Over half of the total population of Mumbai, India lives in the slums or on the streets with little access to clean water and sewage disposal. Last January I spent some time with a non profit organization that works in the Daravi slum which comprises 174 hectares of land with more than 600,000 inhabitants, and is just one of 700 slums in Mumbai. One day the non-profit took a group of us to visit with children who are kept as slave labor, an experience that has no parallel. We were split up into small groups, and put in taxi cabs that drove us around so that we would not know where we were, precisely so that we could not find our way back there ever again. The factory owners do in some instances allow visitors into their work place, yet they would certainly not take the risk of anyone being able to return there and raid the premises or report it to the authorities. The non-profit is able to arrange these visits because the factory owners are encouraged to demonstrate their "enlightenment" to the outside world because they allow for the education of the children who work for them.

The children who work in these sweatshops are taken from their villages at a very young age, usually six or seven. Sometimes they are stolen, sometimes sold by parents or other relatives who are lured into thinking that the children will be treated fairly and will come home someday with profitable skills and money saved. Sometimes the children are bonded laborers, compelled to work for their employers in exchange for a loan to their families, and they are unable to leave while in debt. They earn so little that they may in fact never be free of this debt. Other trafficked children work in apprenticeship for years, "learning the trade" without pay. As the children become older and their fingers less dexterous, they are sold off to other industries or let go. Their small nimble fingers are valued for beautiful beading and embroidery work. Other common situations for child labor in India are the manufacturing of drugs, matches, glass, fire crackers, rugs, and diamonds. The non-profit told us that the children's names were changed, they were emotionally and sexually abused, and that they often work seven days a week without ever going outside.

We arrived to the shop by entering a dilapidated building and then crawling up a long dark passageway. The foreman told us that he had come there as a child and had worked hard to eventually become in charge of this beading shop. He sells a yard of intricately beaded and stitched cloth for approximately $3, and three yards of less intricate work also for $3. There are twelve children who work for him, and he explained to us that there is no means to pay them when he is already providing them with room and board. The children sleep in the same room they work in, and his wife prepares the meager provisions. Two hours each week are set aside for the non-profit to come in and teach the children how to read and write. This instruction was arranged by the non-profit which initially used threats of legal action and exposure against the sweatshop to let them work with the children. Most of the children in Daravi have no real connection with their families who are usually from far away mountain villages. The program that the non-profit offers to these children goes beyond a basic education. They help the children to locate and communicate with their families, with literacy enabling this interaction.

Children will be slaves as long as there is a market for the products they produce. Because of this, fair trade needs to be a part of every discussion about globalization until slavery and other abusive practices are eradicated.

We asked a lot of questions during the visit. One was how old the children were. Before knowing the response I would have guessed that the age range was between 4 and 14. In reality their ages are between 6 and 28 years of age. The 28 year old was fair, slight and quiet. Even with additional information about their situation I could have never guessed his age accurately. His growth and development are far from normal for a man of his age. The laborers spoke directly to us, but under the watchful eye of the foreman, so we understood that our interaction was limited and most likely disingenuous.

It is hard to make sense of the world after having witnessed child slavery first hand. Reading about the indignities that people face could never do for me what a few hours with these children did. Believing in fair trade is different than constantly acting on it. With the surfeit of inexpensive imported goods from India being sold all over the world, buying fair trade products one hundred percent of the time has to come from the pit of your stomach. I feel genuinely sick when I think about those children, and that is what is required to change consumer habits. Stores should be required to attach the story of these twelve children, who began working in a dim, grimy factory at the age of six and who don't even know their real names, to the purses and shawls fashioned by their small hands. Nevertheless, children will be slaves as long as there is a market for the products they produce. Fair trade needs to be a part of every discussion about globalization until slavery and other abusive practices are eradicated. Fair trade needs to be described to consumers in graphic terms so that consumers can actually see the gaze of a child's eyes that have not seen daylight in months as they select their merchandise.

According to Oxfam, fair trade is an alternative approach to conventional international trade. It is a trading partnership which aims at sustainable development for excluded and disadvantaged producers. It seeks to do this by providing better trading conditions, by raising awareness and by campaigning. A key component of fair trade is that individual producers are benefiting from the trading terms applied, something which is clearly not happening for the children that I met in Daravi.

Each of us can better support fair trade by looking for the ‘Fair Trade Certified' label or the Fair Trade Federation logo on a product. Fair prices reflect the true production costs of an item, including raw materials and labor. Forced labor and exploitative child labor are not allowed in the fair trade system, nor is gender discrimination or abuse in the workplace. Fair trade producers require that working conditions are equal, healthy, safe and environmentally friendly. The children of India deserve all this and more, but most of all, they deserve a childhood. It may be a long time before childhood becomes a part of their reality.

The globalization tour was arranged by Global Exchange, based out of San Francisco.

The non-profit organization working out of Daravi is Pratham.org.






Contributed by Erin Kate Thomas as a part of a program evaluation to Global Exchange.

To read a Global Envision article about empowering children, see Children Are Changing Their World.