Day 125: Would You Do This Job?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2190251/And-thought-bad-job-Indian-sewer-diver-paid-just-3-50-day-plus-bottle-booze-unclog-Delhis-drains.html?ICO=most_read_module

People are paid the equivalent of 3,50 Pounds a day, with a bottle of moonshine, to unclog sewers of Delhi, India.

The work-related mortality rate for the people doing this job is almost 70% and (or because?) they are not provided with any protective clothing or equipment. This still happens even though it has been banned - the municipalities employ thousands of sewer divers across India. All of this is still occurring even though India has recently announced that they will be spending 52 million Pounds on a space mission to Mars.

So that effectively indicates that the government of India (and every other government) would rather focus on studying a rock planet than addressing the problem right here on Earth of almost 50% of the population living in poverty - not including animals and the destruction of nature.

All around us, in every aspect of our civilization, we have decreed the value of life to be less than the value of money. Consider that the only reason any country would focus on a mission to Mars instead of solving poverty is that they want to keep up with the international competition so that they can make more money. The only reason a country would spend any money on defense is to protect the money they have.

Look at North Korea: here is an example of blatant disregard for life in favour of prancing around with guns, threatening war to whoever looks their way. What is the motivation for these actions? They want more money, they want to protect the money they have and they want to appear to be strong so that no one will want to try and take their money. But then what of the people? The people are starving because the government (which is made up of people and not robots or aliens, contrary to popular belief/assumptions) squeezes every resource they can from the citizens, leaving them with nothing. Of course, as with every country, the leaders and high-ranking officials live in the lap of luxury.

This line of thought leads me to pondering: every movie we see where their is the valiant hero, freeing his people from the "old ways"/tradition or whatever has been designed in such a way that we will perceive personal glory and personal fulfillment as more important than communal fulfillment, which in turn led to the belief that it is OK for some people to be rich while other people starve - cos the rich people are valiant heroes who fought for their personal freedom - so what if they destroyed a few communities along the way and introduced diseases and alcohol and abuse.


Back to my original point: would you want to be a sewer diver in India? Would you want your child to be a sewer diver in India? Would you be willing to put your young child to work so that your whole family could survive? Would you want to live in a society where child labour is accepted because that is how most people are forced to live in order to survive? Of course you don't want any of these things - no one does - so then why do you allow so many, many people to live in such circumstances simply because you were fortunate to be born in a place where you were given an opportunity to live comfortably? How is your life any more important than the life of a child working in India? How is the life of your child more important than the life of any other child? Oh, simply because it is yours it is somehow more valuable? That doesn't even make sense.

Choose a world where all will be free from misery due to the (mis)fortunes of birth and circumstance. Vote and share your ideas at www.equalmoney.org

Comments