Blood Cotton - Part 2

Apparently some society aunties do not like their mania for lawn being mixed up with the plight of cotton pickers.  Even if cotton is the thread that runs between their hyper consumerism and the poverty of the pickers, they'd rather focus on the positives -- the aesthetics of lawn, and the healthy business it generates.  


Girls have a right to look pretty.  One day at work, when a colleague said that, I was reminded of our trip to Karachi University.  We were trying to arrange a talk by Kakakhel, a journalist from Peshawar.  As we found our way around the college's  bureaucracy to acquire a room, we met an Islamic history professor.  She was a petite woman and so pleasant faced, she seemed more suitable for Montessori.  Her jet black hair was tied back.  My friend told me her story was that she did not add the obligatory "peace be upon him" after saying the Prophet Mohammad's name when she taught.  She told her students who were offended by this omission that it was a history course and not be confused with theology.  She got a lot of flak for it.  Well, on this particular warm day, the campus was empty.  There was a strike and only a few students had made it -- most significantly the ones from Gilgit.  She walked up the hallway dressed in a lawn suit floral print that looked like it was pulled out of the eighties and defied any conformity to current trends.  She didn't care.  Her life was consumed by more important things.  On this side of the bridge she would be a social pariah.  Somebody to be pitied and derided.


I was a kid's birthday party a few days ago, and acutely aware of my schizophrenic existence.  The topic was lawn, and I overheard that Sana Safinaz suits were available in black for a mere Rs. 1000 to 1500 extra fee.  I also heard that some women were buying in bulk, and buyers were mad that they had to be stuck in the same line as them when they had only a modest five to purchase.  The vendors were slammed with a Rs. 2 crore tax.  It was a small dent as they made profits of Rs.  6 crore or 10 crore.  


There seems to be an unhealthy obsession with possessing lawn in Pakistan -- at least in Karachi.  There is a lingo and urban legends around the fetish of lawn.  You have to wear the print before someone's maid is spotted in it.  You have to find ways not to run into someone wearing the exact same print.  You can't wear the same print a second time.  You can always spot a cheap imitation from Gulf.  The summer will be excruciating if you do not have 200 suits hanging in your closet. Then begin the trips to the darzi, and lots of time expended in design and embellishments.  A generation gone to hell and lost in space.  Sometimes it feels there is an army of elite women run amok in the city playing a secret tambola that never ends, but turns into a kitty party, and shrieks of laughter.  


Here is a journalist berating "Asim Jofa" that his shoots of Iman Ali, the model, are deceptive.  She says the lawn joras they sell do not come with all the "kaam" Ali is wearing, and the pre-packaged fabric is rarely enough to tailor the extravagantly flared designs they boast.  Heartfelt complaints.  Lawn mania masquerading as intelligence.





http://old.thenews.com.pk/26-02-2011/instep_today/


The billboards have gone nuts this past month.  Its like the city has been taken over by a giant woman with thin muscles, spidery legs, and a vindictive, on the verge of anorexia expression.  She has vowed to spread her wings over electrical wires, across flyovers and over every piece of mahogany furniture in sight.  


All this for something that adds no value to society, and creates nothing that people can use in their everyday life.  Its simply big clunky jewelry for the textile mills -- collaborate with big names in fashion design and modeling and multiply the profits.  Orient for example, partnered with Deepak Perwani who did a delectable pastel collection for them.  He seems to miss the irony in his statement endorsing simplicity.   “I think a simple lawn suit loses its charm the moment there is excessive embroidery on it.”  His suits start at Rs. 2,800 and do not quite go up to Rs, 4,000.


http://tribune.com.pk/story/134982/holi-lawn/    


Textile mills have made it big this year, specially in exports.  The president declared 2011 as their year and Gul Ahmed made a profit of Rs. 588 million.


http://www.just-style.com/news/nishat-mills-doubles-hy-profit_id110604.aspx


In the meanwhile 250,000 power loom workers were striking in Faislabad for an increase in wages last July.  Looms convert thread to textile.  Union organizing in this area survived the assaults of the Zia decade.  In the picture below, you see them standing behind a banner of the Labor Quami Movement





They were finally successful in a 17% wage hike, but not without blood.  On July 6th, Mustansar Randhawa (See picture below) an organizer of power loom workers across Faisalabad, Jhang and Toba Tek Singh, and his brother were shot to death.  The AHRC called for an investigation.  

http://www.solidarity-us.org/current/node/2949
http://www.laborpakistan.org/news54.htm







The fight for labor in general and the power loom workers runs deeper than the fight for wages.  According to a PILER/SDPI study and Labour Party activists, employers avoid paying into social security and provident funds by showing shops comprising less than 10 employees.  Under the Factory Acts, 1934, such payments are mandatory only for enterprises larger than 10.  Moreover, employers do not issue identification cards or appointment letters to their employees in an attempt to legally bypass any duties owed to them.  Workers are therefore completely deprived of any state and employer funded social security benefits -- due to a conniving alliance of the bureaucracy, the industrialists and even the labor courts that can be nobbled and bribed.  This makes the labor of Pakistan very desperate and vulnerable.


