India Stone

CharlesD

I'm not sure where this post should go.
A TV show on PBS the other night about child labor stated that much of the stone quarried in India that is shipped to America for countertops is mined by forced child labor.
That news sort of took some of the luster off some of that beautiful stone I admire.
Have any of you all heard of this going on in India?

Meezer

Perhaps someone in the masonry forum may know?

Glasshousebltr

Nooo ........never has a thing of such beeen there ..........I give you 2 goats for your sister.

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Bob

Tscarborough

If you consider "forced" to be the same as "hungry", I wll cede the point. Please do not apply American soccer-mom standards to people living in a home made of sticks with a dirt floor and little chance of anything else, though. The choice to buy the fruit of their labor is up to you.

concretemasonry

I've been in India about 10 times. I have been around stone quarries, but they were for stone to be crushed for use as concrete aggregates and base.

Usually, the quarry employees live in "huts" built out of block or brick with wrinkled tin roofs (housing often goes with the job, even if it is a bridge construction job). Most of the work is done by men but you find some women, but never saw kids. Often women will carry excavated material on trays on their heads on a job.

The closest thing I saw was the women chipping head-size rock into smaller agregate (1/4" to 1") by hand with a hammer or other rock (very good hard rock). I assume these women were also looking after the kids if there was no school. I was told by a friend that they sorted by size (by hand & eye) and put it into bags that they sold themselves. - the women were in their pretty saris and did wear some gold (if you cannot buy land, you buy gold and wear it to avoid losing it). They did not know they were poor.

It may sound strange but it is believable when cement is weighed and sold by the pound (1# to 10# bags) at a DIY store. Nothing is built out of wood and not everyone has a car, so bags are all you can put on a bike. - I have seen brick delivered on a trailer behind a bicycle. I also saw 30' lengths of rebar (bent into a "U" delivered by bicycle). If they were really poor they would live in a wood/poly shanty or an abandoned section of 4' culvert.

If it can be done, the Indians will find a way.

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Dick

Engineer, designer and consultant recently active domestically and internationally on construction and design in about 35 countries.

Glasshousebltr

Not even Custer can stand in their way ..........

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Bob

Mike Finley

Good point.

I saw another report that said those same Indians weren't being paid enough to have 2 big SUVs, buy their kids $20,000 cars for their first cars, go out to dinner 4 nights a week, or vacation in the Poconos twice a year either.

TempestV

many times, jobs that we would consider near slave labor are a big step up for people in third world countrys.

concretemasonry

India is not a third world country. Because of its size and population, it does have a lot of poor, but does not have the number of "voluntarily unemployed" people that the U.S. has. They want to work.

Good schools (not enough for the population), is very very safe and is starting to really break out because of the technology and wealth. There is a joke there that if you can't get into the top Indian engineering schools, you have take a step down and go to something like M.I.T.

Unfortnately, the country does not have a lot of natural resources, but it has people and technology.

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Dick

Engineer, designer and consultant recently active domestically and internationally on construction and design in about 35 countries.

TempestV

India is one of the few countries that can be both classified as a modern country and a third world nation. Parts of India are prosperous, technological power houses, but other parts are still what someone would consider third world.