What if you knew how your t-shirt is made? By Sumangali Girls?

Another take on "there comes a point when you don't want to know."

I often tell students that one of the wonderful aspects of the market is that it will deliver as long as we are ready to pay up.  I remind them that in a liberal democracy, we not only get to exercise preferences in the political arena but also via the market transactions that we engage in.  It is the aggregation of such preferences that then feed into shaping not only how we humans live but also how we interact with the natural environment.

Most of us tend to think that we can be active only via the political process--by voting for a party or a candidate, or by organizing community action, or any of the possible political approaches.  But, we can equally, and perhaps more forcefully, cast our preferences via the market too.  Well, a variation of that old expression "put your money where your mouth is" can do wonders via the market, as opposed to the relatively no cost approach of signing on to petitions, for instance, to Free Tibet!

While I don't quite agree with the entire philosophy presented by Anna Lappe, the idea that I get across to students is no different from the succinct way she has put it:

Source

When we spend money to buy the atrociously inexpensive widget that is made in China, well, we are also voting for the labor and environmental conditions there.  On the other hand, if we truly valued the labor and environmental conditions, then we could bypass those widgets, or offer to pay more for products that were manufactured while treating the labor and the natural environment a lot more responsibly to our liking.  Like how I pay more for the coffee that I buy--the premium goes towards better labor conditions and a more environmentally responsible coffee-growing.

The market will deliver if we exercised such preferences to create the kind of world that we want.  It is just that more often than not we don't put our money where our mouth is.  Talk is bloody cheap, right?

And, what if we dug deeper into how those widgets are made in some corner of the world?

Dana Liebelson writes in Mother Jones about trying to see where t-shirts are made.  Of course, the publication being Mother Jones is an immediate give-away on what to expect in the piece.  Yet, it is a must read.

Leibelson goes to my old country, India.  To my old part of the world there, Tamil Nadu.  And she goes to Coimbatore, which was another old stomping ground of mine.

The details that she writes about are troubling, indeed.  Will make most of us squirm in our seats and wish that we didn't know anything about all those.  Life is easier when we don't know.  Denial is a marvelous mechanism to have a blissful life.  But, attempting to understand the world means getting to know the atrocities all around that, ironically, seem to make our daily lives that much more comfortable.

So, how much at ease is Liebelson when she returns to the comforts of life in the US after finding out how the t-shirt is made?

A few months after I return from India, I go out to drinks with some friends, one of whom is wearing a rad pair of black tights with stripes up the sides. When I ask her where they came from, she proudly tells me that they cost just $20 at H&M. I don't push for details, because who am I to judge? I'm wearing a made-in-India Urban Outfitters shirt I bought before my trip. I looked at the label when I returned home, for the very first time. This is a thing I do now, even though it won't tell me what I want to know: Somewhere down the supply chain, did Aruna or Selvi make parts of my shirt?

Who am I to judge is a variation of "Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone," right?

Liebelson concludes that essay recalling her meeting with, and interviewing, Lakshmi.  I wish Liebelson had pointed out the tragic irony of the name: Lakshmi is the name of the Hindu goddess of wealth, and here was a real life Lakshmi struggling for her very existence.

At 25, she was a year older than me, all of 4-foot-10, and wearing a beautiful orange dress covered with flowers that she had embroidered herself. Beginning at age 16, she worked at a spinning mill for five years, in conditions she called "torture." Supervisors offered her vacations in return for sex, and when she declined, she says they denied her lunch breaks. She was dyeing yarn with chemicals that burned her hands and gave her boils. Supervisors would only give girls gloves occasionally, deducting the cost from their pay. Her hands would go numb for days. After five years, she left with about $620—half of one month's rent on my studio apartment—and crippling ulcers. She has since spent her wages on doctors' bills, and there is nothing left for a dowry.

Caption at the New Yorker:
Lakshmi, 25, developed burns and boils on her hands from dyeing chemicals. "No man is going to marry me now," she says.

Lakshmi is trapped in circumstances that are beyond are her control.

I interviewed her in her room, which was filled with embroidered blankets. It was night, and the stars were as numerous as they are in the big sky of Montana, where I grew up. Through the open windows we could hear a chorus of insects. We took a photograph together, sitting on her cot, and she put her arm around me and grinned. A calico cat jumped from the dirt floor onto the bed. For that second, we were just two young women—unmarried, drinking tea, tired from a long day. But after we stood up, I knew that I would soon get on a plane to Washington, DC, where stores selling cheap leopard-print pumps and skinny jeans line the streets and no one expects me to give my entire salary to my parents for a dowry. And Lakshmi would still be here in this room, knowing—as she told me right after the photo was taken—that "no man is going to marry me now."

Perhaps another case of "there comes a point when you don't want to know."