I visited a bunch of tanneries in December and was never able to write about it.  Not having health benefits had been particularly debilitating for an engineer at one of the factories.  A 50 year old man, Kashmiri good looks, he took me to his tiny office that looked like the workshop of a mad scientist from an old era.  It was covered with an extraordinary dust - collected over years from leather emissions.  He said he made Rs, 18,000 after 20 years of service (and deserved at least Rs.50,000) and his employer would not pay his medical bills.  He had a heart attack and had to undergo surgery, and had to take loans.  He said he works in rubber slippers and is exposed to electrical currents all day.  He recounted an episode when he saw a pair of boots at a Bata shoe outlet and he thought they were perfect safety wise, but put them back when he saw the price was Rs. 2,000.  


He took me for a tour of  the factory floors where boys and young men were draped around various machines.  They repeated the same process over and over.  One group was sending leather through a hot iron machine machine so that it got thinner and shinier.  Without gloves, the workers repeatedly manipulated several very hot metal locks that clasped the material.  He asked me to touch them, and I was shocked.  The winter cool belied the fact that this area would be a 120 degrees in a few months.  There was a devilishly pungent odor as the factory next door produced chicken feed made out of fish remains.  (In fact, I was pretending to be a journalist doing a story about the stench.)  


A labor organizer informed me that the effluents released in the tanning process are not being treated by the tanneries, and are entering the water supply.  Instantly, the wide canal seemed like a cancerous crack in the middle of the road.


http://casestudies.lead.org/index.php?cscid=148


Workers have no one to watch their back when they get sick -- no employer, no state mechanism to bail them out.  This is true not just of the power looms and the tanneries but all sectors - cotton pickers of course suffer the same disabilities of social security in the face of exposure to harmful pesticides.


Its terribly dehumanizing that while people who have worked 20 years find Rs. 2,000 for a much needed pair of boots to be prohibitively high, some women of society can splurge Rs. 6,000 on a suit they will wear once or twice.


To all the people who read the piece on Blood Cotton and reacted with with this -- 


Buying expensive lawn will not make a difference to the plight of cotton pickers.   In fact our buying allows them to stay employed.  


The problem is much larger than that.  Your side of the consumerist rat race makes no difference to anyone. You are not keeping them employed.  They never had jobs to begin with.  Your cash is simply the grease that works a larger than life, gluttonous industry - where art comes to die, where in the name of fashion and aesthetics, people are making bundles of money, and secretly scoffing at the bewildering and shrill narcissism of women who think that lawn, somehow, enhances their status and makes them whole. 

the movers and shakers: women of pakistan

Newsweek came up with a list of 100 women who matter most in Pakistan.  They left out a few from a list they had of 350 women, broke a few hearts, and left a bunch feeling indignant.  


http://www.newsweekpakistan.com/component/content/article/38-features/270-100-women-who-shake-pakistan


A "list" such as this a ridiculous idea, and here's a list why:


1.  It fits the paradigm of how westerners write about Pakistan.  If its not going to be the terror militant suicide angle, then it should be about defiance, spirit, resilience - their art, their bold and talented women, their unique industries.  They party at french beach, they produce sex toys, they have transvestites who collect taxes, they have fashion shows where models display skin and bones.  They have a 100 women who matter (most.)  What is implicitly problematic with this module its always the other (softer) side of the dichotomy, the side that doesn't wield swords in the name of Allah, and isn't a failed state.  


2.  The list is horribly weighted towards the rich, powerful, and privileged -- politicians, business owners and even social entrepreneurs who buy into capitalist models of success for the poor.  Case in point: Roshaneh tops the list -- who combines benevolent capitalism with patriotism.  Another case in point: Bushra Aitzaz -- who to her credit, heads a business, and is head of the cricket board, and who according to "facebook note" source reminded the lawyers who questioned Aitzaz's leadership of their movement of their "auqaat," which roughly translates to "shut up, you low class."  


