleached by men whose pant legs are rolled up in a bath of bleach to which the harmful chemical sodium hypochloride has been added. Even when they work standing in a bath of sulphuric acid, no protective measures are taken. Working with the chemicals from the dye factories has been linked to skin problems and hair loss. If gloves are available, they sometimes don’t fit the adult men’s hands or are torn. Face masks are rarely available, which means workers contend with breathing problems and persistent headaches. And then there are often a number of follow-up treatments using chemicals that pre-shrink the fabric, make it wrinkle-free or flame retardant.

My thoughts wander to a bright green T-shirt I bought recently. Did that dye cause the same kind of damage?

We are standing along the river next to the municipal water purification plant, S.M. Prithiviraj and I. He bursts into laughter, I can’t believe my eyes. The river looks more like a large pool of dark-colored dye with a big layer of foam than something resembling water. Why is Prithiviraj laughing? He and his organization, Community Awareness Research Education, have taken water samples to be tested so often that he is way beyond the stage of disbelief.

At this spot, the total amount of dissolved particles in the water, which indicates the degree of pollution, is 20 times higher than the law allows. Bacteria that could at least break down a portion of the polluting substances have long since perished in the mixture of heavy metals, acids, lye, solvents and fabric softeners.

Tirupur is a frightening example of the effects of the clothing industry on the environment. Prithiviraj has calculated that every day about 130,000 pounds of chemical silt is dumped at the edge of the city and that about 10.4 million gallons of nonpurified waste water flow into its rivers. The water is unsuitable for consumption, household use or agriculture, yet the poorest people rely on it because clean water is too expensive and the only water available at the factory is sometimes yellow- or brown-colored.

Prithiviraj considers the construction of the purification plants one big sick joke, and not even because, in blatant defiance of all the agreements, as many as two-thirds of all factories here don’t use them. ‘They were built to give the impression that everything’s okay,’ he says, ‘but in Tirupur nothing is okay. After they were built the factories weren’t even given the right purification techniques, so at best the plants turn black water grey. That was not the intention. It would transform polluted water into pure, colorless, clean drinking water.’ This was a multimillion-dollar investments on the part of the regional government.

It is precisely the bleach and dye processes – and cotton farming – that are usually left out of the clothing factories’ social conduct codes, thus ignore the industry’s impact on the environment. Anyway, you and I can probably agree that Western clothing companies should do something about this situation. But what can you do in the meantime?

Just back form India, I was strolling along the busiest shopping street in the city where I live. The store windows loudly displayed their bargains and price cuts. I just happened to run into someone I know. I told him about my trip to India. I described the underpaid seamstresses who work long days, about farmers who drink their poisonous chemicals, about the relationship between the color of the water and Paris fashions.

My friend stood looking uncomfortably. ‘I didn’t know,’ he said. His eyes fell to the ground. I saw that he was carrying two plastic bags from a clothing shop. ‘I suppose I should return these,’ he laughed.
We said goodbye. He walked on.