This blog post has been chasing me and eluding me for days. Each time I look up at the billboards featuring giant versions of models hawking their celebrity for a new brand of lawn, I am reminded of my vengeful promise to all the women at work who buy luxury cotton. I promised them a post about the cotton pickers of Sindh and Punjab. I couldn't get around to it because the trip to Hala and Matiari and an opportunity to personally interview the cotton pickers never materialized. But on international women's day, I sit here immersed in teaching, grading, reviewing for exams, and the tinkle of glamor, bells, and cotton is often mind numbing. I wonder if Alice ever burrowed her way out of the rabbit hole? Did Iman Ali fall out of the Asim Jofa lawn billboard and her duped expression, and stumble onto the footpath and stagger on home? You see we all falter; but should we fail continuously and forever to see the big picture?
The big picture is terrifying. My sister asked me so is the solution that we stop buying cotton. Perhaps. But is it really ever as simple as consumer side boycotts? Its always more about finding ways of effective solidarity and organizing by understanding the economics of landless sharecroppers, in particular women, and the political, legal, social impediments to unionizing, rather than buying less. And never as some capitalist women suggest - buying more. Unless there are serious changes in rural land ownership, improvements in education, and recognition of informal worker rights - keeping the mill running by consuming is not the solution but a rather frighteningly gluttonous evasion of guilt.
According to the research done by Karin Astrid Siegmann and Nazima Shaheen (1), most cotton pickers are women. About 2 million of them each year come out to do this work. About 15% of cultivated land in Pakistan is used for growing cotton. (See Pakistan's cotton belt in map below)
http://www.pakissan.com/
They are also the least empowered workers in the country, and this stems from what the authors call a "triple informalisation" as seasonal, contract, and piece rate workers. Their wages are de-linked from the price of cotton an they are paid by the maund. A maund is one day's work by some estimates and earns them about Rs. 40 a day. According to the Agricultural Prices Commission of Pakistan in 2004, the average picking rate is Rs. 85 and Rs. 80 in Punjab and Sindh. (2) "At the peak of the 2005-06 season, pickers reported that they started picking around 5 to 6 am and continued to work until 4 to 5 pm in the afternoon," a 12 hour work day.
According to the SDPI and the WFP, the cotton growing districts of Punjab are at the bottom of the provincial ranking of female literacy. And women workers are often not able to confirm the weight of the cotton they picked or generally exercise and assert their rights.
The work is seasonal of-course and runs in 3 to 5 waves between August and February; the women and girls are on "contract", and do not have employee status and any of the consequent protections of labor law or social security. Women cotton pickers work in groups but are not members of unions that would organize for their rights. Indeed the law forbids both categories, agricultural workers and contract employees, from forming official unions that would impose collective pressure on the growers and force them to pay better and use less pesticide.
Horrifyingly thus they have no hope to be compensated if they acquire skin disease and cancer. Siegmann and Shaheen's article continues that 80% of the total pesticides consumed in Pakistan are used for the protection of the cotton crop during its growing period from July to October. Cotton pickers are likely to contract skin disease and cancer. They do not have access to medical care; they are not informed about the health perils of working in cotton fields, and even if they were informed, it is doubtful they would have a real choice given their generally low socio economic status and a lack of alternatives. When businesses and governments collude and decide to liberalize trade and lower the price of pesticides, the people most acutely affected by pesticide use are obviously not part of the discussion.
Silently they suffer. Ruthlessly landowners and industrialists race to the bottom. Obliviously we consume.
A lawn suit bought at Gul Ahmed for Rs. 4,000 could equal 100 working days of a woman in rural Sindh. Add to that her malnutrition, lack of education and social safety nets, and exposure to pesticide. Add to that the contamination in food and water and how that affects the health and prospects of even the children.
It's not lawn, it's blood cotton.