3.  When the list does stumble upon a representative from the working class, it is everybody's favorite token, Mutktaran Mai.  Not to diminish her contribution -- however, her presence in such lists shows what a rural, non elite person has to suffer, and how she must miraculously rise above all odds, in order to make it to the imagination of the corporate media and the glitzy liberal ngo-charity-philanthropy circuit.  Millions of women work in fields and in home based factories and contribute significantly to the economy, and to use a cliche, are the backbone of society.  They suffer gross injustices, are not recognized as workers, paid less than their male counterparts.  What about their leaders and organizers?  Or is it enough that they are represented by the landed politicians who rely on their vote bank and the business women who de facto gain in profit margins from their exploited status, have made it to the list? (And Jugnu Mohsin who publishes stories about the 'good times' of the famously wealthy in her glossy magazine peddled by street vendors who work 8 hour days and still don't make enough to pay their chidlren's tution.)


4.  Then the glaring exclusions that simply do not make sense.  I am not supporting their inclusion -- but it does not add up why Aseefa Zardari (of anti polio achievements and a father) would make the list and Fatima Bhutto (also of father fame) would be dropped; why Sonya Jehan would make it as TV's most attractive mascot, yet Sania Saeed, sensible, social issue drama actor would be eliminated; why Sheema Kirmani classical dancer and creator of Tehriq-i-Niswan and whose work has impact in Karachi was deemed to matter less than Shazia Sikander modern miniature artist whose work has "shown at every New York Gallery worth its salt."   Nighat Said Khan, one of the founders of the Womens' Action Forum made it, and so did Aurat founder Nigar, but it must be terribly vexing for Anis Haroon, also active in WAF and Aurat, chairperson of National Commission on Status of Women, and robust on social issues to be considered any less important.  Also Sara Suleri over Kamila Shamsie?  Kamila is prolific with quality and Broken Verses raised important socio-political issues.  Sara, while sweet and intelligent, and a contributor to theory, is still talking about Meatless Days.  (At a recent event at T2f she referred to a  paragraph in MD about how her sister asks a guy slaughtering her chicken if its "fresh."  Laughs. )

5.  Which brings me to a connected point that the list compilers probably did a coin toss or a dice roll in various categories.  Madeeha Gauhar over Faryal Gauhar.  Sara and Bapsi over Kamila.  Bunny over Anis.  Asma over Hina.  Ayesha Taseer over Tammy Haq.  Fehmida Mirza over Fehmida Riaz.  Salima Hashmi, painter, curator, gallery owner over the other 100 curators, painters, and gallery owners, and innovators in art.  Durriya Qazi was left out -- the person who tried to popularize (co-opt) truck art.  So was the woman from Poppy Seed Studio and her endeavor to produce dhaba art in an attempt to blatantly romanticize and cash in on the work of working class art pupils.  Ghetto isn't cool yet in Pakistan, and Sheedi donkey cart drivers are not quite rapper status.  Nor is being non hetero-sexual acceptable.


(In the sports:  Naseem Hameed, Rubab, Sana Mir, Carla Khan or Kiran Baluch?  (Its such a quaint and small club, put them all in.)  Tina and Abida, singers of Faiz and Sufi kalam, but not Iqbal Bano and Munni, who sing Faiz and ghazal-- one dead, the other badnaam.  Tehmina Durrani cruised in unchallenged.  Who doesn't want to read about the carnal exploits of feudal politicians?  Meera, Veena, or Mathira?  Space only for two in the tramp 'n vamp category.

 6.  Four religious minorities made it to the list. (At least the ones I could count.)  Bapsi Sidwa, Spenta Khandawala, Nargis Mawalvala, and Asiya Nasir.   Three parsis -- all of whom, I am pretty sure, live abroad, and one Christian.  Hallelujah!  But notice the write-up on the one local Asiya non Muslim.   (politically incorrect term, yet in wide usage.) She represents the orthodox Jamaat -i-Ulema-Islam.  Hence, despite her valiant speech in the national assembly about the rights of  minorities, she stands with a party that believes in the systematic legal and political discrimination against minorities, and upholds the infamous blasphemy and Qisas and Diyat laws. Spenta's claim to fame, dubiously, is that she was Hillary Rodham's classmate at a top notch American college.  Nargis, physicist, one of my sister's good friends at one time -- lovely person -- but also MIT-Smith lineage.

7.  And cheering, and tacitly supporting the case for U.S. war and drone attacks on defenseless people in Waziristan (the so called existential threat of militants): Sajida Zulfiqar who resists the taliban to run her furniture business; Samar Minallah (who despite other accomplishments) is cited for exposing the Swat flogging video that precipitated and legitimized a military strike on Swat.  Many women and children were displaced and killed as a result of that operation.  And a certain Dr. Percha who helps un-brainwash taliban children as her service to humanity (with more brainwash and salami sandwiches for the duration of the course so they can endure hunger for the rest of the year?)  And a certain Dr. Shirin who was a former advisor to George Bush, and Huma, an aide to Hillary Clinton. (Shudders.)  Now read Falluja and Najaf in Qul style a few hundred times.


