Additional notes on GAP and Child Labor

As a person from India, I do feel bad about child labor being used there. But then that is not the end of it. If these children would not have been working for GAP, they would have ended up as Child Farmers or Child Workers, or something, but not as school childrens. Does it change the picture a bit? Not at all.

Why. Let's explore:

- The children would have ended up in cotton farms producing cotton, which would have been used to make yarn, and then the cloth for GAP.
- The children would have ended up in other industries such as food which would have contributed indirectly to GAP's products (by bringing food to GAP's workers).

And to tell you that these are not Long Shot Imginations. Anyone who has eaten on a roadside eatery in India would know that the dishes are washed by children, food is delivered to the table by children and so on.

So GAP terminating the contract does not solve the problem. What GAP should have done was:
To continue giving work to same contractor and put up regular inspections at the contractor to ensure that no child labor is used, the workers are treated fairly, the children are being sent to school, fed and provided housing by the contractor (as a punishment). That would have forced the contractor to change the way they think.

One Note:
The view on child labor in India is slightly different. People would prefer to child to work rather then die of hunger. Hunger because of not having money to buy food is not easily understandable to someone who has not faced it. And this is not about skipping a meal. This is about going on for days without food. The wealth India creates, does not percolate to poorest of its people. Cloths produced by child are not neccesarily the worse thing that occurs on the planet.

Children were used in manufacturing cloths for Gap in India

There is a report, that one of the sub-contractor used child labourers to produce cloths for GAP in India. The link is here.

It is really disturbing that children were used to produce cloths in those shops. But there are things that I find more disturbing.

• Quoting from report: Hansen blamed the alleged abuse on an unauthorized subcontractor for one of its Indian vendors and said the subcontractor's relationship with the Gap had been "terminated.". Yes, the subcontractor's relationship is terminated. But what about the Indian Vendor? It was the vendor's responcibility to enforce GAP's ethics standards. Why is GAP not acting tough against the Vendor?
• Was the incident reported to Indian Government? Why Not?
• Why isn't GAP threating to pull out from Indian Manufacturing completely?

Why isn't Unicef taking up this and similar issue with Indian Government?

$100 laptop, Child Labour and other random thoughts

Well, Nicholas Negroponte's $100 laptop is almost ready. I am sure it may be something really great for children of underdeveloped and developing countries.

What caught my eye was his comment:

"In fact, one of the saddest but most common conditions in elementary school computer labs (when they exist in the developing world), is the children are being trained to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint," Negroponte wrote in an e-mail interview. "I consider that criminal, because children should be making things, communicating, exploring, sharing, not running office automation tools."

That is very true.
This throws up some interesting questions:

1. Can a child of an artisan learning ancestral art be considered child labor?
2. If a child is learning science and maths in a school, or learns to write a software program, should it be considered child labor?
3. Should the baby who acted in "Baby's Day Out" be considered child labor? In the same breath, should all child actors be considered child labor? What about child musicians and other prodigies?
   

Why is child labor rampant in underdeveloped countries? One of the greatest reason for that is that most countries fail to implement proper minimum wage policy. The policy is faulty, and sometimes not enforced. Sometimes, the amount of minimum wage is so low, that it does not allow a person to sustain himself/herself and additional 1 defendant (say a child). Think about large families with several children. Only option left for them is to beg, work, and somehow make their living. Can the countries raise their minimum wage to allow a person to survive himself and feed an additional person? If that is possible then those parents would be ready to send their children to schools.