1) Karin Astrid Siegmann and Nazima Shaheen: Weakest Link in the Textile chain: Pakistani Cotton Pickers; Bitter Harvest. The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Vol. 51, No. 4, 200
http://www.sdpi.org/advocacy/10-Karin%20Siegmann%20and%20Nazima%20Shaheen.pdf
2) Recently the price of cotton has risen considerably to Rs. 11,000 per maund. See http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011\01\21\story_21-1-2011_pg5_9
In 2010 it peaked at Rs, 7,000 per maund. Siegmann and Shaheen say that: "At the national level, a 20 % increase in cotton prices causes poverty among all cotton-producing households to fall from 40 per cent to 28 %. I do not know of any studies showing that this unprecedented rise in the price of cotton has alleviated poverty in any meaningful manner, or helped women in any way.
14 comments:
am glad someone has written about the luxury lawn lunacy. I myself am astonished at this horrendous race. Having returned to my homeland after 3 years, I see many changes and this new lawn trend is one of the most useless and exploiting.
I think those who strongly believe in the view projected in this blog, should actually boycott the exhibitions and purchase from the thousands of other reasonable unbranded prints and lawns available in markets like gulf, gizri etc.
In my experience you'll look good in a 300 rupees lawn suit if you stitch it well and carry it off nicely. I have shopped this summer too - but none of my lawn suits were beyond Rs.500.
Another idea is the cut pieces section in gulf market - sometimes you find pieces big enough to make a full flared shirt! ( I found 2 such pieces at Gulf 2 days ago)
I'm glad I work with an organization (WWF - Pakistan) that is actively working to minimize the impact of growing cotton on our natural resources, on the environment, and on the people who grow it. I know the facts, so I can make informed decisions as a consumer.
If you're based in Lahore, I would like to invite you to my office. Or if you're in Karachi, Let me know if you'd be interested in receiving some information about the Better Cotton Project of WWF - Pakistan & BCI.
Last but not the least: this is a great post.
I agree that the branded lawn mania has reached hysteric proportions and that we are obfuscating the real issue of unfair wages in the agriculture sector with our disdain for commercialization of lawn.For those poor workers down the value chain, it doesnt matter whether the end product is branded, expensive lawn or unbranded cheap ones - they get bad wages regardless. The issue is not whether to buy expensive or inexpensive clothes - but to change the condition of poor workers.
Zen I agree with you. Regarding the lawn and cotton pickers connection, please keep in mind that the majority of cotton in this country is exported whether in raw, spun or woven form and a very small percentage is used for the lawn. Furthermore, I have heard from reliable industry insiders that the MOST of these lawn exhibitors (SANA SAFINAZ included) import the fabric from China and have it printed locally by mills in Pakistan. Very few large lawn players i.e. Gulahmed and maybe some others produce their own fabric using local cotton.
My point is that this article was great in enlightening us about the plight of cotton workers and came at a good time as well, and maybe the only way these workers will get the attention they require is by linking them to this issue, but its not a strong linkage in any form. Generally worker conditions in developing countries are awful, lets talk about the bigger issue here, boycotting lawn will not do much but more attention to Lawn itself which it really does not need.
What we need to think about globally is fair trade and better labor conditions in general.
@Madiha. I don't know the break down between local cotton and lawn directly but the thread that runs through this is that cotton at one end has suffering poor workers and on the other the rich gluttons gorging on luxury cotton. In some ways it is no different than other ugly disparities that run through our society but it definitely worth bringing up. The connection may not be commercial (as you say) but it is a human connection - an unfair, exploitative one.
You have no idea about the economics of cotton, do you?
Cotton picking is the single most valuae source of income to millions of households in rural areas. money circulates when you buy branded cotton and finds it's way down to the masses. Boycott your own home grown cotton???? What an idiotic idea is that. All these poor women you are so worried about will starve to death along with their children.
Money spent on Pakistani products is never wasted no matter what. So when you buy cotton or an expensive wedding dress or do huge lavish weddings you are in fact helping the economy more by circulating money. Get it.
Faisal,
your comment is symptomatic of a phenomena in Pakistan --read and comment without understanding the point. comprehension skills, much?