8.  In essence this list lines up well with imperialist philosophy.  Apart from a few good people here and there -- Ayesha Jalal, Samina Khan, Asma Jehangir  -- (Tahera Hasan, a friend, and a lovely person as well,) and  the list is replete with examples of globalization, capitalism queens, and imperialism mascots.  And the parade of horrors -- landed, industrialist politicians and financiers.  Most, except  a couple, either live abroad, or were educated abroad, or holidayed abroad.


In the spirit of International Womens's day, make up your own list; lets do our own version of the Mumbai resistance.  The only rule is that they should represent women with spelled out or practiced socialist, leftist, radical feminist, anti-capitalist, or pro labor ideologies .  They  question the status quo, and do not perpetuate it in any form or fashion, and not privileged in terms of past social status.  Broaden it to South Asians.  Throw in a few Maoist Nepali leaders for good measure.


My list:  


1. Noor Naz Agha - leader in lawyers' movement.  Took the police baton in a rally, and has filed uncelebrated landmark lawsuits on the rights of bonded labor.

2. Najma Khanum, labor party activist, who was returning from a meeting in Baluchistan with home based workers when she was killed in a tragic road accident.  The roads were in a state of negligent disrepair and there was no non military hospitals on the way that would serve the people of Baluchistan.  In any civilized country, there'd be a protest and a million dollar lawsuit.


3.  Arundhati Roy, just because.

Blood Cotton

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/english/allabout/crop/cotton/cotton.growing.areas.pakistan.shtml





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.

lucidity subtlety irony maturity

As a teacher, you have to be careful that you do not shoot down a student so much that she or he is scarred forever.  I once had a teacher.  Singlehandedly, she shot me down, and built me up, and shot me down so completely, I never knew whether I was excellent, horrible, or just plain ridiculous for even trying-- to write to apply to college, to even exist.  Once she asked me to do a book review in class and I started by saying:  Jane Eyre was a woman, an ugly woman.  To which she snapped, Jane Eyre is NOT ugly; she is plain.  (Laughs.)  And in my head, I was like, of course she is plain.  That's what I meant.  I just didn't think to say it because ugly is more colloquial when you're 14.  But I felt humiliated and ridiculed in front of the entire class, and that clouds learning.

You see she loved me at some level.  I knew it.  In class ten, we had to get up and talk about a book we read, and I described a short story in a book called "Bad Girls."  This was a story about a woman who has had a beautiful life, and decides to end it in a beautiful suicide, but is surprised when her plan goes awry and she ends up vomiting in different spots of the meadow where she had planned her demise.  She was so pleased, she almost rubbed her hands in glee.  She was a tad intrigued by the notion of 'badness' in the story, and related to it.  I thought even then.  I  was on cloud nine for a few days and eager not to mess up the karma .

Here is how she described me when I was in class nine many many years ago:  This was a description not for subject, but on the whole, as a class teacher.

She has the potential for creative writing.  She can be fluent, with a lucidity of expression and subtle humor.  She is mature enough to understand the use of ironic expressions and can write imaginatively.  But she lacks application, and is quite careless about punctuation.  (I still am.)  Also, her writing lacks a focal point and indeed all her answers need to be better organized and written with some plan in mind.  (If only I'd listened.)  Perhaps this is due to her inability to apportion time...

It gets better..

Of late she has fallen into the habit of using vocabulary she cannot manipulate...(I'm sprouting wings!) and her answers seem to miss the point altogether.  She does not build a base for arguments, but tends to spring to a conclusion too quickly or gets lost in meaningless generalizations.  (Aren't you supposed to like help me fix that?)  Her attempts at essay writing was a shambles and the comprehension test surprisingly poor.  (I had writer's block dammit, and I did not comprehend.)  She OBVIOUSLY needs to discipline herself in the use of language, particularly as she is also keen on oratory and debating.  (Stop!)

By the way I came 2nd in class this term.  The principal had mercy and wrote nice words to cushion the blow.  I made it to college without a single tuition lesson.  Not because I did not need them,  I did not have access to transport.

In college freshman year, I found Elaine Jahner and we read "Heart of Darkness" which I really struggled with and understood only a little. But thank god, she chose to ignore that my writing still lacked a focal point. She saw the lucidity subtlety irony and maturity, and only because she was generous and liberal, and me a person of color.   But really, all teachers should try that.  (Alternatively, all students should have at least one teacher who sees that.)  It really helps the students when someone in authority thinks they are lucid.