And so is your point.
No one is disagreeing that pickers need to have their rights protected. Yes we need labor laws to protect not only cotton pickers but also every other industry in pakistan.
What i am trying to correct here is a misconception that money spent is money wasted. It's not. Just think about it. Money just exchanges hands. now is that good or bad.
As for as cotton picking ladies are concerned, in my person experience as being a small scale farm owner (this is an enterpreneural activity and i am not a feudal), the pay scales are around Rs5-10/kg depending on the location and season (i can take you to areas in Thatta, Badin, Mirpurkhas, Sanghar where you can verify that rate) which means daily income of Rs200-400 (at 40kg picking per day). For a month this means income of Rs6000-12000 which is nearly in line with monthly income of your urban driver, security guard, house helper not to mention that the average urban women pays hardly 2000-3000 per month for a house cleaning lady for half days back breaking labor. In case of urban workers the cost of living is many times more than a rural faimly.
Also in most cases, the cotton picking is the only cash paying labour that rural ladies do whereas majority of their time is spent doing work (cooking, raising kids, caring animals, tendings fields)for which they are paid nothing.
As far as i understand your idea is to take away the only decent paying source of income that a rural woman has. How many rural women did you consent before writing this article?
Ia m so glad some one has written about this. I myself like weraing good clothes. But does good mean expensive.
Where ever I go women are discussing lawn and how many pieces they bought and the amount of money they spent. Then they sit and cokmplain about their maids whose one month of pay equals to price of their one jora.
Very well written
Dear Author:
You make an incontrovertible point in that the plight of cotton workers warrants attention, and perhaps some sort of social security net sponsored by the government.
From a free market standpoint, your argument that buying cotton adds to or fuels the plight of cotton workers is absolutely incoherent. Think about it. If the whole of Pakistan reads and understands your blog post, and if no one buys cotton products tomorrow, what will happen? Cotton producers will either export their produce, or they will fire cotton workers, who will then have no means of livelihood (not even the Rs. 40 / day they had when Pakistan was buying cotton). Neither of these outcomes are any improvements over the status quo.
A more coherent argument on your side would've been to impose and enforce a minimum wage law, which I, again, criticize as a free market advocate. In a nutshell, minimum wage laws increase unemployment, and, in some cases, decrease international competitiveness of local manufacturers (Econ 101).
The million-dollar question, then, is what should we do? Should we let the cotton workers rot?
I think the solution does not lie in imposing minimum wage laws; or boycotting cotton products; instead, it lies in setting up institutions to empower the labor force through education. I may be wrong, I'm not quite well-read on developmental economics or public policy - but I do know that boycotting cotton is as incoherent an argument as boycotting Hershey's chocolates for its recent human rights violations at manufacturing plants in Pennsylvania, or Apple's in China.
To deliver one final death blow to all these boycotting proposals - did you ever read Plato, Socrates, Hobbes, Locke, Mill? If there is one thing most philosophers agree upon - it is that human beings are selfish. Even IF (and that's an impossible if) boycotting made economic sense, it would have been absolutely impractical because human beings, in general, are selfish. You and I may boycott, but the masses at large will not.
usman,
you lost me when you said free market. look around you. there is massive unemployment and people do not get min wages. there are useless goods produced, consumed by many, while in parts of Sindh there is hunger and starvation. pretty soon we will have food riots given the inflation. free market works for the 1% and fails the rest. so its a failing system. what we see now free market neo capitalism is the last scramble at the world's goodies, a massive globalization and war effort by corporations to increase their profits and usurp natural resources. this will not solve the world's problems. do not peg yourself as a free mkt economist or a developmental one. look at it holistically without narrow minded and cliched comparisons to Soviet Union's so called failure. if this is the world you want, the world of the 1%, then you are welcome to it. it is not the world I care for. You have nothing, bro, to lose, but your chains. short of massive overhaus, we need a seriously sturdy regulatory system.
also, i never said boycott. so the incoherence in yr reading is lost on me.
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